The 37th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival opens tonight with Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s outstanding The Stroll which received its world premiere in the US Documentary Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, going on the win that section’s Special Jury Award for Clarity of Vision. It tells the collective history of the transgender... Continue Reading →
The 36th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival came to a close last weekend with the world premiere of Kevin Hegge’s vibrant and immersive celebration of the creative spirit of the New Romantics, Tramps! The high-spirited, sold out event, attended by Hegge and many of the film's subjects, marked the end of a thrilling edition... Continue Reading →
Filmmaker Emily Branham spent fifteen years following drag artist, and Drag Race's OG next drag superstar, BeBe Zahara Benet aka Marshall Ngwa, resulting in the insightful, heartfelt, and inspiring award-winning feature documentary Being BeBe. From her early pageant days, to the high of snatching that first Drag Race crown, through the struggles of making a... Continue Reading →
Harri Shanahan and Sian Williams' feature documentary Rebel Dykes, which receives its Los Angeles premiere at Outfest LA 2021 on Saturday August 14th (also screening virtually August 15th-17th), is a rousing, celebratory, and considered examination of London's rebel dyke subculture of the 1980s and its legacy. The film's punky, DIY aesthetic captures the anarchic spirit... Continue Reading →
UPDATE: Rebel Dykes opens in UK cinemas and is released on digital Friday November 26th 2021. Harri Shanahan and Sian Williams' feature documentary Rebel Dykes, which receives its world premiere as part of the virtual 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival running March 17th to 28th and its Australian premiere at the Melbourne Queer... Continue Reading →
With an overview of the ACT UP story having been told in compelling and detailed documentaries such as Jim Hubbard's United in Anger: A History of ACT UP and David France's How to Survive a Plague, it's pleasing to now see significant members being focused on individually, such as trans trailblazer Connie Norman, a broadcaster,... Continue Reading →
Luchina Fisher’s feature documentary Mama Gloria, currently making its New York premiere at the virtual 11th annual Athena Film Festival at Barnard College until March 14th and receiving its international premiere as part of the UK-wide 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival starting next week, tells the captivating life story of Chicago's septuagenarian Black... Continue Reading →
Often films with a message are so busy driving that message home that they become one-note. Rūrangi, which plays this month's virtual 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, doesn’t fall into that trap. By placing this transgender homecoming tale into a broader, intersectional context of identity—gender, sexual, cultural—it rises above them to become a... Continue Reading →
Jonathan Wysocki’s debut feature Dramarama, part of this year's virtual BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, is about the last summer after high school, after the curtain has fallen in the high school auditorium for the last time, just before the cast is about to split up and head their separate ways, everyone going off... Continue Reading →
Tunde Johnson is a normal 17 year old boy. He’s Black; he’s gay; he loves his parents; and he’s been sleeping with the hottest guy in school, even though he’s dating Tunde’s best friend. Oh, and, no matter what he does, every night Tunde is murdered by the Los Angeles Police Department. And then he... Continue Reading →
