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 →
BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Rebel Dykes ★★★★★
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 →
Film Review: Mama Gloria ★★★★
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 →
BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Rūrangi ★★★★1/2
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 →
BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Dramarama ★★★★
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 →
BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: No Ordinary Man ★★★★
Directors Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt take us on a thought-provoking and emotionally potent journey as they track the life and legacy of trans masculine icon American jazz musician Billy Tipton, who enjoyed a successful career in the 1940s and 50s. When he died in 1989 his story was co-opted and sensationalised by the media,... Continue Reading →
BFI Flare Film Review: P.S. Burn This Letter Please ★★★★★
The outstanding feature documentary P.S. Burn This Letter Please, now streaming in the US on Discovery+ and premiering iun the UK at 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, uncovers the history of New York’s drag queens of the 1950s and '60s. Following the discovery of a box of old letters in a storage unit... Continue Reading →
BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Cured ★★★★
Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer's riveting feature documentary Cured, which had its world premiere at Outfest and screens this month as part of the virtual 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, examines the fascinating chapter in queer history that saw gay liberation activists successfully overturn the US psychiatric profession's classification of homosexuality as a... Continue Reading →
BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Cowboys ★★★★
Anna Kerrigan’s contemporary western Cowboys, which won two jury awards at last year's Tribeca, with Steve Zahn taking best actor and Kerrigan winning for her screenplay and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest for newcomer Sasha Knight, is part of the virtual 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival March 17-28th... Continue Reading →
BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: Sublet ★★★★
Veteran Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's outstanding new feature Sublet, co-written with Itay Segal, opens with the arrival of a jetlagged and disorientated fifty something gay man, Michael (The Inheritance's John Benjamin Hickey) to bustling Tel Aviv. He's a travel writer for The New York Times who has come to uncover the "real" city over a... Continue Reading →