From March 16 to 27, the BFI Southbank hosts the 36th London LGBTQIA+ Festival, featuring a selection of digital creations from around the UK available on the BFI Player. This year's BFI Flare, one of the world's most significant and oldest LGBT film festivals, will be held in person, in cooperation with the British Council, to give worldwide viewers chosen works on the BFI Player through five Free films - now in its sixth year. Six world premieres, 56 feature films, and 84 short films from 42 nations are among the festival's highlights this year.
Kevin Hegge's feature documentary TRAMPS! closes the festival on Saturday, March 26th, the film chronicles how art students coming to London in the 1980s created a unique combination of British art, fashion, music, and cinema, finally establishing the New Romantics. The focus of Hegge's film is shifted to the variety of work done by less well-known but equally significant field participants, showing how creative resilience provides the groundwork for future creative subcultures when they are most required. According to Hegge, TRAMPS! has been years in the making, and it wouldn't exist if BFI Flare hadn't broadcast his first documentary in 2013.
Esther Newton Made Me Gay, a joyous depiction of a renowned octogenarian American academic that emanates humour, ardent inquiry, and a generous dose of New York no-nonsense, is another world premiere at the festival. Esther Newton's life work forms the cornerstone of LGBTQIA+ cultural anthropology. Bradley & Pablo's joyful do-it-yourself documentary Charli XCX: Alone Together is also about highly renowned pop diva Charli XCX, who worked on a new record with legions of homosexual admirers throughout the world during the 2020 lockdown. Dakan, a 1997 LGBT African cinema masterpiece directed by Mohamed Camara, is shown from the archive. The film, billed as West Africa's first LGBT film, provided a chance to reconsider the meaning of Dakan and was the subject of demonstrations during its creation.
Comments