The 27th BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is coming soon – it’s on from March 14th-24th. Now the full programme for the event has been revealed, including the strands Hearts, Bodies and Minds, along with a few gala screenings and an extensive shorts programme.
As previously announced, the festival will open with I Am Divine, a documentary about drag performer Divine, who’s famed for her appearances in early John Waters movies. LLGFF will close with the Canadian drama Margarita, about the complicated love life of an attractive young Mexican, lesbian nanny, who has to battle against deportations. It’s now been revealed there’ll also be a centrepiece gala of Out In The Dark, a love story from Israel that is set against a backdrop of political conflict.
The emotionally minded Hearts strand of the festival includes Korean director Leesong Hee-il’s new trilogy of queer films, with a double bill of the relatively short Going South and Suddenly Last Summer and the longer White Night. There’s also the Cannes Critics’ Week prize winning Beyond The Walls, as well as I Do, which was written and produced by former Bad Boys Inc. boyband member, David Ross.
The more confrontational Bodies segment includes James Franco’s meta-movie collaboration with Travis Mathews, Interior Leather Bar, which is about the recreation of lost gay S&M scenes from the 1980 movie Cruising. Bodies also has a focus on images of transgender and intersex lives, including the documentary Intersexion, which attempts to demystify intersex people, and Mr. Angel, about porn star Buck Angel, the self-styled ‘man with a pussy’. Another movie that looks interesting is I Am A Woman Now, about the first generation of trans ladies.
The Minds section aims to be a bit more cerebral, including the Oscar nominated AIDS documentary How To Survive A Plague and Les Invisibles, which follows the lives of 11 LGBT people who are over the age of 70. Minds also features a look at queer director Pier Paolo Pasolini, including a documentary on him, a panel discussion and a screening of 120 Days OF Sodom.
There’s an awful lot of interesting stuff going on at the festival – with plenty of performances and other queer art alongside the movies. If you want to know more, you can flick through a digital edition of the LLGFF programme by clicking here. Priority booking for BFI members opens at 11:30am on Tuesday February 16th, while general public booking starts at 11:30am on Monday March 4th.
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