The Brisbane Queer Film Festival is just around the corner film lovers won’t be disappointed with this year’s line up. BQFF is marking its tenth year with a season of award winning films handpicked from across the globe that will make you laugh, cry and feel inspired.
Be sure to get your tickets fast, as there are always sessions that sell out.
Opening Night
The opening night’s party features eye-popping high definition video and a smattering of house, future-retro and disco music. Entitled 3D Disco, visuals (with supplied 3D glasses) were created by the Novak Collective and have appeared in many festivals across Europe.
Were the World Mine
This opening night movie mixes schoolboy love and Shakespeare, winning hearts and swaying judges everywhere it goes.
Openly gay Timothy lives with his single mother, and attends an all-boys school where he’s prone to musical daydreams to escape the drudgery of class and the homophobic taunts from his fellow students. The object of his desire is Jonathon, the handsome star of the rugby team, and Timothy regularly dreams this very straight boy will fall in love with him. When both Timothy and Jonathon are cast in the school production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it seems fate is on his side.
Brisbane Queer Film Festival – Opening Night is on Friday April 3, 7pm at the Powerhouse Theatre. Tickets are $30 which includes both the film and party.
Families, Friends, Partners and Lovers
This film explores the diversity within the lesbian and queer-identifying women’s communities of Queensland. The exhibition features singles, couples, families, social groups, flatmates, performance groups and lovers from many ages and from all over the Sunshine State, and is a body of documentary portraits which celebrates the diversity of a community all too often stereotyped by both the straight and LGBTQ media.
Families, Friends, Partners and Lovers is on Tuesday 31 March to Sunday 19 April. Monday – Friday 9am – 5pm, Saturday & Sunday 10am – 4pm and during performance times. Entry is free.
Chuecatown (Boystown)
Gay men have a reputation world-over for moving into run-down areas and transforming them into real estate paradise. Madrid’s Chueca district is their latest target. The only problem – it’s populated by little old ladies who refuse to sell.
Mysterious and sexy real estate agent Victor takes matters into his own hands, systematically killing off the grannies and instating queer couples in their place.
When adorable bear couple Rey and Leo inherit their neighbour’s flat, Rey promptly moves his overbearing mother, Antonia, into the apartment. Both Leo who doesn’t get along with his in-law, and Victor who will not let the apartment slip through his fingers, try to get rid of her.
It’s up to an eccentric police detective and her sexually confused son to solve the case of the murdered grannies before Antonia is the next victim.
Chuecatown screens Saturday April 4.
We Are The Mods
High school loner, Sadie, befriends the wild new girl, Nico, and together they explore sex, drugs and rock and roll by embracing 1960’s British Mod culture in present day California.
This teen drama that follows the familiar “good girl corrupted by bad” story line offers a good-hearted homage to not only seminal films of the 1960s but also to the heady rush of young artistic discovery familiar to any sensitive ex-high schooler.
We Are The Mods screens Sunday April 5.
Filth And Wisdom
Madonna’s directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom, is a hilariously sexy tale of three flat mates in London who delve into naughty behaviour in pursuit of their dreams.
Filth and Wisdom centres around Ukrainian immigrant, AK. While AK’s dreams are filled with rock stardom, his reality is moonlighting as a cross-dressing dominatrix for straight married men. AK lives with two younger girls. Holly is a trained ballerina who longs to dance with the Royal Ballet but in the meantime earns her living as a stripper and pole-dancer at a local club. Juliette is a pharmacy assistant who dreams of going to Africa to help starving children.
Filth And Wisdom is a delicious blend of comedy, drama music and romance. Arguably based on some of Madonna’s own experiences, the three distinctive characters show that the paths of wisdom and filth eventually arrive at the same enlightened place.
Filth And Wisdom screens Monday April 6.
F@#king Different Tel Aviv
Following on from Berlin and New York, the F*#king Different project continues with this latest edition from Israel, which offers the most diverse, exciting and impressive addition to the series yet.
Fifteen filmmakers from Tel Aviv were each approached to make a short film with one criteria in mind – that the gay men must produce a film about lesbians and vice-versa.
The shorts that emerged are wildly inventive, flitting between various styles and genres, and guaranteed to include something to please everyone. Viewed as a whole, it is an inspirational piece of work, and a true testament to the wealth of queer filmmaking talent evident in Israel.
F@#king Different Tel Aviv screens Sunday April 5.
Wrangler: Anatomy Of An Icon
From the dawn of the sexual revolution comes the outrageous true story of 1970s gay porn icon Jack Wrangler, who became a major brand name in adult entertainment, as well as a hero to the newly liberated gay population. Jack Stillman grew up in Beverly Hills, a child of privilege, and after a stint on a religious drama series he turned to bartending, go-go dancing and in the end, gay porn. A cavalcade of movie roles followed – sailors, cowboys and construction workers – Jack Wrangler played them all.
Today, Jack Wrangler has gone on to an accomplished theatre career, but still looks back bemusedly on his adventures in the skin trade with pride.
Wrangler: Anatomy Of An Icon screens Sunday April 5.
Save Me
Mark (Chad Allen) is a voracious party boy, addicted to drugs and men, but is given a chance to alter his ways when he wakes up in hospital after a post-binge suicide attempt. His brother promptly sends him to Genesis House, a Christian-run ministry that attempts to ‘cure’ gay men of their urges through spiritual guidance.
Mark is initially sceptical, but he finds solace and friendship with some of his fellow members, especially Scott. Sensing the two men are becoming too close, Gayle, the woman who runs the house, is determined to intervene. Judith Light is extraordinary as the tragic Gayle, whose (misguided) mission to fill the gap left by her own son, sees her stuck on a merry-go-round, seemingly never to escape.
Save Me screens Sunday, April 5.
Affinity
This film is the highly anticipated adaptation of a Sarah Waters’ ( Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith ) novel.
Margaret (Anna Madeley), a young Victorian gentlewoman, begins making charitable visits to a women’s prison. As she becomes increasingly drawn towards a particular prisoner, the psychically gifted Selina (Zoe Tapper), we soon realise that Margaret’s black clothing is not, as everyone assumes, a sign of mourning for her recently deceased father, but grief for the loss of something else entirely.
This film examines how counterfeit and deceit may be necessary to survive in harsh times, but sometimes a nugget of purity can exist in even the most twisted of relationships. Or can it?
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