Press release from Melbourne Queer Film Festival
The 21st Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) which celebrates the talents of queer filmmakers both locally and overseas, opens on Thursday 17 March with Kaboom (USA) by famed queer film director Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation, The Living End, Mysterious Skin). The eleven day festival closes with Spork (Dir JB Ghuman Jr), a blend of Glee and Mean Girls which the film signals a different wave of new queer cinema for the contemporary – gender fluid, non-stereotyped and queer to its core.
“We’re incredibly proud of this year’s selection. Presenting such a strong program of films and events is a fitting was to celebrate our 21st birthday, and indicates the quality and strength of queer film from Australia and around the world”, said Festival Director, Lisa Daniel.
Opening at the Astor on 17 March with screenings to follow at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and Greater Union from 18 – 27 March, the MQFF will showcase a stand-out program from the international festival circuit, as well as some gems from our home-grown filmmakers. With more than 90 sessions, there is something for every taste.
The spotlight is shined on three Centrepiece presentations; Heartbeats, the second feature from 21-year-old French Canadian Xavier Dolan which wowed audiences at the 2010 Sydney Film Festival winning the top prize; The Last Summer of La Boyita (Julia Solomonoff), a compassionate Argentinian drama about childhood friendship and discovery; and Undertow by Javier Fuentes-León – a beautifully filmed and unique ghost story set on the Peruvian seaside, where a married man struggles to reconcile his devotion to his male lover.
Along with the huge and varied selection of feature films, the Festival includes a vast array of international shorts programs as well as the popular local shorts packages Oz Shorts (The City of Melbourne Award package), Celluloid Casserole and Oz Docs.
To help celebrate MQFFs 21st there will be a special retrospective, the Best of the City of Melbourne Oz Shorts. Including Australian shorts featured at the Festival going back to the mid-90s with titles from now established filmmakers such as Tony Ayres, Clayton Jacobson and Emma Freeman. Another way to party on for the birthday celebrations is with Midnight Movies on Saturday nights during the Festival.
Other feature films to look out for include gay highlights House of Boys (Luxembourg) a coming out story set in the backdrop of Amsterdam in 80s where HIV was known as the ‘gay cancer’, romantic comedy about finding love at 40 – Violet Tendencies (USA) and the gay version of Boyz n the Hood, La Mission (USA).
Four lesbian highlights include Gigola (France) set in Paris during the 1960s, hard-hitting drama A Marine Story (USA) and the saucier version of a Jane Austen romance, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister (UK).
While trans audience will love international queer film favourites Paulista (Brazil) that will take audiences on a rollercoaster journey of secrets, passion and heartbreak; 19th Century Sicilian drama The Sea Purple (Italy), about a woman living life as a man in order to be with the woman she loves; and the unforgettable documentary The Regretters (Sweden) about Orlando and Mikael who realise that life post-surgery isn’t what they dreamed of.
Since the Melbourne Queer Film Festival emerged 21 years ago there have been some major changes in queer cinema. The Festival planning started in the Prahran house of filmmaker Lawrence Johnston back in 1990. Then with the help of the late lesbian identity Pat Longmore and others, the MQFF premiered at the Dendy Brighton and National Theatre in St Kilda. While the Festival now screens across three venues and pulls in crowds both queer and straight. The most obvious change since the Festival’s inception is the large increase in the availability and quality of queer titles for queer film festivals, as well as the countries they emerge from.
The full program is now available at www.mqff.com.au