BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival comes to a close
Closing Night Gala 8 April 2009
After two weeks of screening the best in queer cinema, the 23rd BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival comes to a close tonight with the UK premiere of veteran French director Vincent Garenq's Baby Love. The Film is a delicious comedy of contemporary manners about the highs and lows of gay parenting with Lambert Wilson, Pilar Lopez and Pascal Elbé. We are delighted that Vincent will be joining the programmers on stage for an extended introduction to the film.
Following the screening festival guests will move on to Floridita on Wardour Street where Work! DJ and long time Festival supporter Jeffrey Hinton will plat til the small hours.
2009 has been the most successful LLGFF ever, attracting more than 28,000 visitors, with 95 sold-out performances, on stage talks and discussions from 134 filmmakers, and almost 1,000 panellists, journalists and industry delegates.
The Festival hosted the world premieres of Maria Beatty's Bandaged, Elliat Graney-Saucke's Travel Queeries, Andrew Haigh's Greek Pete and K.A. Burkhardt's Tremble & Spark. We are delighted that Greek Pete along with Pedro, Burn the Bridges and Fairytale of Kathmandu were picked up for UK distribution during the festival.
LLGFF highlights included John Hurt's visit to BFI Southbank for An Englishman in New York, where he talked extensively about playing Quentin Crisp for the second time. Matt Lucas presented a special 30th anniversary screening of Ron Peck and Paul Hallam's pioneering gay feature Nighthawks, recently restored by the BFI.
Shamim Sarif's UK feature I Can't Think Straight brought in the biggest lesbian crowd of the festival, selling out both screenings. It was a record-breaking year for lesbian film with more feature films and larger audiences than in any of the Festival's 23 years.
Queer activism was a key part of the Festival, marked by the introduction of The Campaign for Homosexual Equality Derek Oyston CHE Film Prize which was awarded to Julian Shaw for his documentary Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story, the film that jurors thought best demonstrated the organisations aims.
A rare UK visit from legendary Aids activist Cleve Jones and the panellists of In This Our Lives: the Reunion, many of whom had participated in the National Black Gay Men's conference, confirmed the continuing need to fight for LGBT rights both at home and abroad.
The Raincoats film Fairytales and a rare live performance by the band raised the roof of NFT1 and Invasion of the Chubsters became just that when the stage was mobbed by a lively audience of queer fatties - Chub Power!
Club Wotever celebrated the success of The Lovers and Fighters Convention by throwing the Festival's first Black Tie party. Another first was My First Gay Disco which attracted queer parents from all over London and their families. There were party tunes, balloon animals, games and dancing and lots and lots of fun and we're hoping that next year the event will be even bigger.
Unskinny Bop, Lower the Tone, Club Kali and Ghost School transformed the warm spring evenings at BFI Southbank over both weekends with club nights and performances around the venue.
The LLGFF's commitment to experimental cinema and the queer avant-garde built on the success of last year with an extended programme that included John Greyson & David Wall's video opera Fig Leaves; Channelings: An Invocation of Spectral Bodies and Queer Spirits a collection of films curated by Latham Zearfoss and Ethan White; Lesbian feminist filmmaker Barbara Hammer's A Horse is Not a Metaphor; the iconic films of Gregory J. Markopoulos and our collaboration with Electra on Outside to Catch the Action all of them proved hugely popular with audiences.
Retrospectives from Ulrike Ottinger and Allyson Mitchell, continued the themes of experimentation, demonstrating that there is life beyond the mainstream, each presenting a body of work which proved inspirational to LGBT filmmakers and audiences alike.
Next year LLGFF promises to be even bigger and better, the Programming team are already discussing ways to build on the successes for 2010.
There's more to discover about film and television through the BFI. Our world-renowned archival collections, cinemas, festivals, films, publications and learning resources are here to inspire you.
www.bfi.org.uk/llgff
After two weeks of screening the best in queer cinema, the 23rd BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival comes to a close tonight with the UK premiere of veteran French director Vincent Garenq's Baby Love. The Film is a delicious comedy of contemporary manners about the highs and lows of gay parenting with Lambert Wilson, Pilar Lopez and Pascal Elbé. We are delighted that Vincent will be joining the programmers on stage for an extended introduction to the film.
Following the screening festival guests will move on to Floridita on Wardour Street where Work! DJ and long time Festival supporter Jeffrey Hinton will plat til the small hours.
2009 has been the most successful LLGFF ever, attracting more than 28,000 visitors, with 95 sold-out performances, on stage talks and discussions from 134 filmmakers, and almost 1,000 panellists, journalists and industry delegates.
The Festival hosted the world premieres of Maria Beatty's Bandaged, Elliat Graney-Saucke's Travel Queeries, Andrew Haigh's Greek Pete and K.A. Burkhardt's Tremble & Spark. We are delighted that Greek Pete along with Pedro, Burn the Bridges and Fairytale of Kathmandu were picked up for UK distribution during the festival.
LLGFF highlights included John Hurt's visit to BFI Southbank for An Englishman in New York, where he talked extensively about playing Quentin Crisp for the second time. Matt Lucas presented a special 30th anniversary screening of Ron Peck and Paul Hallam's pioneering gay feature Nighthawks, recently restored by the BFI.
Shamim Sarif's UK feature I Can't Think Straight brought in the biggest lesbian crowd of the festival, selling out both screenings. It was a record-breaking year for lesbian film with more feature films and larger audiences than in any of the Festival's 23 years.
Queer activism was a key part of the Festival, marked by the introduction of The Campaign for Homosexual Equality Derek Oyston CHE Film Prize which was awarded to Julian Shaw for his documentary Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story, the film that jurors thought best demonstrated the organisations aims.
A rare UK visit from legendary Aids activist Cleve Jones and the panellists of In This Our Lives: the Reunion, many of whom had participated in the National Black Gay Men's conference, confirmed the continuing need to fight for LGBT rights both at home and abroad.
The Raincoats film Fairytales and a rare live performance by the band raised the roof of NFT1 and Invasion of the Chubsters became just that when the stage was mobbed by a lively audience of queer fatties - Chub Power!
Club Wotever celebrated the success of The Lovers and Fighters Convention by throwing the Festival's first Black Tie party. Another first was My First Gay Disco which attracted queer parents from all over London and their families. There were party tunes, balloon animals, games and dancing and lots and lots of fun and we're hoping that next year the event will be even bigger.
Unskinny Bop, Lower the Tone, Club Kali and Ghost School transformed the warm spring evenings at BFI Southbank over both weekends with club nights and performances around the venue.
The LLGFF's commitment to experimental cinema and the queer avant-garde built on the success of last year with an extended programme that included John Greyson & David Wall's video opera Fig Leaves; Channelings: An Invocation of Spectral Bodies and Queer Spirits a collection of films curated by Latham Zearfoss and Ethan White; Lesbian feminist filmmaker Barbara Hammer's A Horse is Not a Metaphor; the iconic films of Gregory J. Markopoulos and our collaboration with Electra on Outside to Catch the Action all of them proved hugely popular with audiences.
Retrospectives from Ulrike Ottinger and Allyson Mitchell, continued the themes of experimentation, demonstrating that there is life beyond the mainstream, each presenting a body of work which proved inspirational to LGBT filmmakers and audiences alike.
Next year LLGFF promises to be even bigger and better, the Programming team are already discussing ways to build on the successes for 2010.
There's more to discover about film and television through the BFI. Our world-renowned archival collections, cinemas, festivals, films, publications and learning resources are here to inspire you.
www.bfi.org.uk/llgff
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