10 to watch at BFI Flare 2016- Not Television

Robert Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures

Last night (February 18 2016) saw the launch of this year’s BFI Flare – the 30th edition of what used to be called the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Running from March 16 to 27 at BFI Southbank, it looks set to be another strong year for the fest.

The opening film is The Pass, debut helmer Ben A. Williams’s adaptation of John Donnelly’s play, starring Russell Tovey and Arinze Ken as professional footballers involved in a decade-long dance (insert tackle pun here). It’s very good news that the festival’s opening will be back at the Odeon Leicester Square – queer takeovers of mainstream venues are always welcome – though personally I found Tovey much more appealing as a neurotic werewolf than the hench douchebags he seems to be playing these days.

Anyway, here are 10 titles from the programme that caught my attention – though there’s plenty more to explore. Check out the full programme here while you wait for booking to open (February 24 for BFI members, February 29 for non-members). I haven’t actually seen any of these so I’m not vouching for their quality – they’ve just piqued my interest – and they appear in no particular order.

Femme Brutal

This year’s Flare programme is unusually short on films related to cabaret, drag and performance. So I’m intrigued to check out Liesa Kovacs and Nick Prokesch’s Austrian feature documentary about the queer feminist troupe Club Burlesque Brutal, in which seven artists discuss how sexuality, gender and body politics feed into their acts – also, of course, included in the movie. Full listing here.

Rebel Dykes

There’s a whole lot of 80s in the air these days, and this work-in-progress screening promises to showcase the bolshiest end of the lesbian spectrum of those years, from Brixton squats to Greenham Common via bands and zines. (There are other windows into the UK’s queer past elsewhere in the programme, including a look at 1986’s infamous Section 28 in We Have Rather Been Invaded, and a screening of the 1960 TV play The Trial of Sir Roger Casement, produced by Peter Wildeblood.) Full listing here.

Sauna the Dead – A Fairy Tale

Okay, full disclosure: I’m totally biased about this one because it’s the debut short film by my partner, Tom Frederic. Even so, I think it’s fair to say that this fable – inspired by mean guys on Grindr, set in a gay sauna and featuring a horde of zombies in towels – provoked plenty of buzz at last night’s launch. Shot on a shoestring at Chariots Vauxhall over just five mornings, it’s the story of a narcissist who gets more than he bargained for, and mixes 80s-style adventure, horror and shades of A Christmas Carol. Full listing here.

Jason and Shirley

Shirley Clarke’s 1967 film Portrait of Jason is a uniquely contentious document – an on-screen interview with the fascinating hustler-performer-raconteur Jason Holliday that also seems to exhibit some of the problematic social structures its subject talks about. In Stephen Winter’s recreation of the night of the interview, Jason is played by Jack Waters while Shirley is played by Sarah Schulman (author of The Gentrification of the Mind and co-director of United in Anger). Full listing here.

Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story

BFI Flare is always good at giving porn its due – even if it still feels a bit wrong-in-a-good-way to watch hardcore action on the august screen of NFT1. Michael Stabile’s doc promises a survey of the life and work of Chuck Holmes – creator of 1970s gamechanger Falcon Studios, promoter of the enduring horny frat-boy image and gay rights activist. With talking heads including John Waters and Jake Shears, it should be good value in more ways than one. Full listing here.

Famous Diamonds

The experimental strand of Flare is always worth checking out to see what’s going on at the wilder fringes of queer filmmaking. Canada’s Daniel MacIntyre – whose Lion cycle did weird and ravishing things on the theme of radioactivity – returns to the fest with a new short that uses an array of techniques (including kalaedoscopic photography and hand-tinting) to cram desire, break-ups and stardom into “an exploding volcano” of a film. Famous Diamonds screens in a package alongside works about Sal Mineo and by Jonathan Caouette. Full listing here.

Girls Lost

Trans visibility continues to increase both in culture at large and within Flare. In this year’s fest, the Transform panel considers how far we’ve come and how far is still to go, while Meet Silas is an on-stage event with Transparent director Silas Howard (whose 2001 feature By Hook or By Crook also screens). Among the rest of the trans-themed programming, I was intrigued by Girls Lost, a Swedish feature offering a fantastical take on gender identity, in which three female teenage friends supernaturally achieve male bodies – something one of them finds particularly fulfilling… Full listing here.

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures

The late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe is still something of a lightning rod for controversy. This documentary by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Party Monster, RuPaul’s Drag Race) promises an “extraordinary range” of interviewees offering insights into the creation of Mapplethorpe’s iconic and often unsettling images. (Elsewhere in the programme there are chances to explore the work of London artist Duggie Fields, who’s on hand for a tea party after a showcase event, and avant-garde choreographer Yvonne Rainer.) Full listing here.

Loev

At the festival launch they played a short, simple clip from Loev that hinted at a feature with a strong, supple take on character, location and precarious situations. It’s about two young men in Mumbai – old friends with a complicated history – and director Sudhanshu Saria shot entirely undercover on the city’s streets because of India’s repressive laws around homosexuality. That in itself makes it a powerful document – here’s hoping its narrative and emotional power is just as noteworthy. Full listing here.

Glitter Slush Neon Cake

I love the name of this programme, which collects three half-hour shorts billed as “magical, hyperreal depictions of queer youth”, which, just, yes. The Ballad of Ella Plumhoff (left, by Germany’s Barbara Kronenburg), Floozy Suzy (Otavio Chamarro, Brazil) and Lucid Noon, Sunset Blush (Alli Logout, US) deal respectively with lesbian remedial classes, a magic book in the school library and a basement queer commune. What’s not to like? Full listing here.