BFI Flare 2015 preview for Sight & Sound

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I wrote a preview for Sight & Sound of this year’s BFI Flare London LGBT Film Festival, which kicks off on Thursday. It’s posted here with the magazine’s permission. 

2014 was a watershed year for the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival: it was rebranded as BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival. 2016 will also be notable, as the festival’s 30th edition. And 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of gay sex in the UK. So perhaps it’s understandable that Flare 2015 feels somewhat reined-in. Not that any less work has gone into this year’s edition, which runs from 19-29 March at BFI Southbank, or that it looks short on rewarding titles. But the programme promises solid stimulation rather than a conspicuous thematic angle or specific sense of mission.

Among the dramatic features, the starriest names are to be found in the opening film, I Am Michael. Justin Kelly’s feature about gay-rights activist turned ‘ex-gay’ Christian pastor Michael Glatze stars James Franco as Glatze and Zachary Quinto as his partner. There are titles from festival regulars Monika Treut (Of Girls and Horses), François Ozon (The New Girlfriend) and Carol Morley (The Falling, one of several titles already seen in the London Film Festival), and promising features such as the Canadian fortysomething lesbian comic drama Portrait of a Serial Monogamist, and Frangipani, a love triangle billed as Sri Lanka’s first gay film.

Flare continues to put a premium on documentaries, including the closing night film Out to Win, about LGBT sportspeople, and gala presentations Do I Sound Gay?, about the less-sniggersome-than-it-sounds subject of ‘gay voice’, and Stories of Our Lives, a black-and-white film by Jim Chuchu about LGBT life in Kenya. In fact, Chuchu’s film is less a documentary than a collection of stories adapted from an archival research project. Shot on an ordinary DSLR camera, it looks beautiful and has already been banned in its homeland. Some other documentaries focus on notable emblems (The Last One: Unfolding the AIDS Memorial Quilt) or figures (Regarding Susan Sontag), though the niche offerings are just as intriguing: In the Turn, for instance, follows Canada’s Vagine Regime, “an international queer collective of roller derby players of all shapes and sizes”, so the programme notes explain, as they help out a 10-year-old trans girl whose school won’t let her play sport.

This year’s archival offerings are largely familiar. There are reprises of recent releases (Appropriate Behaviour, The Duke of Burgundy, Pride) and a literary adaptation strand comprising The Color Purple (1985), Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1991), Orlando (1992) and Strangers on a Train (1951) – worthy titles but hardly neglected gems. Nor could The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) be described as a rarity, though an IMAX screening for its 40th birthday sounds rather fab, and provides an excuse to present its sort-of sequel, Shock Treatment (1981), a prescient reality-TV satire by the same team of writer Richard O’Brien and director Jim Sharman that features some of the same characters. Another intriguing title from the vaults is 54: The Director’s Cut. The queerest qualities of Mark Christopher’s 1998 morality tale, set around the infamous 70s New York City nightclub, were excised by the Weinsteins at Miramax before its original release; this restored version has just been well received at the Berlinale.

A dedicated shorts programme aside, the festival isn’t heaving with new work from the UK. An exception is Dressed as a Girl, Colin Rothbart’s funny, at times disturbing documentary portrait of the East London alternative drag scene. Video work by some of its subjects is included in my own drag-themed event, BURN: From Hackney to Vauxhall, which also includes Save the Tavern, Tim Brunsden’s portrait of London’s oldest LGBT pub, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, recently bought by property developers. The vulnerability of venerable queer spaces is also explored in We Came to Sweat, about Brooklyn’s now-defunct Starlite, a black gay bar that pre-dated Stonewall.

And fans of the butch will find a fair bit to hold the interest. The documentary Fulboy offers a locker-room-and-all portrait of an Argentinian soccer team; The Golden Age of the American Male showcases 1950s and 60s physique flicks made by Bob Mizer for the Athletic Model Guild; Tab Hunter Confidential, a new doc by I Am Divine director Jeffrey Schwarz, lifts the lid on the closeted teen idol. Flare programmer Emma Smart ensures the boys don’t hog the fun with a talk called ‘We Love Xena: Warrior Princess’.