37th edition of BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival sees audience increase by 16%
Highlights of this year’s edition included a successful inaugural BFI Flare Expanded programme and 57% of the audience being new to the festival.
The 37th edition of BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival (15-26 March), the UK’s leading LGBTQIA+ film event, closed on 26 March seeing a continued growth in audiences returning to cinemas to experience the festival. Overall BFI Flare saw 28,923 audience attendances across BFI Southbank screenings, events and on BFI Player. The festival saw 85% occupancy at BFI Southbank (very close to 2019’s high of 87%) notably up from last year, with 57% of bookers new to BFI Flare. Campari joined BFI Flare as the festival’s new main sponsor and talent highlights included visits from Leslie Caron, Richard Wilson, Chris Jenks and Marielle Scott.
Over the first four days of the festival, 800 attendees experienced the first BFI Flare Expanded programme, a selection of five immersive art and virtual reality works from boundary-pushing LGBTQIA+ artists working across emerging technologies. The works, including interactive Virtual Reality, screen-based installations and 3D-scanning, explored themes of identity, belonging, self- expression and vulnerability.
BFI Flare welcomed 280 filmmakers and their teams in person from 30 countries. Special guests included Richard Wilson, Chris Jenks, Marielle Scott, Zackary Drucker, Kristen Lovell, Malcolm Kenyatta, Jewelle Gomez, D. Smith, Shamim Sarif, Hannes Hirsch, Carter Smith, François About and Leslie Caron.
Partnering for the ninth year, BFI Flare and the British Council made five LGBTQIA+ short films from the BFI Flare programme available to global audiences for the duration of the festival with the ground-breaking Five Films For Freedom. The LGBTQIA+ digital campaign attracted over three and a half million views from around the world with a quarter of views coming from parts of the world where freedom and equal rights are limited. Figures from international content partnerships are still to be counted. The project allows audiences worldwide to show solidarity with LGBTQIA+ communities and this year’s selection spanned from Guyana, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Nigeria, South Korea, with each story celebrating love as a human right.
Over 12 days between 15– 26 March, BFI Flare welcomed audiences to its home at BFI Southbank with 58 feature premieres and 90 shorts screened from 41 countries. 8 short films were made available for free on BFI Player plus the 5 shorts selected as part of Five Films For Freedom. The festival hosted 6 World Premieres, 13 International Premieres, 4 European Premiere and 18 UK Premieres from across the features programme.
This year’s edition included the Opening Night of THE STROLL: Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s stirring and deeply personal Sundance Award winning documentary about trans sex workers of colour in New York’s Meatpacking District. Fresh off its World Premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Closing Night film was Hannes Hirsch’s debut feature DRIFTER, a scintillating portrait of a young man coming to terms with life, love, sex and relationships in contemporary Berlin. Both films and many in the festival demonstrated the themes of community and friendship running through this year’s programme.
Other highlights from this year’s film programme were the two feature films focussing on intersex central protagonists which had their UK premieres at BFI Flare. Tünde Skovrán’s intimate documentary WHO I AM NOT was BFI Flare’s Centrepiece Presentation – an intimate portrait of the lives of two intersex South Africans and the challenges they face navigating binary sex and gender systems. Soh-Yoon Lee’s South Korean coming of age comedy, XX + XY follows an intersex teen and their friends navigating the complex feelings and urges that come with adolescence. The fresh, funny film is a sex-positive spin on the high-school comedy, giving a voice to those whose stories are all too often overlooked by this genre.
BFI Flare’s 6 World Premieres included Tim Harris’ timely documentary Kenyatta: Do Not Wait Your Turn which followed 31-year-old Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta on his race to become the first openly gay person of colour with a seat in the United States Senate. Corey Sherman’s hilarious and heart-warming Big Boys, a coming-of-age comedy about a teenage boy experiencing a sexual awakening when he falls for his cousin’s boyfriend on a camping trip. Acclaimed filmmaker Shamim Sarif’s visually arresting Polarized explored the unavoidable attraction that develops between two women as they navigate the barriers of race, religion and class that have kept them apart.
The festival also showcased a fascinating selection of features, documentaries and shorts centring the story of queer elders, including Jieun Banpark’s Life Unrehearsed, a captivating and witty portrayal of two retired Korean nurses living their best lives in Berlin and Roberta Torre’s The Fabulous Ones, following a group of older trans women, who reunite following the discovery of a lost letter containing the last wishes of a dearly departed friend. In addition, Ageing With(out) You, a strand of shorts that features queer elders of various ethnicities and orientations experiencing the unique challenges – and blessings – of ageing, with or without a partner.
Popular films in BFI Flare were screened in the Best of the Fest section on the final day. These included Emily Railsback’s heartfelt exploration of queer parenthood; American Parent, lost gay porn masterpiece Le Beau Mec directed by Rudolf Nureyev’s last lover Wallace Potts, Damian Kocur’s Bread and Salt, Sarah Kambe Holland’s coming-of-age comedy Egghead and Twinkie, and Shaun Dunne and Anna Rodgers’s profoundly moving documentary How to tell a Secret on the stigma of living with HIV in Ireland.
Best of the Fest also included D. Smith’s bold documentary Kokomo CIty, Lisa Cortes’ Little Richard: I Am Everything a fierce, fun documentary exploring the complex story about the originator of rock and roll. Vanna Hem and Tommaso Colognese’s uplifting trans football documentary Lotus Sports Club, Pratibha Parmar’s documentary I Am Andrea about the life of controversial feminist Andrea Dworkin, Byun Sung-bin’s Peafowl, plus the aforementioned THE Fabulous Ones and Polarized.
The events programme included an intimate discussion Remembering Ron Peck, which provided the chance to learn more from friends about the Nighthawks director, a sensitive giant of gay independent film who passed away in November 2022. We Have Always Been Here!, highlighted the importance of queer disability representation led by film curator Tara Brown. Bisexual Visi-bi-lity in Film & Television, a sold-out panel discussion. The festival also saw the return of the ever-popular BFI Flare’s Big Gay Film Quiz, and BFI Flare’s DJ Nights at the BFI Bar including sets from Unskinny Bop, Frankie Goes to Flare, Club Kali and The Batty Mama.
Highlights from the Festival’s Industry Events programme included The Makers, which presented a series of conversations with talent from BFI Flare. This included Opening Night The Stroll Co-Directors, Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker, Carter Smith (Swallowed) and Shamim Sarif (Polarized). As well as a spotlight on South Korea, discussed the history of LGBTQIA+ cinema there with director Soh-Yoon Lee and writer Sungyeun Hong (XX+XY), director Jieun Banpark (Life Unrehearsed) and director Yu-Jin Lee (Butch Up!). Queer Filmmaking in Nigeria saw a panel of Nigerian filmmakers, both in person and via zoom to discuss what is it like to create queer cinematic stories in environments that are hostile towards queer people, and what stories are borne from those complex realities. Plus Doc Society and BFI Network held 1:2:1 sessions with aspiring filmmakers.
BFI Flare 2023 welcomed new programmers Rhianna Ilube and Wema Mumma as well as Ulrich Schrauth as BFI Flare’s Expanded Programmer and wished a fond farewell to Senior Programmer Michael Blyth.
