1997 Queer Film and Video Festival
By Bronwen Beechey
MELBOURNE — The seventh annual Queer Film and Video Festival, running March 14-31, will showcase nearly 100 feature films, documentaries and shorts from Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.
According to festival director Tamara Jungwirth, the festival's ongoing success is due to its diversity. "As an easily digestible ideal of gay life is accepted, divergent voices are heard from the queer fringe. The festival not only includes entries from many locales, but is a conduit for diverse cultural expression and spans the radical to the apolitical, the serious, the comic, the glamorous and the amorous."
The festival kicks off in style with its opening night extravaganza, Wigstock: the Movie, a colourful journey beneath the makeup and glamour of the New York drag scene, featuring icons such as RuPaul and Dee-lite.
While publicity has centred on Bound (described as a "steamy, stylish, noir lesbian thriller"), Fire (a sensitive study of a lesbian relationship set in New Delhi, directed by Deepa Mehta) could be a highlight.
Documentaries include It's not unusual: a lesbian and gay history, a three-part series made for BBC2, featuring rare archival footage intercut with personal accounts from a wide-ranging group of gay men and lesbians.
Screenings will be held at the Capitol Theatre, the State Film Theatre and Grierson Theatrette, East Melbourne. Tickets are on sale at Hares and Hyenas Bookstores in South Yarra and Fitzroy. For more information call 0055 12504 (choose option 5).