Cassie (Carey Mulligan) lays sprawled across her seat at a local dive bar – lulling her head and slurring her words. She’s blistering drunk, all alone, and attracting the stares of a group of guys. ‘That is just asking for it’ one of them huffs, another one decides to go over to Cassie and offer…
Category: Film
BFI Flare: LGBTQ+ Film Festival: “Rurangi” Review
No matter where you go in the world, rural areas are almost always more traditionally conservative than metropolitan ones. You’ve read the countless think pieces on behalf of the “forgotten America” that voted for Trump to the shock of the cities, and you’ve seen how the Conservative party has a stronghold on the British countryside,…
BlackStar Film Festival’s 10th edition to take place August 4-8, 2021.
BlackStar Projects, the premier organization celebrating visionary Black, Brown, and Indigenous film and media artists, is proud to announce that the next edition of their annual festival will take place August 4-8, 2021. The festival will be held virtually again in light of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. “So much has changed in the past decade, for…
BFI Flare: LGBTQ+ Film Festival: “Boy Meets Boy” Review
Much like how Pulp Fiction spawned an entire genre of poor imitators, Andrew Haigh’s 2011 film Weekend has a lot to answer for. The beautiful simplicity of that whirlwind gay romance seems effortless in the hands of such an accomplished filmmaker, to the extent that countless other filmmakers have seen it and assumed they too…
BFI Flare: LGBTQ+ Film Festival: “Valentina” Review
In Brazil, 82% of trans kids will drop out of school at some point during their education. Among these children is Valentina (Thiessa Woinbackk) a 17-year-old girl who’s just moved across the country with her mother Márcia (Guta Stresser) to start afresh in a new town and retake her sophomore year. However, problems arise when…
BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival: “P.S. Burn This Letter Please” Review
Autumn-time 1958, two individuals have broken into the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City and made off with thousands of dollars’ worth of luxurious Italian wigs. The accused are the two drag queens Claudia – Claude Diaz – and Josephine Baker – Robert Perez – who stole the wigs for their own drag acts…
“You Have to Put Your Heart in the Project for Your Project to Have Heart.” – In Conversation with Kevin Derek, a Documentary Filmmaker and Producer
When your interview starts with lots of laughter, you know that the conversation is going to be a delightful experience. Kevin Derek is an interesting person; he is smart, humorous and self-critical. But, above all, he is a thoughtful and very passionate, award-winning documentary filmmaker whose latest production More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story…
BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival (Preview): “Cowboys” Review
In just a few years, there have been major steps forward in trans representation on screen. Complaints about cis gender actors signing on to play trans roles are increasingly becoming a thing of the past, whereas just five years ago it could have been a cynical way for an actor to get an Oscar nomination….
BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival (Preview): Poppy Field Review
Protests at screenings of LGBTQ+ films are a common sight in Eastern Europe. Most notably, a screening of the Georgian film And Then We Danced led to violent protests after debuting in Tbilisi cinemas, with arrests and hospitalisations as those hostile to the queer coming of age story burned pride flags on the streets outside….
“More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story” Review
“Wax on, wax off”, almost every single generation is familiar with Mr. Miyagi’s famous words from The Karate Kid. Pat Morita, often known for his memorable role as the above-mentioned sensei, was a man of many talents, and what he managed to achieve during his life was incredible. The Karate Kid made Morita into a…
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