BFI Flare

The BFI Flare festival, a celebration of queer cinema from around the world, runs this March, screening over 150 feature-length and short films, as well as workshops, discussions, dance parties and even a reading group. In all – a joyful exploration of queer identities.
March 2015 will see the 29^th London LGBT Film Festival at the BFI Southbank. The festival has often been a refuge for many who feel under-represented in mainstream cinema, and although LGBT visibility is increasing in Hollywood, Flare's still the place to go for immersion into the hugely diverse world of queer film. 
From 19-29 March an extraordinary range of films will be shown, grouped into the categories Hearts: films about love, romance and friendship; Bodies: stories of sex, identity and transformation; and Minds: reflections on art, politics and community.
I Am Michael, James Franco
The festival kicks off with Justin Kelly’s first feature I Am Michael, which premiered at Sundance this year. The film tells the true story of gay rights activist Michael Glatze who, in a remarkable turnaround, rejects his homosexuality to become a Christian pastor. Starring James Franco as Glatze and Zachary Quinto as his former lover, Kelly’s film is a controversial choice for the opening gala, yet its contentious subject matter will act as springboard for the exploration of identity and acceptance in two seemingly incompatible worlds. 
Patrik-Ian Polk, Blackbird
Blackbird, this year’s offering from Patrik-Ian Polk, also explores the intersection between homosexuality and religion. Based on Larry Duplechan’s novel of the same name, Blackbird tells of Randy, a young black man in small-town Mississippi whose response to his nascent sexuality is complicated by the conservative environment in which he lives and the religiosity that surrounds him. The convergence of Polk and Duplechan, powerful voices in the representation of African-American LGBT themes in art, makes Blackbird an exciting prospect – a smart and compassionate coming-of-age story.
François Ozon’s The New Girlfriend (Une Nouvelle Amie) is another literary adaptation. Ozon has turned a short story by Ruth Rendell into a sharply satirical examination of gender roles and the instability of identity and desire, starring a languid Romain Duris as recently widowed new father David, and following the development of his friendship with his wife’s best friend. Featuring labyrinthine twists, Orzon's film is as teasingly humorous as it is melodramatic.

Still from François Ozon's The New Girlfriend

Appropriate Behaviour, Desiree Akhavan
Desiree Akhavan (read our exclusive interview here) wrote, directed and starred in one of the most hotly-anticipated films of the festival, Appropriate Behavior. The film charts the collapse of Iranian-American bisexual Shirin’s relationship with Maxine, and her disastrous attempts to get her back. The narrative jumps between the beginning and end of the relationship, revealing its cracks to viewers before either partner perceives them and culminating in a very funny film that's often difficult to watch. Its focus on the over-educated and directionless twenty-somethings of Brooklyn has drawn inevitable comparisons with Lena Dunham’s Girls, but this is a disservice to Akhavan, whose film is original and witty in its own way.
Documentary: Mala Mala
Mala Mala documents the lives of nine trans people in Puerto Rico with exquisite cinematography and a thumping soundtrack. The diversity of gender identity and personal aspirations is embraced in the film, which follows one trans man and eight trans women and drag queens in their personal pursuits of happiness. Directors Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini have balanced the individual desires and stories of each person with a strong sense of community as the women’s activism for transgender rights and against employment discrimination leads them to testify before the state legislature. The film is a celebration of individuality and solidarity simultaneously, gorgeous to look at as well as entertaining and political.
Regarding Susan Sontag, Nancy Kates
Another documentary worth considering is Nancy D Kates’s Regarding Susan Sontag. The film makes use of footage of Sontag, interviews with her friends and lovers and extracts from her extensive journals to tell the story of the celebrated intellectual, the confrontational and proudly bisexual Sontag, illuminating her public persona and revealing more about her private self. This is an engrossing film about one of the major intellectual forces and political activists of the last hundred years, but it must be acknowledged that it is the person, rather than her work, that is the focus of the piece.

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Read our previews for Dear White People; Dior & I; Pride and The Duke of Burgundy – all of which will also be screened at this year's Flare. 

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