Brisbane Queer Film Festival

Now in its 13th year, the Brisbane Queer Film Festival at the Power House is gearing up to start its cutting edge program for 2012. The festival showcases shorts, features and documentaries by and about the queer community from around the globe.

Festival director Sarah Neal reflects on the significant changes in the festival during her five years at the helm, “There are more films being made by queer filmmakers or that have queer content”. Neal also points to a rise in queer content films coming from countries such as Iran where homosexuality is still taboo, film still a valuable medium in getting a message out.

Some highlights heading to our shores this year include:

With Every Heartbeat (2011) from Sweden – Mia and Frida are soon-to-be stepsisters and meet for the first time at their parents’ engagement party. As they get to know each other, strong emotions begin to stir between them. With Every Heartbeat is an unexpected romance showing on the 14 and the 19 of April.

On opening night, Friday the 13 April (also showing on the 16th) is Leave it on the Floor (2011) set in the ballroom world originally memorialised by “Paris Is Burning”, the documentary that highlighted the “drag ball” sub-culture of New York. Leave it on the Floor is an original musical set in the scene of Los Angeles. This is the world of improvised fashion and dancing that, in the day, influenced Madonna’s Vogue but more importantly provided a family to those no longer accepted at home. Leave it on the Floor uses the power of fiction to expose the emotional heart that is often guarded from documentary. Take a step away from the whitewashed homosexual comedy that we know and love and enjoy a night with the orphaned and rejected, ragtag subculture that still survives and thrives today.

Hit So Hard (2011) a documentary about Patty Schemel, the openly gay drummer of Courtney Love’s seminal rock band ‘Hole’. A true survivor of what we now know as the disaffected ‘slacker’ generation, Patty found herself embraced by the dark side of addiction and fame. Hit So Hard shows on Sunday 22 April.

If it’s local film talent that you’re after, The Cure (showing on 14 April) by Brisbane director Heather Corkhill, is a documentary on the relationship between faith and sexuality and is the only Australian documentary to make the cut this year.

For more information on the line-up for this years festival check out the website www.bqff.com.au. The festival runs from Friday 13 to Sunday 22 of April so forget about those big budget, big ticketed movie houses and get along to support the independent film community that thrives in our very own city. Book online at www.brisbanepowerhouse.org.