Melbourne Queer Film Festival

Last updated

Melbourne Queer Film Festival
MQFF Logo.jpg
Genre LGBTIQ+ Film Festival
Location(s) Melbourne, Australia
Founded1 February 1991;33 years ago (1991-02-01)
Attendance23,000 (2015)
CEO David Martin Harris
Website mqff.com.au

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) is an annual LGBT film festival held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia in November. Founded in 1991, it is the largest queer film event in the Southern Hemisphere, in 2015 attracting around 23,000 attendees at key locations around Melbourne.

Contents

Melbourne Queer Film Festival showcases contemporary queer cinema from Australia and internationally, and includes feature films, documentaries, and short films, including world and Australian premieres. The film festival is hosted at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Cinema Nova, and Village Cinemas.

History

Melbourne Queer Film Festival sprang from the Melbourne International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, which was first screened in 1991. The new Melbourne-born film festival was the initiative of Midsumma Festival as an attempt to present a community-based alternative to the several gay-themed but commercially intended film festivals that came to Melbourne each year around the time of the Sydney Mardi Gras. Most of these belonged to Sydney cinema chains and lengthy seasons of successful films often followed these film seasons.

The festival's opening night film in February 1991 was Longtime Companion at the Dendy Brighton Cinemas. The film was due for its commercial release shortly later and the festival is credited as being an important factor in the film's success in Melbourne. The film festival was organised with lesbian films on every night at 6pm and gay films on 9pm. Following opening night screenings took place at the National Theatre in St Kilda, also the home of the 1992 festival.

It was originally as part of the Midsumma Festival, which had started in 1989. The Midsumma board asked filmmaker Lawrence Johnston and lesbian bar owner Pat Longmore to be the first festival co-directors. It drew good audiences and was a marked success. The 1992 Festival also screened at the National Theatre and opened with the film adaptation of David Leavitt's novel The Lost Language of Cranes. In early 1992 the film festival took up residence at Hares & Hyenas bookshop in Commercial Road, South Yarra, which was founded by Crusader Hillis and Rowland Thomson a few months before in December 1991. The film festival was housed at the back of the bookshop until 1995. The three co-directors of the 1992 festival, rebranded the Melbourne Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival in recognition of video's increasing prominence in film at the time, were Pat Longmore, Crusader Hillis and Helen Eisler. The 1992 festival was notable for its focus on films that broke with the tradition of coming out narratives, featuring BDSM, post punk films, including by Bruce La Bruce and films by emerging filmmakers of colour. Teenage Sadie Benning was a festival guest with their short films shot on the toy Fischer-Price PXL camera. Sadie went on to develop an important career in video, installation and as the founder of the feminist post-punk band, Le Tigre. The festival made a small loss and Midsumma abandoned plans for future iterations.

With a filing cabinet of filmmaker contacts still at Hares & Hyenas, in mid-1992, Crusader Hillis and Rowland Thomson of Hares & Hyenas set about conducting public meetings at the bookshop to attract new members to help steer the festival. In September 1992 they met with UK actor and writer Madeleine Swain, her partner of the time, Suzie Goodman, and film enthusiast Frances O'Connor. At the suggestion of Hillis and Thomson, the festival was renamed queer, and the day following the meeting, Hillis incorporated the festival as an association, the first festival in the world using Queer as its collectivising feature. It was moved to March under the name Melbourne Queer Film and Video Festival and screened at the State Film Theatre at Treasury Place. After two years with Swain as President and director, Tamara Jungwirth was recruited as Festival Director and a period of rapid expansion ensued. In 1995, the festival started Movies Under the Stars, screening classics in a picnic atmosphere at Fairfield amphitheatre.

In 1996, a touring program went to five interstate capitals including Hobart, where homosexual activity was still a crime. The festival played a part in the establishment of queer film festivals in Brisbane, Bendigo, Far North Queensland and in New South Wales.

In 1997, Claire Jackson became president. In 1998 City of Melbourne came on as supporter through their arts grants. Lisa Daniel joined as Festival Director for the 1999 festival and a period of rapid growth began.

In 2003 the name was changed to Melbourne Queer Film Festival and in 2004 the screenings moved to the new ACMI with opening nights at the Astor Theatre.

In 2010, screenings expanded to Greater Union on Russell Street. In 2011, MQFF headed to the Art Deco Sun Theatre in inner west Footscray with a satellite festival over a weekend in late August. Opening nights moved to ACMI in 2012.

Description

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival, held in November each year, is the largest queer film event in the Southern Hemisphere. [1] [2] In 2015, it attracted around 23,000 attendees. [3]

In 2019, MQFF screened at The Capitol, Cinema Nova in inner north Carlton, and Village Jam Factory in South Yarra. [4] In 2021, it screened films at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Cinema Nova, and Village Cinemas.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

"New queer cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lygon Street</span> Street in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Lygon Street is located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, running through the inner northern suburbs of Carlton, Carlton North, Princes Hill and Brunswick East. Lygon Street is synonymous with the Italian community of Melbourne, forming the nexus point of Little Italy. It is home to many Italian restaurants and alfresco cafés.

I Am Not What You Want is a romance movie produced by Kit Hung in Hong Kong in 2001. This movie is about 48 minutes.

The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is an annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was founded in 1952 and is one of the oldest film festivals in the world following the founding of the Venice Film Festival in 1932, Cannes Film Festival in 1939 and Berlin Film Festival in 1951.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce LaBruce</span> Canadian filmmaker and artist

Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian artist, writer, filmmaker, photographer, and underground director based in Toronto.

Ana Kokkinos is an Australian film and television director and screenwriter of Greek descent. She is known for her breakthrough feature film Head On (1998), and has directed television shows such as The Secret Life of Us, The Time of Our Lives and Ten Pound Poms.

ACMI, formerly the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, is Australia's national museum of screen culture including film, television, videogames, digital culture and art. ACMI was established in 2002 and is based at Federation Square in Melbourne, Victoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Conigrave</span> Australian actor, activist and author

Tim Conigrave was an Australian actor, activist and author of the internationally acclaimed memoir, Holding the Man.

Seattle Queer Film Festival is an annual film festival in Seattle. The 28th Annual Seattle Queer Film Festival will take place October 12-22, 2023. It is the largest LGBTQIA+ film festival in the Pacific Northwest, and its award-winning films receive national praise. At the festival each film is able to receive an award which is decided on by a jury. Kathleen Mullen is the artistic director of Three Dollar Bill Cinema, the organization that produces the Seattle Queer Film Festival. Kathleen Mullen is the Artistic Director of the Seattle Queer Film Festival in charge of all festival programming and operations. Billy Ray Brewton is the Managing Director (2021-2023)

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frameline Film Festival</span>

The Frameline Film Festival began as a storefront event in 1976. The first film festival, named the Gay Film Festival of Super-8 Films, was held in 1977. The festival is organized by Frameline, a nonprofit media arts organization whose mission statement is "to change the world through the power of queer cinema". It is the oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in the world.

Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Chorus (MGLC) was founded in Australia in 1990 by Lawrence McGuire (1966). The chorus was first named 'Alsounds', due to its part affiliation with the Foundation. In April 1994, the name was changed to Melbourne Gay and Lesbian Chorus, reflecting the chorus's organizational independence and a desire to further challenge stereotypes.

The Iris Prize, established in 2007 by Berwyn Rowlands of The Festivals Company, is an international LGBT film prize and festival which is open to any film which is by, for, about or of interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex audiences and which must have been completed within two years of the prize deadline.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reel Affirmations</span> LGBTQ film festival held in Washington D.C.

Reel Affirmations (RA) is a non-profit, all-volunteer LGBT film festival in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1991 and held every year in mid-October, as of 2011 Reel Affirmations was one of the largest LGBT film festivals in the United States. Baltimore's Gay Life newspaper called it "one of the top three films festivals for the entire LGBT community." A 2007 guidebook claims it was one of the largest LGBT film festivals in the world. A listing of LGBT film festivals claims it is the largest all-volunteer film festival in the world.

Palace Cinemas is an Australian cinema chain that specialises in arthouse and international films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australian Queer Archives</span> LGBT archive in Australia

The Australian Queer Archives (AQuA) is a community-based non-profit organisation committed to the collection, preservation and celebration of material reflecting the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex LGBTI Australians. It is located in Melbourne. The Archives was established as an initiative of the 4th National Homosexual Conference, Sydney, August 1978, drawing on the previous work of founding President Graham Carbery. Since its establishment the collection has grown to over 200,000 items, constituting the largest and most significant collection of material relating to LGBT Australians and the largest collection of LGBT material in Australia, and the most prominent research centre for gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and intersex history in Australia.

The Mardi Gras Film Festival is an Australian LGBTQ+ film festival held in Sydney, New South Wales annually as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras celebrations. It is organised by Queer Screen Limited, a non-profit organization, and is one of the world's largest platforms for queer cinema.

The Queer Palm is an independently sponsored prize for selected LGBT-relevant films entered into the Cannes Film Festival. The award was founded in 2010 by journalist Franck Finance-Madureira. It is sponsored by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, filmmakers of Jeanne and the Perfect Guy, The Adventures of Felix, Crustacés et Coquillages, and L'Arbre et la forêt.

Beijing Queer Film Festival (BJQFF), (Chinese: 北京酷儿影展), is an LGBT film festival, held annually in Beijing, the capital city of the People's Republic of China. It was the first LGBT film festival to be established in mainland China, founded in 2001 by the Chinese author and LGBT film director Cui Zi'en, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy.

Johnny Symons is a documentary filmmaker focusing on LGBT cultural and political issues. He is a professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University, where he runs the documentary program and is the director and co-founder of the Queer Cinema Project. He received his BA from Brown University and his MA in documentary production from Stanford University. He has served as a Fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program.

References

  1. ↑ "Arts News. Proudly Different: Melbourne Queer Film Festival". ABC iView. 5 April 2016. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
  2. ↑ "Andrews Government backs Melbourne Queer Film Festival". 31 March 2016.
  3. ↑ "Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2015-16 Report" (PDF). mqff.com.au. 1 January 2017.
  4. ↑ "History of MQFF | Melbourne Queer Film Festival". mqff.com.au. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.