QFest, formerly known as the Houston Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (HGLFF), is a nonprofit organization based in Houston, Texas, dedicated to promoting the media arts as a tool for communication and cooperation among diverse communities by presenting films, videos, and programs by, about, or of interest to the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community.
Organizations closely associated with movies helped produce the first HGLFF in 1997. [1] [2] The HGLFF does not use a curator; instead, each venue books its own films from submissions and projects they pursue independently. An advisory board facilitates organization of the films and events – an undertaking that begins almost a year in advance. [3] Striving to make the Festival accessible to the entire population of the greater Houston area, the two-week festival has screenings at Landmark Theatres, Angelika Film Center, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Rice Cinema (at Rice University), DiverseWorks Art Space, and Aurora Picture Show.
The Festival was co-founded by Loris Bradley (formerly of DiverseWorks), Sarah Gish (formerly of Landmark Theatres) and Marian Luntz (still with the Museum of Fine Arts).
The festival was renamed QFest in 2007. [4]
In addition to showing feature films, documentaries, and short videos, the Festival hosts a series of panel discussions, public forums, and other special events in conjunction with screenings to examine such topics as hate crimes, the media's influence on the perception of LGBT people, and the unique way in which Houston’s gay and lesbian community has developed over the last few decades.
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TransGeneration (2005) Director: Jeremy Simmons
D.E.B.S. (2004) Director: Angela Robinson
Stupid Boy (Garcon stupide) (2004) Director: Lionel Baier
Pink Flamingos (1972) Director: John Waters
Gypsy 83 (2001) Director: Todd Stephens
Lan Yu (2001) Director: Stanley Kwan
Psycho Beach Party (2000) Director: Robert Lee King
Valley of the Dolls (1966) Director: Mark Robson
Jenni Olson is a writer, archivist, historian, consultant, and non-fiction filmmaker based in Berkeley, California. She co-founded the pioneering LGBT website PlanetOut.com. Her two feature-length essay films — The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) — premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her work as an experimental filmmaker and her expansive personal collection of LGBTQ film prints and memorabilia were acquired in April 2020 by the Harvard Film Archive, and her reflection on the last 30 years of LGBT film history, in The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2021. In 2020, she was named to the Out Magazine Out 100 list. In 2021, she was recognized with the prestigious Special TEDDY Award at the Berlin Film Festival. She also campaigned to have a barrier erected on the Golden Gate Bridge to prevent suicides.
Philadelphia QFest was founded in Philadelphia as the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival by TLA Entertainment Group in 1995. It was given its current name, QFest, in 2009. One of the festival's founders and current Artistic Director, Raymond Murray, describes QFest's mission as giving gay and lesbian audiences the opportunity to see films that accurately reflect their life experiences without the filter of the "straight" Hollywood system.
NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival put on by The New Festival, Inc., is one of the most comprehensive forums of national and international LGBT film/video in the world.
The Inside Out Film and Video Festival, also known as the Inside Out LGBT or LGBTQ Film Festival, is an annual Canadian film festival, which presents a program of LGBT-related film. The festival is staged in both Toronto and Ottawa. Founded in 1991, the festival is now the largest of its kind in Canada. Deadline dubbed it "Canada’s foremost LGBTQ film festival."
Montrose is a neighborhood located in west-central Houston, Texas, United States. Montrose is a 7.5-square-mile (19 km2) area roughly bounded by Interstate 69/U.S. Highway 59 to the south, Allen Parkway to the north, South Shepherd Drive to the west, and Taft to Fairview to Bagby to Highway 59 to Main to the east. The area is also referred to as Neartown or Neartown / Montrose.
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.
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.
The Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival (formerly the Fairy Tales International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival) is an annual event held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Since its founding in 1999, the festival has attracted over 35,000 attendees. It is currently the longest running LGBT film festival in Alberta.
The Gulf Coast Archive and Museum of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender History, Inc. (GCAM) is an LGBT history organization located in Houston. It was previously in Neartown.
The GAZE International LGBT Film Festival Dublin is an annual film festival which takes place in Dublin, Ireland each Bank Holiday weekend in late July and early August. Founded in 1992, it has become Ireland's largest LGBT film event, and the country's biggest LGBT gathering aside from Dublin Pride.
Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement is a 2009 American documentary film directed and produced by Susan Muska and Gréta Ólafsdóttir for their company Bless Bless Productions, in association with Sundance Channel. The film tells the story of the long-term lesbian relationship between Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer, including their respective childhoods, their meeting in 1963, their lives and careers in New York City, Thea's diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and Edie's care for her partner, and their wedding in Toronto, Canada, in May 2007, because gay marriage was not then legal in their home state of New York.
The Houston GLBT Community Center was a community center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies in the Houston metropolitan area and southeast Texas. Its last location was in the Dow School building in the Sixth Ward of Houston.
Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a Professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies.
Matthew Montgomery is an American film, television, and stage actor, director, writer, producer and educator. He was born in Houston, Texas in 1978. Since his debut in Gone, But Not Forgotten (2003), he has primarily specialized in independent movies with LGBTQ+ themes. His most recent film, Devil's Path (2018), marked his directorial debut and was produced by his husband, actor/producer Steve Callahan.
Undressing Israel: Gay Men in the Promised Land is a 46-minute documentary written by American adult-film entrepreneur, columnist, gay activist and gay pornographic film director Michael Lucas, and co-directed by Lucas and Israeli director Yariv Mozer. In his debut as a documentary filmmaker, Michael Lucas portrays in this film released in 2012 Israel's thriving GLBT community through footage of Tel Aviv's vibrant nightlife, a same-sex wedding, and candid interviews with a diverse range of local Israeli gay men and lesbians, including a gay MP, an openly gay Army trainer, a drag queen, a transvestite, a young Arab-Israeli journalist, and same-sex parents raising their children and a number of artists and activists.
Houston has a large and diverse LGBT population and is home to the 4th largest gay pride parade in the nation. Houston has the largest LGBT population of any city in the state of Texas.
Snowflake is a 2014 Italian short film written and directed by Italian director Francesco Roder and filmed in New York City. The short film stars American actresses Ele Keats and Tracy Middendorf.
image+nation. LGBTQueer Montreal is an annual eleven-day film festival, which takes place in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Held in November each year, the festival is dedicated to sharing the stories and experiences of LGBTQ+ people and is the first festival of its kind in Canada.
Andrea Weiss is an American independent documentary filmmaker, author, and professor of film/video at the City College of New York where she co-directs the MFA Program in Film. She was the archival research director for the documentary Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (1984), for which she won a News & Documentary Emmy Award.
The Melbourne Queer Film Festival is an annual LGBT film festival held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Held in November, the festival is regarded as the largest queer film event in the Southern Hemisphere. The festival attracts around 23,000 attendees at key locations around Melbourne.
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