Saturday, March 16, 2024

BFI Flare: Five Films for Freedom

 This year's crop of Five Films for Freedom, which heralds the start of BFI Flare, is especially strong. 

Along with the dramas of Halfway and Cursive is the unusual animated docudrama of Little One, in which an unseen narrator asks her two dads how they knew they were ready to be parents. The interview takes place on camera but with the very stylised rubbery animation, an unusual combo. While it is acted, it does feel as if it could be a documentary. Quite clever. 

Compton's '22 is a documentary with arty leanings, as young queer gender  non-conforming artists watch footage of interviews with survivors of the 1966 Compton's Cafeteria riot. They then perform responses to it in song and dance on a set resembling said cafeteria as a way of enacting a bond with this earlier generation. 

The longest film is a coming of age drama, The First Kiss, in which a teenager goes on a first date with a guy hoping to get a kiss but confronts entrenched homophobia. It is sweet and sad and shows how needed the security of queer culture is. 


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