Fringe! Queer Arts and Film Festival

 The festival finished last week but I have taken some time to finish watching films and gather my thoughts. 

Naturally, I spent a bit of time pondering my own film, Lactasia, which made its belated UK debut. The screening was socially distanced and relaxed and was somewhat masked. It certainly was a new experience for me to see people lying on bean bags at a festival screening. We were even offered gay masks! Well, rainbow ones. I have kept one as a souvenir. 

Here is a pic of the installation I put up at Rich Mix for my screening. 

But the other films I saw ranged from the high camp of Captain Faggotron to a whole programme of witchy experimental shorts. Captain Faggotron was great fun and a distant cousin to Lactasia in its B-movie values and humour. And it was set in Berlin, which is always a delight to see on film. 

I also saw a newly digitised version of Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire Too, which is an old favourite of mine. It looked great and it's always great to spend time with these amazing activists, now seen at a distance of 30 years. I think a lot of the youngers viewers were really impressed by what they saw and some women told me they wished they had been there. I had, of course, and was wearing my Lesbian Avengers T-shirt to prove it!

I viewed several shorts programmes, including the romance-themed Queer Summer Lovin'. The standout in this programme was definitely Youssou & Malek, which was very clever and beautifully shot. The two leads had great chemistry as a young couple faces being split up by life choices. 

The end of my attendance at the festival in a live capacity was the shorts programme Enchanted Visions, which featured an array of truly baffling and bewitching films, some more abstruse than others. I am not sure I truly understood any of them, in fact, but that may have been because I was utterly exhausted by that point. 

Suffice to say it was an exciting week for me, my first live festival in three years and a chance for people to see what I have been working on for eight years, too. 

Made in East London

Tomorrow my film Lactasia gets its UK premiere at Fringe! Queer Film and Arts Festival in London. It's been a long process to get to this point, with many bumps in the road, not least Covid which delayed our post-production process by two years. 

still from Lactasia

Nonetheless, it's gratifying to finally get the chance to see the film on a proper cinema screen with an audience. And the film is very much steeped in East London, from its references, to its rehearsals, to its locations. Here I shall run through a bit of what that looks like. 

Rich Mix, the venue where the film is showing tomorrow, was the site of our rehearsals for our zombies, who stalk the film with their quest to find The Others. Two of the three zombies showed up for this meeting in September 2017, as we worked through what zombie drag queens sound like and how they move. It was great fun working through this. 

still from Lactasia

The montage sequences sprinkled throughout the film were largely shot in Shoreditch and Bethnal Green as I wandered up and down shooting interesting backdrops with a particular interest in street art such as murals and graffiti. Many of these, of course, no longer exist, as street art is usually ephemeral, unless it's Banksy's! But I felt that capturing a snap shot of how those streets looked at that moment gave the film a particular feeling of NOW. 

still from Lactasia

The climactic scenes at a goth club were shot in Bow, and I confess I have not been back since we shot there in 2019 but I assume the railway bridge is still there, quite eerie at night. 

Since our production and post process was so long, entire locations have disappeared. Some scenes were shot with the actors walking past such buildings as Mirth and Percy Ingle which have shut down. 

I have an especial fondness for a particular small alleyway in Walthamstow where our scenes of zombies trudging past a busker were soundtracked by the local sparrows in full song. I loved that sound, not quiet as the alleyway has been supplanted by blocks of flats. I hope the birds have found a new and better home. 

Fringe! Shorts: weird and wonderful

This year, as with the last, I am not able to attend Fringe! festival in person but the queer film festival is offering Fringe! From Home options which is welcome. 

So far I have viewed two shorts programmes and will extract the standouts for this post. 

The French long short Daughters of Destiny (dir. Valentin Noujaïm) is an absorbing atmospheric sci-fi tale of three young women being kidnapped by aliens who claim to have a paradise that looks a lot like a smoky queer night club. I found it quite imaginative and with resonances of Girlhood. It could also be expanded into a feature, should the filmmaker wish it. 

ELIZA (dir. Amy Pennington) is a comic mockumentary about lesser known poet Eliza Cook who wrote in the 19th century. I was slightly confused as to why the actor had a heavy Northern accent while claiming to be from London, but it was quite amusing to see the Victorian-clad poet wandering around present day Kent reminiscing about the last time she was there.

Another comedic short, How To Sex Your Cannabis (dir. Ryan Suits) uses facts about cannabis to make points about gender expression. A great example of using DIY techniques to create a world. 

Some films cross genres. A wild patience has taken me here (dir. Érica Sarmet) at first appears to be a documentary, as a Brazilian lesbian speaks to camera and then takes tea with her cat at home. Once she goes out, however, she meets up with four younger dykes and suddenly the film seems to be some kind of intergenerational fantasy in which everyone has sex and makes vlogs. Most odd. 

More sedate in tone is I was looking for you (dir. Georgia Helen Twigg) in which a woman bakes using a recipe from an older woman she realises recognised her as a kindred spirit. It poses the intriguing question as to whether people can see more in us than we do ourselves. Quietly affecting. 

Also bowing to queer elders is the futuristic comedy Don't Text Your Ex (dir. Jo Güstin) in which a filmmaker interviews an older couple who offer nuggets of wisdom and not a little swearing. The best bit is the end credits which read as text exchanges of the cast and crew. Quite clever.