London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
www.llgff.org.uk
London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The 24th BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival will run from 17- 31 March, 2010. The deadline for submissions is Monday 22 December.
The LLGFF, as we know it now, was established in 1986 and is the third largest film festival in the UK. The LLGFF on Tour runs from May to September visiting around 40 towns and cities across the UK and Ireland.
Before the festival's formal beginnings, the bfi National Film Theatre screened the world's first serious survey of lesbian and gay cinema in 1977, with a season of 35 features and a publication called Gays and Film by a young academic called Richard Dyer. It was nine years before this pioneering season bore fruit.
In 1986, one of Dyer's former students from Warwick University, Mark Finch, helped to bring a season to the NFT called Gays' Own Films, programmed by Peter Packer of the Tyneside Cinema. Screening nine films over seven days in October, the programme included future classics of lesbian and gay cinema such as Desert Hearts (dir Donna Deitch), Parting Glances (dir Bill Sherwood) and East of the Wall (dir Wieland Speck). Aids was the subject of three films.
The 2nd edition of Gays' Own Pictures (1987) had projectionists working through the night to piece together an original cutting copy of Pink Narcissus, unseen since the 1970s.
The 3rd London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (1988) was the first to be so named and had its first lesbian co-programmer, Penny Ashbrook. More than 40 film-makers took part in a festival which was presented against the backdrop of Clause 28. Film-makers included Gus van Sant, John Greyson, Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, and other highlights included a screening of the world's first lesbian TV soap-opera along with a rare compilation of physique films from 1949 to 1962.
Now in its 24th year, The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival presents a strong and eclectic programme of feature films, shorts, artists' film and video and experimental work, as well as a whole host of discussions and special events.