The 2021 Brisbane Queer Film Festival returned for its 22nd edition in March, featuring a program of authentic queer storytelling by and for the queer community.
Taking place at New Farm Cinemas, the festival program was made up of 14 features, 3 shorts sessions, 6 documentaries, with 17 Queensland premieres and 3 Australian premieres. BQFF Co-Director Shanon King said the program aims to embrace the gamut of queer cinema, with special selections for the niche and allies of Brisbane’s queer community.
“We want to show audiences the future of queer storytelling. The calibre, diversity and inclusiveness in the line-up of films is always something we strive to excel at. Centering and elevating our queer voices, elders and community,” said King. “The reality of coming back out to the cinema together was a daunting reality to face in the current climate of COVID-19. But we were fortunate enough to be able to in Queensland.”
Highlights included the tender and playful UK documentary, Posy Dixon’s Keyboard Fantasies, the story of Beverly Glenn-Copeland a trans elder and musician rediscovered by the youth in the experimental contemporary music scene. The latest Bruce LaBruce feature Saint-Narcisse was a film about the bond of family. Australian filmmakers Thomas Wilson-White and Lizzie Cater’s feature The Greenhouse — a magic-realist film — made its Queensland premiere, and the Teddy award-winning feature from Faraz Shariat, No Hard Feelings.
The Festival opened with the Queensland Premiere of Heidi Ewing’s feature, I Carry You With Me. The 2020 Sundance Film Festival award-winning film traces the decades-spanning, border-crossing romance between two Mexican men. In 2021, BQFF was proud to receive funding support from Screen Queensland.
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