A sneak peak at the MQFF

Screening the best in new local and international LGBT cinema this March, the 19th Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) will showcase movies for every taste, from heart-pounding horror films to thought-provoking documentaries.

Although most of the program is still under wraps, Festival Director Lisa Daniel has given CANVAS a sneak preview of some of the films that will screen this year.

Opening night on Wednesday March 18 will see audience members treated to Tom Gustafon’s delightful Were the World Mine (pictured above), a magical high school musical in which unhappy gay student Timothy (Tanner Cohen) discovers a secret recipe for a love potion encoded in the pages of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Naturally, he uses it to make his school’s homophobes fall in love with each other!

“It’s very, very similar to High School Musical,” comments Daniel. “Think that kind of vein, take out Zack Efron, bump in a lovely-looking boy and that’s pretty much the opening night film. It’s lots of fun, great music; a really good crowd pleaser, I think.”

Another film that’s sure to win hearts is Swedish director Ella Lemhagen’s finely observed drama Patrik 1.5, which Daniel says she was lucky to secure at all.

“It was really hard to get because the distributors were really playing hardball with it, because I think it’s going to be pretty big.

“It’s about two gay guys who try and adopt what they think is a young baby, but there’s a bit of typo in their adoption papers and they end up getting a 15-year-old boy who’s homophobic and quite aggressive and has had a lot of social problems. It’s a really interesting take on modern gay stories. The gay partnership is just taken for granted; there’s no coming out drama, it’s just about stuff that’s very modern and relevant for contemporary audiences.”

With its striking cinematography, complex characters and assured acting, Patrik 1.5 will be a strong contender for the festival’s Audience Award for Best Film, a $5,000 cash prize sponsored by FQ Films.

On the documentary front, festival-goers can look forward to David Rothmiller’s For My Wife… which Daniel describes as “an American documentary … about the birth of an activist” and nominates as one of her personal favourites.

After the tragic death of her wife, Charlene Strong was thrust into the spotlight, becoming a powerful voice for the equal rights of same-sex couples and their families. Her advocacy led to the passage of Washington State’s historic Domestic Partnership legislation.

“She basically has to get permission from [her in-laws] to get permission to see her own wife, because she doesn’t carry around marriage papers and the hospital don’t accept that she’s the wife. So by the time she gets the permission her partner has basically died. And then to make matters worse, she has similar problems at the funeral home, who also treat her badly.

“And from there she became involved in all sorts of activist groups and managed to get all sorts of laws changed around visiting hospitals for partners, that sort of thing. It’s just really inspiring. It had me riveted from the start.”

The festival will also be screening Ghosted, a “lesbian thriller” from director Monica Treut.

“We seem to have a lot of violent films this year,” Daniel observes. “There’s a couple of horror films, and a British film which we’re having the world premiere of called Shank.”

Directed by Simon Pearce, Shank is a confronting story of gang violence and conflicted sexuality, with its main character, Cal (Wayne Virgo) a violent young scally who is conflicted about his sexuality, and afraid to act on his feelings for his best mate, Jonno (Tom Bott).

Coupled with other films in the MQFF program, it indicates an increasing engagement with genre by contemporary queer filmmakers, and a move away from the blandly uplifting stories of the past.

“What I think they’re doing is saying, ‘Look, we’ve had enough of a couple of decades of feel-good stories about gays like Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss and Adam and Steve’,” Daniel says.

“They’re still around, those sorts of films, but a lot more filmmakers are doing really interesting stories where the gay characters aren’t really nice; sometimes they’re just real, like the rest of us. Instead of fluffy Will and Grace types, they’re flawed and they’re complex and they don’t always do the right thing. For me, for my personal taste, it’s a welcome relief.”

The 19th annual Melbourne Queer Film Festival runs from March 18 - 29. Program available from February 25, tickets on sale February 26. Festival members are able to purchase MQFF tickets one week earlier than the general public. Go to www.mqff.com.au for membership details.

This article first appeared in MCV #420, Thursday January 22.