What is the point of a gay film festival? I approached LLGFF with a slight cynicism; I have found films aimed at a homo-audience often lack much depth or meaningful content - a flash of torso, a bit of man on man action or an Abba reference seemingly enough to get funding for a release to the gay market. For me, though, a gay film industry should be to enable discussion, press for rights and provoke debate. Film can be a wonderful medium for analysing and communicating but perhaps because (in the west) we have relatively so little to fight for than even 10 years ago the cinema output has become more about celebration and shallow insignificance - just as Gay Pride marches change to Mardi Gras and move away from their protesting past. So it was quite a relief that the LLGFF programme appeared to present films that comment on and penetrate more resonant areas, from countries where political progress does still have to be made and in the fringe areas of queer culture. A long list of black and Asian films, documentaries and world cinema sit alongside a few of the more clichéd safe fair. It is now the UK’s third largest film festival and this can largely be put down to its broad-minded selections and worldly outlook, epitomised by this year’s selection.

One of the few British films shown was a 30th anniversary screening of Nighthawks, made 8 years before the first LLGFF and in a time when acceptance and mainstream understanding of gay culture was a million miles from now. It was the first British film explicitly about gay life and what’s wonderful about it is how it reads purely as a historical document and doesn’t try to sensationalise or demean the gay characters. Only the main character, Jim, is a professional actor, and the production values are haphazard - it’s rather hard work to sit through the whole 113 minutes but in a curious way it’s rather worth it. I enjoyed the unintended Lynchian moments and not only did I not know how a single shot was going to end, let alone the film, I didn’t feel that the director, cameraman or actors did either. Concentrating on the division of Jim’s existence between gay (tight denim, cruising clubs) and everyday (teaching geography to teenagers) it does feel slightly repetitive to the modern eye and it would help if the scene of conflict, when his two worlds collide, occurred much earlier in the film to give it a kick, but as a historical document it works wonderfully - pre-AIDs, pre-Docklands development, pre-gay film industry.

30 years on from Nighthawks comes the opening showing of the festival, Czech film Dolls. A slick and highly polished production with some convincing young actors in the leads, we follow three girls on the threshold of womanhood as they escape on a pubescent road trip away from a summer sports camp and towards Holland to look for work and boys. To its benefit the ‘gay interest’ in the story isn’t the sole narrative and though it develops as the film progresses there is a lot more inside than just the story of one of the girls, Iska, discovering her lesbian self. While perhaps not as edgy or provocative as some of the films on show, it is a well-executed, quite humorous and intelligent film with some excellent photography.  

Intending to be one of those more provocative films, French film Devotee sets out to explore being disabled and gay. Hérve is a quadriplegic in search of a more meaningful sexual existence than as fetishised object, though it didn’t really delve deeply into the idea of hating the characteristic someone else loves about you - and the internal conflict this can cause. It could comfortably have been cut down to a good 30 minutes observational piece, or been a lot more tightly written and contained a much more profound investigation, but as it is, it felt rather loose and short of content. Both it and Nighthawks had an autobiographical feel about them due to the low production values and neither discussing a topic much further than the protagonist’s single linear viewpoint. In some instances documentary films can offer a much broader approach to a topic and the festival held a varied selection of these.

Documentaries, as a rule, have to be quite tightly edited, lean and have a solid core of fact and information in order to keep the interest of the viewer. Bi The Way sold itself as an investigation into the current ‘trend’ of bisexuality and whether it’s a genuine movement or fashion. At just over an hour and a half, it gave itself plenty of time to look for answers, but it didn’t. Instead various young Americans excitedly exclaimed they liked kissing boys and girls. There was the briefest of discussions with researchers into scientific findings, but the rest was a rather tiresome road trip across the US without much structure and it appeared more of a self-validation exercise than an investigation. I came out at the end knowing some people are bi and some aren’t, and that it’s been on TV a lot in The OC, Buffy and Madonna/Christina. There is a very good documentary to be made analysing the middleground of Kinsey’s sliding scale, the attitudes through history, the personal experiences of existing in a cultural grey area, the scientific knowledge and so on. This isn’t it.

There is a danger that any minority group can turn inwards in defence and create a barrier to the outside world. Through its programming and presentation the LLGFF is resolutely fighting this with a worldly and, in places, challenging packed couple of weeks of films. And, what’s more, it isn’t just confined to London’s South Bank as it heads out on tour around the country with a selection including Dolls, the excellent Mexican film Burn the Bridges and Nighthawks (read the reviews of these online).

Keep an eye on for details of the touring programme www.bfi.org.uk/llgff 

Words > Will Jennings