There’s a new film festival in town. Queer East Film Festival promotes “unheard voices of East & Southeast Asian LGBTQ+ cinema” & screens across London for two weeks from 18 APR to 02 MAY 2020. Here’s everything you need to know.

By RADIANT CIRCUS

Twitter @radiantcircus | Instagram @radiantcircus

Promising an assortment of filmmakers, activists, and academics amongst their special guests, Queer East Film Festival is bringing a newly curated season of film screenings to London. Themes to be addressed by the programme include identity, religion, family, adulthood and politics, all through the various lenses of queer relationships on screen.

The full programme launches on 13 MAR but is set to embrace some twenty-nine films (features, documentaries and shorts) including both classic films and new releases, covering 50 years of cinema from 15 countries. Many screenings will be accompanied by the kind of special features that help audiences take a deeper dive into the worlds created by the filmmakers as well as contemporary LGBTQ+ lives across Asia, a part of the world where progress with LGBTQ+ rights has been mixed, to say the least.

Early programme announcements include Ange Lee’s THE WEDDING BANQUET about a gay Taiwanese immigrant to the USA, avant-garde favourite FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES which is enjoying renewed global attention following its 4K restoration from 35mm negatives, and A DOG BARKING AT THE MOON which is also screening at this year’s BFI Flare. Of this early bunch, we’re most excited to see SPIDER LILIES, Zero Chou’s cult 2006 film about the ambiguous relationship between two women who share a traumatic past which one the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for Best Feature Film in 2007.

Ahead of that programme launch, we’ll let Director & Programmer of Queer East, Yi Wang, have the final words:

“The fight for LGBTQ+ rights in Asia remains strong and committed, but stereotyping, misrepresentation and discrimination still exist. This is especially true for queer people of colour, who are marginalised on the grounds of both race and sexuality, and often excluded from mainstream discourse. By introducing these brave queer storytellers from East and Southeast Asia to UK audiences, I hope Queer East can be a gentle reminder for all of us that the LGBTQ+ community should not leave anyone behind.”

And that’s the meat of it…

QUEER EAST FILM FESTIVAL

Web queereast.org.uk | Instagram @queereast | Twitter @queereastfest | Facebook @queereast

#QueerEast #QEFF2020

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