By Travis Johnson
Safe schools, marriage equality, economic migration, political asylum, and the struggles of ageing, sing-a-longs, family movies, and coming of age stories are some of the topics being tackled at Queer Screen’s Mardi Gras Film Festival, which runs at Sydney’s Event Cinemas George Street and other venues from February 15 to March 2. This year’s theme is “diversity”, and the roster of films strongly reflects that, covering a wide range of subjects and viewpoints within what you might call the Queer Diaspora.
“Continuing our focus on diversity and aiming to be a truly representative LGBTIQ film festival has been our guiding vision,” says Festival Director Paul Struthers. “While we still feature this year’s best coming-of-age movies, we are screening stories about the young and old in our community and everyone in between. Building on last year’s expanded program, we have again increased the proportion of lesbian and transgender content and included more people of colour”.
This year’s highlights include screenings of the Golden Globe-winning Moonlight, plus one world premiere, four international premieres and a staggering 31 Australian premieres.
The opening night film is the award-winning drama A Date for Mad Mary, which sees a fresh-out-of-prison woman desperately seek a date for her best friend’s wedding, while losing Handsome Devil closes out the festival, a comedy about a geeky student’s blossoming friendship with a sporty jock.
Other films include the James Franco-starring King Cobra, Gus van Sant’s When We Rise, HIV drama Pushing Dead, which stars Danny Glover, the Australian thriller Bad Girl, and the camp classic Calamity Jane, with Doris Day.
For more info, shoot over to the Queer Screen website.
