BFI Flare, London
Celebrating its 30th anniversary, the LGBT festival now waves its freak flag in an altered landscape: one where transgender movies are Oscar material and gay people can get married and sing terrible Bond themes just like straight people. Where does that leave Flare? With multiple battles still to fight but also a much better choice of films, especially British ones. On that front, opening gala The Pass follows two friends through the Premier League; Departure roots for a British teen on a life-changing French holiday; and Who’s Gonna Love Me Now? joins the uplifting London Gay Men’s Chorus. International highlights include a Mexican murder-mystery (Carmin Tropical); a gay drama stirring Islam and the FBI into the mix (Naz & Maalik); and a visit to the court of Sweden’s sexually ambivalent Queen Kristina (The Girl King). Not forgetting a good ol’ sing-along screening of Calamity Jane, of course.
BFI Southbank, SE1, Wed to 27 Mar
Glasgow Short Film Festival
More than just an afterthought to the festival proper, this is not only Scotland’s biggest competitive short film festival, but also a collection of one-off events well worth checking out in their own right. There’s the first ever showing of Lost Treasure, the socialist Dawn Cine Group’s unfinished 1956 documentary on the history of the Highlands, shown with new oral history and live music. In a similar vein, Neu! Reekie!’s new documentary Anywhere But The Cities follows 30 Scottish poets and musicians on a nationwide rural roadshow. In a completely dissimilar vein, there are abridged, one-reel Universal horror classics, a focus on Syria, and, on 19 March, no wave legend Lydia Lunch takes over The Glue Factory for a night of live music and rare 16mm shorts from the confrontational “cinema of transgression” movement – don’t say you weren’t warned.
