Australia’s biggest and longest-running celebration of queer cinema returns from 14 to 25 March with over 141 award-winning features, documentaries and shorts from Australia and beyond.
Enjoying its 29th anniversary in 2019, MQFF is spreading its ‘fabulousness’ across Melbourne by screening, for the very first time, at Village Cinemas Jam Factory, in addition to its long-standing screening partners Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and Cinema Nova in Carlton.
Program highlights abound and include films such as Rafiki, the courageous coming-out drama from Kenya about the friendship and tender love that develops between two young Nairobi women, despite hostility from their conservative community.
Sauvage a searing French drama, introduces us to Leo, a risk-taking young gay sex worker, whose uncompromising lifestyle is challenged when he falls in love, whilst the romantic adventure, Sorry Angel, also from France, is a companion piece to the 2018 MQFF hit BPM (Beats Per Minute).
Channelling Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita through a gay male lens, Euphoria is an unadulterated valentine to Rome, which follows entrepreneurial playboy Matteo, whose hedonistic lifestyle comes to a crashing halt when confronted by a family drama.
Acclaimed documentary TransMilitary looks at the lives of the 15,000-transgender personnel in the US military, as told through the stories of four transgender troops.
Award-winning US doco, When the Beat Drops explores the wild and subversive underground dance scene of ‘bucking,’ an energetic, yet sensual form of expression that was born out of gay clubs in the deep south.
Essential viewing, The Happy Prince, stars Rupert Everett – who also wrote and directed – as the legendary Oscar Wilde during the final years of his exile-agony in Naples and Paris.
The golden days of tinsel town are explored via two very different documentaries. Based on Scotty Bowers’ scandalous memoir, Full Service, Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood is an eye-popping documentary that follows this ‘procurer to the stars’ around Los Angeles as he recounts his wild, sexual exploits during Hollywood’s Golden Age, whilst Making Montgomery Clift dispels the long-held theory that matinee idol, Clift was a tortured and tragic figure to reveal a keenly intelligent and humourous man, who was very open about his sexuality.
There’s also Bright Colors And Bold Patterns, the filmed version of US stand-up comedian Drew Droege’s hilarious one-man show, which has captivated off-Broadway audiences and will be presented by Droege himself.
Recently voted Best Documentary at MGFF Becoming Colleen is the unforgettable story about an 85 year-old transgender woman transitioning from male to female in the coastal town of Coff’s Harbour.
And enjoying its Australian premiere is Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy – the Festival’s powerhouse closing night film, which showcases the sensational pairing of Kristin Stewart and Laura Dern’s in the wilder than fiction true account of the infamous literary scam that fooled Hollywood.
So join us in celebrating all the vibrant hues of the LGBTIQ+ rainbow over 14 divinely entertaining days! Visit mqff.com.au
