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) FilmPride, Brighton & Hove Pride’s official queer film festival, will return in August for its third year. This year it’ll be online only.
Pride and Protest
WITH ALEX KLINEBERG
We caught up with Deborah Espect, the festival’s artistic director, to find out more. What inspired you to start FilmPride? I created FilmPride with Bill Smith, who runs Latest TV, three years ago. I’d just done a series of shows on Latest TV where I’d introduced LGBTQ+ short films, documentaries and animations, and I realised that, as far as I knew, we didn’t have a queer film festival in Brighton. So I talked to Bill about it and it turned out that he’d also started thinking about this!
PURE BY NATALIE JASMINE HARRIS
MOTTA BY NISH GERA
We joined forces, and FilmPride was born. We agreed that, as well as delivering live events, it would be great to run part of the festival on TV, to offer filmmakers the chance to have their work broadcast on our local channel. This makes us very different from other film festivals, and FilmPride has actually been screened on different channels in the country! This year, we’re really excited to have Northern Visions in Belfast, Sheffield Live! and KMTV in Kent as our TV partners again. Give us some of the highlights of this year’s festival. There are over 70 films, from many different parts of the world, about so many different topics, so there will definitely be something for everyone. The common denominator is that they are all high-quality films. We have beautiful animations, hard-hitting documentaries and very moving dramas. As well as some very light-hearted content, too. We’ve also interviewed filmmakers about their experiences of making their films, and about what it’s like to be queer where they are based, so this will be a very interesting opportunity for our audiences to find out more about the people behind the films they watched in the festival. How can people get involved and support FilmPride? The best way to support us is to sign up on our website (www.filmpride. org) and watch our films. And then to check out all the Q&As with the filmmakers. And to talk about us on social media (and everywhere else). As we are a volunteer-run festival with no funding, word of mouth is the best way to help us. The FilmPride TV festival will run from August 2 - 15 at 9pm on Latest TV (Freeview 7 and Virgin 159) and online from August 16 - 31, www.filmpride.org.
BY MICHAEL STEINHAGE
) Is Pride still a protest the way it once was? I ask myself this, and go look through the glass. What if I went to Pride in a faraway land, where the gays are oppressed and the cruel in command, would I stand up to count, would I stay in my house? See with protest there’s elephant, with protest there’s mouse. There’s pride and there‘s prejudice across the planet, and here it is lovely if Clive goes as Janet. Elsewhere you may carry your pride in your heart, for it’s only there safe, there in that hidden part. We fought for our rights oft the old queers proclaim, and the young queers protest we are doing the same! It may be a party, a piss-up for many, it may be a huge waste of money for any. “It’s not what it was“ you hear said more than once. Yet is anything ever when it’s been years and months? What is Pride, what is Protest, a march, a petition? What is yours may not be mine, each have their own mission. One year has changed everything, that much is clear. One year has just taken so much we hold dear. One year has made many afraid and alone, one year has shown all that we’re not on our own. We’ve covered our mouths yet we’ve spoken up louder, we’ve stuck to the rules yet we protested prouder. Division and unity, never seen hand in hand, have swept though the world, sparing no single land. First the streets were as empty as never before, no shoes on the pavements, from cars not a roar. Then we clapped at our windows and shared our proud stripes, a commodity now, gel and antibac wipes. We stayed in for the heroes, all behind the front line, admiration and honour when that life could be mine.
But the people will out and when he was stopped breathing, the streets, there was protest, were once again heaving. They should stay behind doors! Very many complained, as they claimed sympathetic but yet they remained. Opinions and passions, safety and spreading, perhaps not so different in papers the headings, as what they once had been in those decades before. Some always get less, and some always get more. And we strive for the change cause we want a world better, and we fight and campaign and belive that we matter. For we must and it’s maybe no difference how, the placard or the keyboard both mighty swords now. And now back to normal or new normal now, reluctant we read of the news of the hour. All can change in a day, but the change that has been will stay with us forever, will always be seen. How we’re blessed to have found out how much a hug means, now at last we are let out from behind our screens. Pride has changed cause and colour, let that be a truth, one we all share, all races and the old and the youth.
