For 26 years, the Providence LGBTQ Film Festival has been an essential component of Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF), one of New England’s largest and most prestigious festivals presenting features and short films from around the world and drawing audiences from Rhode Island and beyond.
This year’s RIIFF runs August 8–14 as a hybrid event with outdoor and drive-in screenings in and around Providence as well as online offerings.
Program Director Shawn Quirk noted that the more than 30 films in the LGBTQ festival reflect increasingly complex, international LGBTQ stories. Many of the narratives center on LGBTQ characters as they grapple with larger questions of identity, says Quirk, such as immigration and cultural clashes. “It’s amazing how LGBTQ narratives have evolved. There’s material about all aspects of life beyond coming out and love stories, but we have that too,” he says.
The diverse offerings in this year’s fest include writer-director Filip Gieldon’s debut feature “Magdalena” about young, single mother Magdalena (played by Magdalena Zak) who is raising her daughter by day and trying to become a professional DJ by night. She thinks her dreams have a chance to come true when she meets Julia (Natalia Sikora). But Magdalena’s traumatic past stands in the way to her new life. Gieldon was born in Stockholm but decided to move to Poland, where his parents are from, to study directing at the prestigious Lodz Film School.
Another first feature comes from Colombian-born director Juan Felipe Zuleta. “Unidentified Objects” is a darkly humorous American indie about two mismatched souls who bond on a life-changing road trip. Peter (Matthew August Jeffers), an unemployed, curmudgeonly gay man with dwarfism, is asked by his neighbor, Winona (Sarah Hay), a boisterous sex worker, to provide a ride for a mysterious emergency. Since Peter needs the money, he agrees to drive Winona with one major stipulation: that they make a pit stop along the way for him to fulfill a long overdue promise.
Director Craig Bettendorf’s documentary feature “Not a Tame Lion,” a follow-up to his 2020 short film “Sorry We Missed You, John Boswell,” explores the life and work of Yale professor and historian John Boswell, whose research on LGBTQ Christianity yielded the groundbreaking books “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality” and “Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe,” which helped shift the marriage equality debate.
In the film, Boswell’s colleagues, friends and family recount his final days as he worked tirelessly to complete the groundbreaking “Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe” in 1994 while privately battling AIDS complications that led to his death on December 24, 1994, at age of 47. “Not a Tame Lion” is from the epitaph on Boswell’s tombstone. He is buried beside his longtime partner Jerone Hart (1946–2010) at Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.
As one of 10 film festivals in the world that is an Academy Award qualifier in the Live Action, Animation and Documentary Short categories and also a qualifier with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), RIIFF has long championed short films and is a premiere showcase for shorts including several that have ended up winning the Oscar. This year is no exception as the LGBTQ festival presents many first-rate short films. These include “Sissy” from director Eitan Pitgliani, who will be attending the festival in person.
Born in Rome, Pitgliani studied filmmaking in London and New York and has made five short films to wide acclaim. “Sissy” follows young Luca as he’s grieving his mother’s death and tries to find solace by visiting his father on his birthday.
“Hard” is director Robin Takao D’Oench’s look at a teenage boy as he experiences awkwardness and struggles to navigate the uncertainties of his sexuality. When his first time with a girl doesn’t go as expected, he’s forced to confront his feelings of desire for his best friend.
“Little Sky,” which premiered at Outfest 2021 and is distributed through HBO Max, is a musical drama about a nonbinary Chinese-American drag performer, Sky, who is haunted by childhood memories and returns to their hometown to confront their estranged father. Writer-director Jess X. Snow is a nonbinary filmmaker who, according to their director’s statement, “creates queer Asian immigrant stories that transcend borders, binaries and time. … The film features an ensemble of Asian American characters, both elder and young, speaking Mandarin, Cantonese and English, made by a team of passionate LGBTQ+ people and people of color and diverse students at the NYU graduate film program.”
A drag performer is also the focus of Kyle B. Thompson’s short “Parrot,” a timely film that address gun violence. It’s about drag queen Brittany Lynn (Ian Morrison) who is participating in a story-time hour at a local library. As an angry group protests outside, Brittany Lynn reads to the assembled children and spots a young boy, Nicolas (Wesley Holloway), who seems cut off from the other kids. Soon, a crisis erupts and Brittany Lynn finds herself protecting Nicolas and learning why he is withdrawn.
The LGBTQ film festival is part of the larger RIIFF which boasts some 300 features and short films along with several guest filmmakers. The special guest for the event is Cathy Tyson, the British actress best known for her BAFTA-winning debut as Simone, a prostitute with a female lover, opposite best actor Oscar nominee Bob Hoskins in “Mona Lisa” (1986). Tyson will attend RIIFF with her directorial debut, the short film “Lilian.” It’s about the first Black woman in the Royal Air Force, Lilian Bader, who fought during World War II as did her husband but who has been forgotten by history. Fifteen years after the war, an old acquaintance named Edith arrives unexpectedly at Lillian’s door bringing questions and conflicts with her.
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