The New Farm Queer Film Festival has launched with twelve days of big film premieres and restored favourites at Brisbane’s New Farm Cinemas.
The second annual festival kicked off on Thursday night with the Queensland premiere of Ira Sachs’ acclaimed queer drama Passages starring Ben Whishaw.
NFQFF program director Sean Tayler said New Farm Cinemas has a proud history of screening queer stories for Brisbane filmgoers.
“It’s so important that our festival program encapsulated queer stories from around the world,” NFQFF program director Sean Tayler said.
“This year we have four films from Germany, two from Argentina, two French films, a film from French Canada, a film from the United States as well some home-grown Aussie stories.”
The festival will run until the closing night gala screening of John Water’s outrageous classic Pink Flamingos on October 2.
But before then, check out five under-the-radar picks from the NFQFF lineup below. See all the films and book tickets at the New Farm Cinemas website.
Horseplay
Argentinian director Marco Berger puts homosocial bonding and toxic masculinity under the microscope in the erotic and discomforting dramedy Horseplay.
A group of friends get together to enjoy a summer holiday at a villa. The men drink, party hard and film prank videos together but under the surface jealousy and violence begin to emerge which pushes tensions to the limit.
Bones and Names
Fabian Stumm’s intelligent and entertaining reflection on relationships sees gay couple Boris and Jonathan at a difficult turning point.
The couple are drifting apart, with Boris, an actor, developing feelings for his younger co-star Tim, and Jonathan, a writer, becoming obsessed with his novel.
The German film is premiering in Australia at the New Farm Queer Film Festival.
Give Me Pity
Sissy St. Claire graces the small screen for her first television special. It’s an evening full of music and laughter, glamour and entertainment!
But Sissy’s live event quickly begins to curdle into a psychedelic nightmare of vanity, insecurity and delusional ambition. She’s stalked by the glowering presence of a mysterious masked man.
Sophie von Haselberg – the spitting image of her mother, Bette Midler – shines bright in Amanda Kramer’s lurid picture of stardom undone.
That Kind of Summer
Three “hypersexual” women are invited to spend 26 days in a quiet rest home and explore different experiences, forms, and extremes of desire.
Under the detached supervision of a therapist and a considerate social worker, the group attempts to maintain a delicate balance.
French-Canadian arthouse filmmaker and documentarian Denis Côté’s film is a smart and observational drama about the sexual conformity of a trio of women in French Canada.
Since the Last Time We Met
In this New Farm Queer Film Festival pick from Argentina, Victor is reunited by chance with David, his first love, fifteen years after the last time they saw each other.
The couple revive their long-lost secret love affair. But this time, David is married to a woman and Victor struggles with his own feelings. Every time the pair meet, it might be the last.
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Dear Readers & the few that may see these tedious comments I have been posting on here for past maybe year or more. Some others do leave comments here & there but no, no one else’s threatens to be longer than the physical magazine and on a quite a few. Any way I am writing in vain I know to express my disgust at THE WORST FILM I have ever seen! An extremely Homophobic & Sexist film that slipped through into the LGBTQIA+ festival circuit. It sure does not deserve its own season anywhere! The movie was called Horseplay renaming it as Horseshit is still far too censored, but I can’t think of anything else. I don’t care this was from a gay director or even cast involved. It seems as long as they are unattainable gorgeous men under 30, shirtless for the most part with a few tasty fruit baskets peppered in, we’ll excuse the vile casual homophobia, & the true ugliness of toxic male culture! I ended up cowardly ‘walking out’ 30 to 45 minutes longer than I really wanted to. I kept something will change to make it all worthwhile sitting through the tedious shenanigans of almost all or it right from the start! Then to find out from a gay couple called Fishjelly that do Youtube movie reviews the ending results in one of the worst assholes fag bashing one of his mates (whom as teenagers supposedly grew up far more intimate than most) with a baseball bat, which presumably kills or seriously harms him now for the rest of his life. I left angry at the time I had had enough and left. I clearly made the right call, I would have been uncontrollably cursing at that screen. If the director’s intentions were to make you uncomfortable & feel abused & discriminated, they exceeded their goal TOO well! If it was to spotlight how bad toxic male culture can really be that also succeeded TOO well, but none of these characters were likeable, nor endearing. it fell well short of any entertainment value. It did look great & was set in lovely location, so I judged by the film poster & blurb it suggested the men in this scenario were gathering in a safe space to relax in each other’s company, where inhibitions were challenged. Instead it was bunch of mid 20 year olds acting like 15 (12 I would have said) year old’s as the maybe a sister (the one likeable character after all) of one of them says, when she turns up at their bec & call! To say I hated this so much, isn’t cutting it close. I just had to vent somewhere like this imploring NO ONE to go see this if there are any more screenings at the Brisbane QFF for 2023 nor anywhere else it goes next. Warn your friends in other states & countries it is forthcoming to avoid at all costs! To be clear I am not angry at the wonderful cinemas for hosting the festival as they have been doing a number of years now. Nor those that run this festival & reasonably thought this would be a great new must see. I misjudged myself by choosing to buy a ticket. In the end you cannot know until you are in the plush chair. I cannot remember any other time I left a movie, even when I wasn’t loving it before it ended, other than Horse I mean Horseplay