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The SouthWest England City of Bristol may not be that well-known outside of the UK but it deserves to as it straddles the beautiful River Avon steeped in prosperous maritime history. Its former city-center port is now a cultural hub, and present-day Bristol now boasts not one, but two lively ‘gay villages’.
The city Pride celebrations kick off on 25th June until 9th July and one of its centerpieces is the Queer Vision Film Fest which delivers a diverse program of UK & International LGBT+ films including independently-made features, animation, and award-winning short films Now in its 10th year Queer Vision, produced by Rebecca Ballard, presents it’s the biggest festival to date for 2022 and a fresh new look that captures dynamic and diverse programming.
Opening Night is a special screening of George Michael Freedom Uncut, on what would have been his 59th birthday. With Incredible, unseen archival and private home footage gives us a first-person account of his life, revealing how he became one of the most influential queer recording artists of all time.
DO NOT MISS veteran queer actor Udo Kier‘s career-best performance as the retired drag queen/hairdresser who gets called back for one last time. Todd Stephen’s delightful comedy SWAN SONG was one of our very favorite films last year that we keep going back to. If we had anything to say about it we would have Kier the Oscar !
Trans filmmaker Lyel Kash’s directorial/writing debut Death and Bowling is an extraordinary achievement. Not just because in a groundbreaking movie Kash cast all the roles in the movie with transgender actors, but his spiritual drama gives a very personal insight which we assume are in some reflections on his journey. This is why it is also on QUEERGURU’s Must See List
Then there are two PREVIEW screenings that we recommend highly. The first is WILDHOOD. It is a beautiful queer coming of age story set within Canada’s first nation Mi’kmaq people, a community over 14,000 years old, based in rural Nova Scotia. The road movie introduces us to Link, (Phillip Lewitski), a Two-Spirit, half Mi’kmaq teenager, and his younger half-brother Travis (Avery Winters-Anthony). The term Two-Spirit loosely refers to queer first nation people – a more detailed indigenous definition is the intersection of the relationship to land, gender, sexuality, ceremony, and culture.
The second Preview is Brit filmmaker Lee Cooper’s debut feature documentary and is an unbridled ode to one of Britain’s lesser-known camp legends: (that’s unless you are an English gay man of a certain age). David Raven aka Maisie Trollette is the oldest drag queen still performing in the UK …..(but don’t call her that she much prefers drag artiste). He was a mere 84 years old when they first started filming (he is now 88) and lives and works in Brighton (often talked up as London by the sea). Totally delightful piece of queer history
For the full program of Queer Vision Film Festival JUNE 25th - July 11th 2022 https://bristolpride.co.uk/queervision/
For the FULL REVIEWS of these, and over 1800 other queer films https://www.queerguru.com
