Queerguru's pick of MUST SEE FILMS at Rainbow Film Fest in Shropshire, UK

Part of Queerguru’s mission is to seek out and support the best indie queer films and help them reach the audiences that they truly deserve. It’s with this in mind we try and cover not just the major metropolitan LGBTQ Film Fests around the Globe, but some of the smaller ones too.

One of our favorites is The Rainbow Film Festival in Shropshire, a rural part of the UK that we doubt many of Queerguru’s will have visited. Their long-established annual event brings some of the best new queer films into towns where the local LGBTQ community would otherwise miss out. After all, why should those big city folks have all the queer fun!

Kudos to Rainbow’s wee team of volunteers who organize the Festival which plays 15th- 17th October at Old Market Hall, Shrewsbury and 22nd – 24th at Kinokulture, Oswestry. Queerguru had access to their Program so we could draw up our list of MUST SEE FILMS at the FEST

AHEAD OF THE CURVE : This is the story of a very determined 23-year-old gambler who always won. First on the horses which filled her pockets with money, and then on the magazine she started with the proceeds. This was the birth of Deneuve which later morphed into Curve became the biggest selling lesbian magazine in the world, and the very first one to put the word ‘lesbian’ on the front. Now 30 years later this fascinating documentary on the powerhouse queer activist and the magazine’s founder Frances ‘Franco’ Stevens comes to the screen as a compelling part of LGBTQ history to date.

AND THEN WE DANCED: Swedish/Georgian filmmaker Levan Akin’s third film a heartbreaking coming-out-story is probably the first-ever LGBT drama ever made in ultra-conservative Georgia. It quite rightly won over international audiences at the Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for a Queer Palm.

This is the story of Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani) a student at the National Georgian Academy of Dance. He may be one of the star dancers in his class but that is still not good enough for his dour instructor with an enormous chip on his shoulder who accuses Merab of being too passionate.. He screams “There is no sex in Georgian dance!

PLUS Queerguru had the pleasure of interviewing filmmaker Levan Akin to talk about AND THEN WE DANCED. Check HERE

CAROL : queer filmmaker To dd Haynes returns to the 1950s with British/American playwright Phyllis Nagy’s adaption of Patricia Highsmith’s controversial novel “The Price of Salt” that had been originally published in 1952 under a nom-de-plume because of its ‘scandalous’ lesbian content.

Highsmith based the story on her own life and had in fact been working as a Sales Clerk in the Toy Department of a large New York Store exactly like Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara). In the movie Therese, a rather quiet ‘loner’, is feeling less than festive even though she has been made to wear her Santa Claus hat as part of the Christmas spirit. She is distracted one day by the sight of a beautiful elegant socialite Carol Aird(Cate Blanchett) who is looking for a Christmas gift for her young daughter. This stunning lesbian romance picked up 5 Oscar Nominations in 2015 …. and we think was robbed by not winning

JUMP DARLING : When you reach the end of the road you are on, what can you do? There are two answers, you stop or change direction. In CLORIS LEACHMAN’s final film made prior to her death, both these alternates are explored, and the poignancy is inescapable. plays Grams, the aging grandmother grown tired, frail, and distanced from the passions that engulfed her earlier years. Dreams of joining the ice capades are barely a memory. Facing a slow exit from her life, or the inertia of a retirement home, she grapples with what little sovereignty she has left. It is an exquisite swan song for one helluva wonderfully actress and person

NO ORDINARY MAN: This is the story of musician Billy Tipton who has iconic status in the trans community. Tipton’s story starts with his death in 1989 when after decades of living as a closeted trans man, his ‘secret’ was discovered and his very successful life just became a tawdry tabloid story. Trans filmmaker Chase Joynt and his co-director Aisling Chin-Yee have chosen to tell Tipton’s story as a very imaginative documentary that focuses on not just it’s historical importance but also on its relevance to today’s transgender community.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE: Céline Sciamma who has already given us Water Lillies, Tomboy, Girlhood and Being 17. confirms her position as one of the leading queer filmmakers with this her latest, and finest film to date. Portrait of A Lady on Fire is a historical drama set in the 19th Century that tells of a forbidden affair between the daughter of a French Countess and a painter. This quiet romance that quietly brims with an unexpressed desire that won the prestigious Queer Palm at Cannes, will undoubtedly win the hearts of lesbians everywhere.

SOCRATES: Life is tough enough for Socrates (CHRISTIAN MALHEIROS) and his single-parent mother as they struggled to eek out a living in their small shabby apartment in Baixada Santista one of the rougher ghettos of São Paulo. Then she suddenly dies and the 15-year-old is left to fend for himself This wonderfully touching drama is the story of his struggle for life and love

SWEETHEART: Throw aside any expectations that Marly Morrison’s film will be an achingly Gen Z teen zeitgeist movie and embrace the fact that it belongs to the classic British genre of sexually awkward teen meets nightmare seaside family holiday. Go with it because that is what makes its humiliating inevitability so sweet.

For the full program and how to book tickets
check https://www.rainbowfilmfestival.org.uk/

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Queerguru’s pick of MUST SEE FILMS at Rainbow Film Fest in Shropshire, UK