Outfest at 40: Inside the Anniversary of the LA LGBTQ Film Festival

1982 – The same year, the Los Angeles LGBTQ film festival, Outfest, was born. hold on to love, best personal brand s Winner/Win Released: Queer content on screen was generally sparse and often hard to find.

Go to the 40th anniversary of Outfest and gay content is easy to find on TV, especially on streamers, and on the movie front, Universal is releasing its first studio movie with an all-LGBTQ main cast this fall. brothers.

But even with the increasing amount of queer content available on the couch and in the multiplex, “we have plenty of entertainment options. It’s not just an independent film. [anymore]- says Outfest CEO Damien S. Navarro – The Los Angeles Queer Film Festival continues to be an active presence in Los Angeles and its LGBTQ community, finding new ways to grow and engage with the entertainment industry.

Outfest kicked off its 40th anniversary last night, July 14th, with the premiere of Billy Porter’s Trans-Aging Story. everything is possible. Other highlights of the festival, which runs until July 24 and focuses on more than 200 titles and 42 world premieres, include two free episodes of the new Amazon Prime series. a league of its own (July, 19); documentary premiere All the Men: An International History of Men (July 16th); 20 years show far in the sky with Julianne Moore (July 17) and close the movie of the night they theyBlumhouse horror film set in a conversion therapy camp.

In addition to all the in-person screenings, the 11-day festival (hosted by Warner Bros. Discovery and IMDB) also includes a trans, non-binary and intersex meetup on July 23 with writer/activist Raquel Willis; a conversation with horror icon Clive Barker (who receives Outfest’s inaugural Maverick Award) on July 17; and a comedy night at the Ford Theater with comedians Margaret Cho and River Butcher. “I mean, you know how you fight when comedy scares you, but comedy immediately,” says Navarro, no doubt referring to last year’s Ricky Gervais anti-trans comedy specials. and Dave Chapelle.

In addition to hosting the Summer Film Festival, Outfest also hosts Outfest’s QTBIPOC Fusion Film Festival each spring, featuring stories about people of color; operates the free streaming platform OutMuseum; manages the screenwriters’ lab; and preserves films through the Legacy Project program. (The first film held by Outfest was the 1986 drama a farewell look With Steve Buscemi.)

In 1982, Outfest started under a different name, a gay and lesbian media conference started by four UCLA graduate students. Over the years, its leaders and programmers have included renowned photographer Kathryn Opie (the first video programmer), Kim Yutan (now director of programming at Sundance), and Kirsten Shafer (now executive director of Women in Film). The festival opened in 1987. bad night For Gus Van Sant, who said: “The whole foundation of my career comes from this festival”. Over its four decades, everyone has been honored, from Tom Hanks and Rita Moreno to Lee Daniels, Joey Soloway and Michaela J. Rodriguez. In 2018, two-thirds of all content shown on Outfest was from trans, black or female filmmakers.

Navarro, who joined in 2019 as CEO and the first black person to lead the organization, spoke next. THR On the festival pandemic, the role of queer film festivals in 2022, and the group’s ties to entertainment companies including Netflix.

What was it like doing the festival during the first two years of the pandemic?

[During the pandemic], we were doing drive-ins. We were at Rancho Calamigos [in Malibu] On land in a beautiful forest. In fact, to this day, people say it was one of his favorite experiences. Last year it was opening night on Hollywood Forever and we were about 50% back; We did about 50 percent virtual.

How did this 40-year festival come about?

In terms of programming, it has all the bells and whistles you’d expect in a major anniversary year. We go back to all of our nostalgic favorites like The Ford and Ace Hotel and of course DGA, which, I’ll admit, when I got on board, I didn’t really like the magic. [the DGA] Many storytellers and filmmakers can see their work featured there.

Looking back over the first 40 years of the festival, what do you think?

You basically had four PhD students who wanted to create a conference and cover all the issues that the queer community was facing because it was more for entertainment. The good thing is that it became Outfest and all its programming and all its tentacles. The bad news is that we still have them. [same] conversations. And it was hard to digest, like when we see things like blows Roe vs Wade and the trans-trans bills and “don’t say gay”. You’re like, “How the hell has 40 years gone by and our community, for all the great things we’ve done, is still here, talking about inclusion, talking about access, talking about our rights being taken away?” “

Why does Outfest also run a streaming platform, OutMuseum?

It’s because of stories like this one of an 80-year-old widowed man in the rural south who filled out the Outfest financial hardship form to get free tickets online. It’s anonymous, but we’re just asking for a short summary so we can track it for grant purposes. And he said, “You know, I married a woman. I lost my wife. I’ve been locked up my whole life. I never knew I would have access to this festival online.

How do you see the role of the LGBTQ film festival in 2022?

We’re talking now that our role is to serve three different audiences. First, it’s an audience that wants a different kind of public experience than a bar or nightclub. For filmmakers, they are under more pressure than ever before, with good reason. [about] Increase the schedule. Ultimately, for streamers and studios, it’s about holding them accountable and meeting with their ERGs. [Employee Resource Groups] And your corporate social responsibility groups and saying, “You can’t just put out a press release saying you’re going to support this more.” We are thrilled to receive this feature and we assure you that we are responsible for ensuring it is in the right hands.

Can you talk about that last point and how Outfest interacts with Hollywood?

Netflix is ​​a great example. Netflix has been making headlines. Obviously, there are things about their leadership that I think we would all say they could do a lot better. But they also screened films and distributed films like Disclosure: Trance lives on screen, that we have a lot of board members and members of our community that are behind this. And they also announced this incredibly large fund for artists, where they said publicly, let’s invest millions of dollars in anything at that moment, in the community to help resolve some of these crises of inclusion, crises of representation. So we see this all the time with corporations. You know, what happens here may not be what is reflected here. We went to Netflix, which we didn’t have any backing, and we built them to fund the whole script lab, which is a show that’s been around for many, many years. It’s great, but one of the challenges is that you get selected for the script lab, you have a mentor, you can show an act of your movies into something creative. But beyond that, when we heard what kind of support the writers needed, it was effective to live in Los Angeles, to have newsrooms for these interviews, and to stick around long enough. They couldn’t pay. So as of last year, Netflix took over all the fees for the whole thing, and then we split $10,000 between two interns. This year we are giving each member $5,000. And the stories we hear from these two [2021] Individuals were the ones who booked their first jobs. They stayed here. So this is just an example.