Queer Lisboa - International Queer Film Festival, Lisboa, Portugal
19 Sep 2014 - 27 Sep 2014
Some of the highlights of Queer Lisboa 18 – International Queer Film Festival are a retrospective of John Waters’ first films; a program that gathers for the first time the complete filmography of British filmmaker Ron Peck; a newly-discovered film by Derek Jarman screened for the first time outside the UK and which serves as a pretext to a closer look to his work and the way it shaped the queer iconography in the 80’s and 90’s; a program dedicated to African Queer Cinema; along with an ambitious selection of the most relevant queer films of 2013 and 2014.
The Way He Looks (Brazil), by Daniel Pinheiro and Reaching for the Moon (Brazil), by Bruno Barreto, are the opening and closing films of the festival, that this year counts with a total record of 135 films from 38 different countries, being so far the greatest edition of Queer Lisboa.
For the first time, Portugal rises to second position of countries with more programmed films, with a total of 18 titles: the short films by Carlos Conceição, David Bonneville, António da Silva, Dário Pacheco and José Gonçalves, the collective Silly Season, Daniel Pinheiro, Ana Sofia Sousa, Daniela Leitão, Francisco Gomes, Tomás Quitério, Marcelo Pereira, Sérgio Galvão Roxo, and the webseries by André Murraças.
Again, the Festival programs its Feature, Documentary, Shorts and In My Shorts competitions, so as the non-competitive Panorama, Queer Art, Hard Nights, and Queer Pop.
“18 Years of Filth” is the motto for this year’s edition, an expression inspired in the John Waters retrospective, which together with the Queer Focus on Africa section, takes place entirely at the Cinemateca Portuguesa. On the 3rd and 4th of October, Queer Lisboa visits the Casa das Artes, in Porto, to screen three of the John Waters films and present the book “Queer Film and Culture”. Before, the book will be launched in Lisbon, at Museu do Chiado, on the 13th of September, exactly 18 years after the first day of Queer Lisboa.
The full Queer Lisboa 18 program can be consulted here, and the screening timetable here.
Queer Lisboa is the sole Portuguese Film Festival dedicated exclusively to screening gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and transsexual themed films, a genre known as Queer Cinema. The Festival also invites a number of personalities working in Queer Cinema to attend the event, therefore promoting theoretical knowledge on queer themes and concepts. The film programme is organized in Competition Sections for Best Feature Film, Best Documentary, and Best Short Film; so as in non-competition sections, special screenings and film programmes dedicated to a filmmaker, theme, or country, retrospectives on the representation of homosexuality in Film History, sections dedicated to Queer Cinema subgenres, and parallel pedagogical activities.
The Festival also works on the preservation, promotion, and distribution of Portuguese Cinema, of which we regularly present retrospectives and special programmes in International Film Festivals.
