The 2024 Melbourne Queer Film Festival will screen 42 feature films, 18 Australian premieres, 18 Melbourne premieres, 19 documentaries, 11 short film packages and 90 short films. Plus, there’ll be a special keynote by international guest, Darryl W. Bullock, author of ‘David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years Of LGBT Music’.
“We're taking over Melbourne with a dazzling lineup of films for the 2024 MQFF programme. We've gathered the most extraordinary new and historical LGBTQIA+ stories from around the globe that shape, form, pay homage to, and celebrate queer music culture,” MQFF CEO David Martin Harris says. “Plus, by popular demand, we’re delighted to bring back the MQFF Festival Lounge at ACMI for the entire season. This will be a vibrant space for LGBTQIA+ community connection, featuring fascinating public programmes, DJs, karaoke and delicious food in a mirror ball-lit setting. In other words, pure queer-joy!”
Programme highlights in 2024 include. . .
The Australian premiere of ‘The Life Of Sean DeLear’, documenting multidisciplinary queer Black artist Sean, sketched in celebratory but commendably clear-eyed style by gender-fluid filmmaker Markus Zizenbacher.
‘Scarecrow In A Garden Of Cucumbers’, in its Australian premiere. It was scarcely seen since premiering 50 years prior, but has been restored by the Academy Film Archive. In one of the first lead roles granted to a trans performer, Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn puts in a riotous turn as small-town girl Eve Harrington. This film now rates as one of the greatest queer film discoveries in years.
The Australian premiere of ‘Linda Perry: Let It Die Here’, a gripping documentary granting access to the formidable Linda Perry, illuminating the many challenges she faced in her life and career, notwithstanding the triumphs.
Dynamic French filmmaking dup Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel return to dark, dystopian themes with ‘Eat The Night’, the Australian premiere. Pablo, a drug dealer, and his younger sister Apolline, escape their tenuous lives, throwing themselves into a fantastical virtual reality computer game.
In the Australian premiere of ‘Life Is Not A Competition, But I’m Winning’, viewers are compelled to pay attention to bodies in motion, on the fraught history of gender in athletics. As Julia Fuhr Mann’s queer athletes move from stadiums like the ‘original’ at Athens to the 1936 Berlin Olympic Stadium, the hidden histories of ‘divergent and ambiguous bodies’ are revealed.
‘Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story’ celebrates its Melbourne premiere and kicks off Opening Night with a bang. It’s the story of a rising star in 1950s Nashville, who became a sensation in ’60s Toronto, with a huge hit ‘Any Other Way’. She disappeared mysteriously from public view for nigh-on 40 years, and we hear from her in never-before-heard phone conversations.
“MQFF celebrates diverse voices, perspectives, and stories from Australia and around the world. VicScreen is proud to be a longstanding partner of the festival, which celebrates Melbourne’s LGBTQIA+ communities through cinema,” VicScreen CEO Caroline Pitcher says.
Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2024 is on from 14-24 November.
