THE BANGALORE QUEER FILM FESTIVAL — 7TH EDITION

MAGIC. STILL FROM THE FILM TO BE SCREENED AT BQFF

Bangalore Queer Film Festival (BQFF) is back!  The annual event of queer films — from the world over — photo exhibitions, art exhibitions, performances and panel discussions will be held from February 27 to March 1 in Bangalore. The three-day festival will be held at two venues — Day 1 at Max Mueller Bhavan in Indiranagar and days 2 & 3 at Alliance Francaise in Vasanth Nagar. Since it's inception, BQFF
has brought together films — from across the world — on themes related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other communities that fall outside the heterosexual norm. 

FESTIVAL 2015 LINE UP

The festival will feature over 55 films (short films, documentaries, animation and feature length films) from 22 countries including France, Belgium, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, Iran, Slovenia, Russia, India, Germany, Finland, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, USA, UK, Portugal, Spain, Myanmar, Fiji, Taiwan and China. 

The opening night feature is Cheryl Dunye’s lesbian romp Mommy is Coming. Then there's  Robin Campillo’s Eastern Boys, in which middle-aged Muller invites young ‘Eastern boy’ Marek to his house after spotting him at the train station in Paris, only to be pulled into another world; and Çağla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti’s Noor, a story of a heart-broken khusra who wants to now be a man again and find love again.

Closing night will showcases Joaquim Pinto’s E-Agora? Lembra-Me (What Now? Remind Me). The filmmaker, who has been living with HIV for more than twenty years, looks back on his life in cinema, his friends and lovers, and at art and nature, all while undergoing experimental drug treatment.

Other films include Violette, a period film that fictionalises the relationship that grew between Violette Leduc and Simone de Beauvoir in the years after the war in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. 

Not to miss the full-length Indian experimental film, premiering at the BQFF – Moloy Mukherjee’s Amar Bhavna Kintu Dur Holona (Messy Forever), an indescribable play of image, identity and narrative.

This year the line-up offers rare treats like XYX (Sasha Ihnatovich and Kato Drobysh), a short film; Naomi Fearn’s  music video Sock Puppet, Raju Rage’s moving narrative on being a trans migrant, Project/ed: ‘cut your coat according to your cloth’. Anurupa Prakash’s Will This Change?, a documentary on the lives of transgender and gay communities in Bangladesh; He Xiaopei and Yuan Yuan’s funny and endearing Our Marriages: When Lesbians Marry Gay Men; the charm and strength of transgender sex workers in Michael Liu’s documentary Magic

BQFF 2015 will also be showcasing queer performances and a photo exhibition. The performances will be held on Saturday and Sunday evening (28^th and 1^st) at the Alliance Française de Bangalore, and include piano performance of Khiyanur Vallikad and the floor-splitting number of the Pink Divas. 

This year BQFF also brings a curated exhibition of illustrations by Nilofer that celebrate the beauty and playfulness of a voluptuous womanly body, a selection of printed and video works by performance artist Tsohil Bhatia, a collaborative photo work by photographer Shilpa Raj and model Striana that explores the melancholia and schism of gender among other works.

 For more info blrqueerfilmfest.com