LGBT Film Festival celebrates 25 years

Ours is an era when TV shows feature LGBT characters. It is an era when films centering on LGBT life — films like Brokeback Mountain and Milk — receive mainstream acclaim and awards. But ours is also an era when some of LGBT culture’s greatest achievements remain obscure. 25th Annual Pittsburgh International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

Oct. 15-24

SouthSide Works Cinema

$6 student tickets for regular admission (excludes opening and closing night)

Ours is an era when TV shows feature LGBT characters. It is an era when films centering on LGBT life — films like Brokeback Mountain and Milk — receive mainstream acclaim and awards. But ours is also an era when some of LGBT culture’s greatest achievements remain obscure.

Though it is not widely known, Pittsburgh has taken great steps to make at least one area of LGBT self-expression more visible: the cinema. It’s a rich category of contemporary filmmaking that the Pittsburgh Lesbian & Gay Film Society has promoted for years.

In 1985, local psychotherapist and movie buff Richard Cummings founded what is now the Pittsburgh International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, the world’s sixth-oldest LGBT film festival. This year, the event celebrates it’s 25th anniversary.

“It used to be that if you didn’t go to the festival and see these films, you’d never see them again. In 1985 you didn’t have “Will & Grace” and “Queer as Folk.” If you identified as LGBT and wanted to go to the movies and see yourself on screen, this was the place to do it,” said Mitchell Leib, festival president and programming director, when stressing how groundbreaking Cummings’ work was.

Now, a lot has changed. The New Queer Cinema of the ’90s evolved into something more far-reaching than a branch of independent film, and, with the help of home video and information technology, LGBT movies have drawn attention from heterosexual circles as well. According to James Richards, the festival’s marketing chairman, surveys indicate that 29 percent of last year’s audience identified as straight.

Of course, LGBT cinema would not be where it is today without the tireless promotion of people like Cummings. That’s why Pittsburgh’s LGBT festival is marking its 25th anniversary with gestures of thanks to all those who have contributed to the advancement of LGBT film, whether as organizers or artists.

The festival’s grand opening featured Casper Andreas, an Out Magazine-lauded Swedish director who introduced his new film, “Violet Tendencies,” about a straight woman who realizes her friendships with gay men might be compromising her chances of securing a mate.

The 25th festival will also present audiences with a selection of what the Pittsburgh Lesbian & Gay Film Society considers LGBT classics. “Longtime Companion” was the first wide-release movie to deal with AIDS. “Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss” was the professional debut of “Will & Grace” actor Sean Hayes and “a lightweight favorite,” according to Leib. Robert Aldrich’s landmark 1968 movie “The Killing of Sister George,” is a censorship-balking story of a lesbian actress’ career troubles, which, on its debut, earned an X rating for showing explicit scenes of lesbian romance.

A diverse assortment of contemporary LGBT films will accompany the classics — short, feature-length, domestic, foreign, low- and big-budget works. These movies will address controversial issues like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (“A Marine Story”), transexuality in the context of performance art (“Riot Acts”), coming out in high school (“Fit”), bringing LGBT culture to Hollywood (“Making the Boys”) and identifying lesbians in the not-so-recent past (“Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister”).

This year’s less controversial selections are no less compelling. Richards noted that “Elena Undone,” a film about a latently lesbian woman married to a preacher, features a 3-minute-and-24-second kiss — the longest in screen history. “Baby Jane?” is Billy Clift’s drag-themed remake of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s cult classic “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Leib called Clift’s film “a brilliant recreation of the original movie, with some great spoofs and two guys [drag artists Matthew Martin and J. Conrad Frank] who are amazing in their roles.”

“I still feel it’s really important that we have a festival like this, because watching something in your living room is not the same as watching something in a theater with a whole audience. The theater experience is more interactive, more well-rounded.” Leib said, insisting that the increased availability of LGBT material does not make festivals like Pittsburgh’s irrelevant.

While LGBT culture is less marginal, it is still rare to see authentic representations of LGBT life at the highest-grossing levels of our entertainment industry — hence the importance of festivals like Pittsburgh’s.

“You can go to the movies any day of the week and see a straight love story. But if you want to go with your peers and watch a film that’s about two women or two men, or a bisexual story, if you want to watch something that’s part of your community, you have to come to our festival,” said Leib.

Richards added that the Pittsburgh Lesbian & Gay Film Society has “made a concerted effort to reach out to all the Pittsburgh colleges. We hope we have films that will speak to them.”