Film: 30 Love

To mark the 30th anniversary of BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival, we are delighted to announce the Top 30 LGBT Films of All Time in the first major critical survey of LGBT films.

Over 100 film experts including critics, writers and programmers such as Joanna Hogg, Mark Cousins, Peter Strickland, Richard Dyer, Nick James and Laura Mulvey, as well as past and present BFI Flare programmers, have voted the Top 30 LGBT Films of All Time. The poll’s results represent 84 years of cinema and 12 countries, from countries including Thailand, Japan, Sweden and Spain, as well as films that showed at BFI Flare such as Orlando (1992), Beautiful Thing (1996), Weekend (2011) and Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)....

BFI.

The top ten...

1 Carol (Todd Haynes, USA 2015).
2 Weekend (Andrew Haigh, UK 2011).
3 Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong/Japan/South Korea 1997).
4 Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, USA/ Canada 2005).
5 Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, USA 1990).
6 Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/France/Germany/Italy 2004).
7 My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, UK 1985).
8 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain/France 1999).
9 Un Chant d’Amour (Jean Genet, France 1950).
10 My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, USA 1991).

Sake, Brokeback Mountain and My Own Private Idaho are chick flicks, and Weekend is as dull as a wet weekend.

Still, at least that hour-and-a-half depoliticised rictus grin, Pride, didn't make their final cut.

Flare: Hot Pants

To celebrate the launch of this year's Flare: London LGBT Film Festival here's a picture of Russell Tovey in his pants.

Julie Bindel: Why I've Always Hated...

It was early evening and I had not yet eaten, so I took a glass of wine and a packet of Haribos into the private screening of I Am Divine: the story of Divine. I touched neither, because early on in the film I felt a little sick. I’m unsure as to whether that queasiness was a result of the mention of dog excrement (more anon) or the scale of misogyny contained within its 90 minutes...

Footage from Divine’s one and only appearance on Top of the Pops (he was banned as a result of complaints about obscenity) in 1984 singing ‘You Think You’re a Man’ reminded me why I always hated drag. Feminists at the time of the TOTP atrocity labelled Divine ‘woman hating’.

So by the time, towards the end of the film, we were treated to footage of Divine in Pink Flamingos eating dog excrement, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to want dinner that evening. The fact that it was alluded to at the beginning of the film (it being the stuff of cinematic legend) made the rest of the film pretty unpalatable.

Julie Bindel - who else! - writes for Britain's best-selling right-wing magazine, The Spectator.

A bizarre lesbore who hates gay men and trans women - so tries to justify it with endless ridiculous bilious articles about how they hate women.

I guess she must practice being dull and sanctimonious.

Anyway, hope that slag-off by the dreadful Bindel's left you gagging to see the film - here's the all-singing all dancing website.

And here's a video interview with the director Jeffrey Schwarz at Flare: The BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival..