Gemma Creagh chats to Roisín Geraghty, programmer for Gaze LGBT Film Festival about this year's festival, which runs 3rd - 7th August 2017.
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A Message from Roisín: Welcome to the GAZE 2017
It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to the cream of the crop of LGBT cinema.
The GAZE Silver Anniversary programme weaves together our LGBT past, present and future. We have carefully knitted these threads in our programme choices, through our film content, events and discussions, and through our Queering in the Years exhibition, which explores representation of LGBT identity in the Irish media.
Films like Against the Law recall a painful past in which queer culture lived clandestinely, while our powerful opening film, The 34th – The Story of Marriage Equality in Ireland, recounts a turbulent past but focuses on the equality that years of struggle have brought to Ireland.
However, the current political and social climate of the world leaves us feeling anything but joyful about what the future holds. Instead of stagnating in fear and anger, we can use our ingrained LGBT activist power to harness change. We explore avenues of combining film and activism in our screening and panel discussion, Flare Tactics. The queer community know better than anyone that mobilizing a movement can change the world, and right now, more than ever, we need to keep that in our minds.
The centrepiece of the 2017 GAZE programme is our British LGBT Film Focus, kindly supported by the British Council. It is very appropriate for us to include this focus for our 25th anniversary. In the wake of Brexit, we want to strengthen our cultural ties and look forward to how we can continue to develop artistic relations with the United Kingdom.
Not only that, but it is very significant that while we at GAZE celebrate our 25th anniversary, the UK is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality. Our British series includes filmic work such as Young Soul Rebels and Queerama, which document British queer history, while we are also incredibly proud to present films like our closing film, God’s Own Country, a reflection on contemporary LGBT life in the UK.
For me, there is no artistic medium more powerful than film. An amazingly accessible creative medium, the power cinema has to bring people together in a collective experience always astounds me. As is the mantra of GAZE Film Festival, the power of our LGBT stories is a power that cannot be underestimated. It has the power to impose reflection, to change attitudes, to instill emotion, and, most importantly, to provoke change.
It brings me such joy to bring together films from all over the world, from all genres, and from so many different voices to the GAZE audience. Thank you for allowing me to do so. It is an incredible privilege, one which I do not take for granted.
Read the programme here.
