Expect transgressive films, critical re-examinings of mainstream structures, an enthusiastic audience and intimate dialogues with filmmakers. The introductions to films and director Q&As provide a more intimate layer to the film going experience – for a taste, check out Desiree Akhavan and Carol Morley’s Q&As from this year on the BFI Player.Ĭlub des Femmes is a more off-the-map queer, feminist collective that curates film screenings and events. Flare offers an extensive programme – one that I think values emerging filmmakers as highly as regular festival luminaries. The BFI Flare, “Britain’s longest running and most popular LGBT film festival”, celebrated its 28th edition this year. Esteemed institutions such as the ICA and Tate Modern curate and programme queer content, and outside of this many independent festivals, art collectives, smaller galleries and individuals are taking it upon themselves to create space for queer political voices. London’s queer arts scene and cultural spectrum has grown rapidly in recent years, with newly-formed events and spaces celebrating the panoply of sexuality, gender diversity and LGBT people of colour. The BFI on London’s South Bank hosts an annual LGBT film festival, Flare Drag and cabaretīy drag performer Oozing Gloop, co-editor of Serious Fun and founder of the Yeast London Cabaret Yet, as new ventures and activities for LGBT communities pop up each month, often in what are traditionally heteronormative venues, it is becoming clear that there’s more to be enjoyed in gay London than ever before. Beloved LGBT venues such as The Joiners Arms in Shoreditch and the Black Cap in Camden have closed due to soaring rents (both were in prime real estate locations) and stringent changes in local council policies. Also in Hackney, the National Trust property Sutton House is the venue for an immersive, LGBT-friendly cinema event Amy Grimehouse, and just down the road, dingy club Vogue Fabrics hosts both straight and gay club nights throughout the week.Īdmittedly, London’s gay bars have been facing difficult times of late. In the basement of one of Hackney’s trendiest hotels ( Ace Hotel, Shoreditch) is the club night Hard Cock Life – a mostly-male hip-hop night. Hackney, for example, is taking on increasing importance as a new kind of gaybourhood: where LGBT establishments aren’t ghettoised but dispersed among other businesses.
London has seen gay clubbing events spread out from the centre over the last decade. Born to perform … Amy Grimehouse night at Sutton House.