Look­ing back to move for­ward at BFI Flare 2022

The BFI Flare LGBTQIA+ Film Fes­ti­val is back in-per­son for the first time since the pan­dem­ic halt­ed cin­emago­ing. In its 36^th iter­a­tion, the fes­ti­val is keen to re-estab­lish a queer togeth­er­ness through a pro­gramme of LGBTQIA+ high-pro­file and indie-bud­get titles that arrive after months of iso­la­tion. Bridg­ing the con­text of cur­rent view­er­ship with the arrival of new queer cin­e­ma releas­es, the theme of reflec­tion is omnipresent through this year’s Flare programme.

The reflex­ive nature of this year’s doc­u­men­taries, biopics and nar­ra­tive fea­tures is mul­ti­fac­eted. Although they coa­lesce with a yearn­ing to pause and recon­sid­er our­selves, those around us and the com­mu­ni­ties we are a part of, the result of both recal­i­bra­tion and dis­cov­ery is not homoge­nous. While some of these films were made pre-Covid, they take on new, per­ti­nent mean­ing viewed in the cur­rent post-pan­dem­ic climate.

In iso­la­tion, the reflex­ive cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage that unites these fes­ti­val titles is a direct response to the shared expe­ri­ence of pan­dem­ic-forced sep­a­ra­tion and con­tem­pla­tion as the future was uncer­tain. ​“A recur­ring theme in BFI Flare 2022 is the redis­cov­ery of for­got­ten queer his­to­ries, and recog­ni­tion of the LGBTQIA+ trail­blaz­ers whose pio­neer­ing work has so often gone over­looked,” Michael Blyth, BFI Flare’s Senior Pro­gram­mer said about this year’s pro­gramme. ​“In reflect­ing on the past, we can bet­ter under­stand the present, appre­ci­at­ing how far we have come, whilst acknowl­edg­ing how much is still left to do.”

Sit­u­at­ed with the more promi­nent fes­ti­val titles, like Alone Togeth­er and Girl Pic­ture, is Ter­rence Davies’ exquis­ite biopic Bene­dic­tion, a poet­ic por­trait of famed British poet Siegfried Sas­soon nav­i­gat­ing love that dare not speak its name. As the film moves into its final act of sor­row­ful anguish, an old­er Sas­soon (Peter Capal­di) lays down his pen to artic­u­late a sen­ti­ment of lost acknowl­edge­ment. ​“I would have liked to have been recog­nised for my work, though. For some sig­nif­i­cant way for my work,” he tells his son in a som­bre moment of delib­er­a­tion. While the wartime poet­ry of Sas­soon is a sta­ple in British class­rooms, knowl­edge of his sex­u­al­i­ty (an impor­tant con­text) is not. It is this notion of for­got­ten queer­ness that is fun­da­men­tal to this year’s programme.

Bene­dic­tion is one of BFI Flare’s por­traits of LGBTQIA+ his­tor­i­cal fig­ures that recon­tex­tu­alise the place queer indi­vid­u­als hold in cul­tur­al his­to­ry. Esther New­ton Made Me Gay, a doc­u­men­tary on the life and times study of the pio­neer­ing Amer­i­can cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gist known for her ethnog­ra­phy work on fem­i­nist and LGBTQIA+ com­mu­ni­ties, and Fram­ing Agnes, a cast of trans actors use a talk show for­mat to explore the lega­cy of a young trans woman’s expe­ri­ence in the 1950s UCLA gen­der clin­ic, both work to reassem­ble the past to con­tex­tu­alise the present. In cen­tring the erased his­to­ries of LGBTQIA+ sto­ries, these doc­u­men­taries and archive mate­r­i­al prove enrich­ing for­mats for queer sto­ry­tellers to explore his­to­ries of their own.

Esther New­ton Made Me Gay and Fram­ing Agnes reach into the past to illu­mi­nate for­got­ten sto­ries and res­onate on a per­son­al lev­el. This preser­va­tion of the LGBTQIA+ com­mu­ni­ty are not only through indi­vid­ual fig­ures, impor­tant places (Jacquie Lawrence’s Gate­way Grind) and move­ments (Kevin Hegge’s TRAMPS!) are also the sub­jects of doc­u­men­tary work that recog­nis­es lit­tle-known queer history.

Ultra­vi­o­lette and the Blood-Spit­ters Gang sees a sim­i­lar act of unearthing a dis­in­te­grat­ing archive. Robin Hunzinger’s doc­u­men­tary uncov­ers a long-hid­den fam­i­ly secret: his grandmother’s les­bian lover, Mar­celle. Over black and white grainy footage and pho­tographs, the con­tents of the lovers’ let­ters are shared and a clan­des­tine rela­tion­ship is pieced togeth­er as Hun­zinger makes sense of his fam­i­ly his­to­ry. It is inescapable that this film arrives at a time when where view­ers have expe­ri­enced months absent of events result­ing in flick­ing through old pho­to albums and dig­ging through box­es of trea­sured fam­i­ly pos­ses­sions to pass time, so these rumi­na­tions of self feel par­tic­u­lar­ly timely.

No film cap­tures this focused self-inquiry more than It Runs in the Fam­i­ly. The gen­e­sis of Vic­to­ria Linares’ film revolves around the dis­cov­ery she is relat­ed to polit­i­cal pio­neer film­mak­er Oscar Tor­res.​“My child­hood mem­o­ries are dis­ap­pear­ing. Pho­tos. Videos. Stuffed toys,” Linares’ begins. Then comes the line that shat­ters this calm­ness: ​“My fam­i­ly, or the one I knew up until now, erased my cousin Oscar.” The deep­er she delves into the life of the queer film­mak­er the more self-reflec­tive Linares becomes. In re-eval­u­at­ing the past of her fam­i­ly she begins to ques­tion her own place in the unit. Inward-look­ing with meta­tex­tu­al resolve, It Runs in the Fam­i­ly is an account of iden­ti­ty med­i­ta­tion that is resound­ing­ly pro­found, even for its per­son­al specificity.

These pon­der­ings of self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion are also present in nar­ra­tive fea­tures that revis­it child­hood (Bret­ten Hannam’s Wild­hood) and mourn the mul­ti­fac­eted iden­ti­ties that went unknown (Elene Naveriani’s Wet Sand). The lat­ter, in par­tic­u­lar, draws on the emo­tion­al weight of reflect­ing in the time-paus­ing state of mourn­ing. Wet Sand ren­ders a cathar­sis through loss when Moe (Bebe Sesi­tashvili) returns to her native Geor­gian vil­lage to arrange her grandfather’s funer­al to find he had a lover of twen­ty-two years, unbe­knownst to her. A heart­string-tug­ging tale of loss and remem­brance told with mes­meris­ing­ly poet­ic visu­als, this film is led by per­for­mances that are restrict­ed with the taut­ness of bot­tled up emo­tion. In learn­ing more about a man she did not ful­ly know, Moe keeps her grand­fa­ther alive in memory.

Like sun­light that shines through a prism and refracts into a rain­bow of colours, this col­lec­tion of queer sto­ry­tellers, nar­ra­tives and his­to­ries cul­mi­nate in a cin­e­mat­ic trend of reflec­tion that is far from homoge­nous, but unit­ed in the endeav­ours of dwelling on the past to make sense of the present. Look­ing back doesn’t always feel like the most pro­duc­tive step to take, yet this year’s Flare pro­gramme demon­strates the neces­si­ty of reflec­tion for pro­gres­sion. Time (and the cin­e­mat­ic release sched­ule) will tell if this pan­dem­ic-forged con­sid­er­a­tion of recount­ing his­to­ry in such a nat­ur­al man­ner will con­tin­ue to be a preva­lent theme for LGBTQIA+ film­mak­ers and sto­ries emerg­ing from isolation.