Inside the Anniversary of LA’s LGBTQ Film Festival – The Hollywood Reporter

In 1982 – then LAs LGBTQ film festival Outfest was born, the same year that Make love, Personal record and Victor / Victoria were released — queer on-screen content was usually scarce and what was there was often difficult to access.

Cut to the 40th anniversary this year of Outfestand gay content is easy to find on television, especially on streamers, while on the movie front, Universal will release the first studio film this fall with an all-LGBTQ main cast, brothers.

But even with a greatly increased amount of queer content accessible from the couch and on the multiplex — “We have a lot of choice in entertainment. It’s not just independent film [anymore]” said Damien S. Navarro, Executive Director of Outfest — LA’s queer film festival continues to occupy a vibrant place in the life of Los Angeles and the LGBTQ community, finding new ways to grow and engage with the entertainment industry.

Outfest kicked off its 40th anniversary celebration last night, July 14, with the Billy Porter’s Trans Coming-of-Age Story Premiere Everything is possible. Other highlights of the party – which runs through July 24 and will spotlight more than 200 titles and 42 world premieres – include a free screening of two episodes of the new Amazon Prime series. Your own competition (July 19); the premiere of the documentary All Man: The International Male Story (16th of July); a 20-year display of far from heaven with Julianne Moore present (July 17) and the closing film she shea Blumhouse horror photo set in a conversion therapy camp.

In addition to all the personal screenings, the 11-day festival (presented by Warner Bros. Discovery and IMDB) also includes his Trans, non-binary and intersex top on July 23 with writer/activist Raquel Willis; an interview with horror icon Clive Barker (who will receive Outfest’s inaugural Maverick Award) on July 17; and an evening of comedy at the Ford Theater with the Margaret Cho and River Butcher comics. “I like to say, you know, how do you fight when you’ve been bullied by comedy, but by comedy them right back,” says Navarro, no doubt referring to last year’s anti-trans comedy specials by Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle.

In addition to hosting the Summer Film Festival, Outfest also hosts the Outfest QTBIPOC Fusion Film Festival every spring with stories about people of color; manages the free streaming platform OutMuseum; runs a screenwriting lab; and preserves movies through the Legacy Project program. (The first movie to be saved by Outfest was the 1986 drama) Goodbye looks starring Steve Buscemi.)

In 1982 Outfest began under a different name, the Gay and Lesbian Media Conference, launched by four graduate students at UCLA. Over the years, its leaders and programmers have included famed photographer Catherine Opie (the first video programmer), Kim Yutani (now program director at Sundance), and Kirsten Schaffer (now the CEO of Women in Film). In 1987 the party opened with: bad night by Gus Van Sant, who has said, “The whole foundation of my career comes from this festival.” Over the four decades, all honorable mentions have taken place, from Tom Hanks and Rita Moreno to Lee Daniels, Joey Soloway and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez. In 2018, two-thirds of the total content shown at Outfest was created by filmmakers who were trans, people of color or women.

Navarro — who joined as Executive Director in 2019 and the first person of color at the helm of the organization — went on to speak to THR about the festival’s pandemic, the role of a queer film festival in 2022, and the group’s ties to entertainment companies, including Netflix.

So what was it like doing the festival during the first two years of the pandemic?

[During the pandemic], we did drive-ins. We were at Calamigos Ranch? [in Malibu] in the mud in the beautiful forest. To this day, people still say it was one of their favorite experiences. Last year opening night at Hollywood was Forever and we were back about 50 percent; we did about 50 percent virtual.

How did it go to put together this 40th anniversary festival?

As far as programming goes, it’s all the bells and whistles you’d hope for in a great anniversary year. We’re back to all our nostalgic favorites like The Ford and the Ace Hotel and of course the DGA – which I will say, when I first got on board I didn’t quite realize the magic that [the DGA] applies to so many storytellers and filmmakers to have their work featured there.

What are your thoughts as you look back on the festival’s first 40 years?

You actually had four PhD students who wanted to set up a conference and cover all the topics in the time that the queer community was dealing with as it got more and more involved in entertainment. The good thing is that it grew into Outfest and all its programming and all its tentacles. The bad news is we still have them [same] conversations. And that was hard to bear, like when we look at things like tilt Roe v. Wade and the anti-trans and “Don’t Say Gay” laws. You say, “How the hell has it been 40 years and our community, for all the great things we’ve done, is still here, talking about inclusivity, talking about access, talking about our rights being taken away?”

Why does Outfest also have a streaming platform, OutMuseum?

It’s because of stories like this widow, well in her 80s in the rural south, who filled out Outfest’s financial hardship form to get free tickets online. It is anonymous, but we ask for a little explanation so we can track it for grant purposes. And he said, “You know, I married a woman. I lost my wife. I’ve been locked up all my life. I never thought I’d ever get access to something like this festival online.”

How do you see the role of an LGBTQ film festival in 2022?

We talk about our role now is to serve three different audiences. First is the crowd that craves a different kind of community experience than a bar or a nightclub. For filmmakers, they’re under more pressure than ever before – so it’s [about] increasing programming. And then finally for the streamers and the studios, it’s about holding them accountable and meeting their ERGs [Employee Resource Groups] and their corporate social responsibility groups, saying, “You can’t just put out a press release that you’re going to support this.” We’re happy to take that resource and we’ll make sure we’re responsible for making sure it ends up in the right hands.

Can you further explain this last point and how Outfest is dealing with Hollywood?

Netflix is ​​a good example. Netflix has been in the news. There are clearly things about their leadership that I think we would all say could do a lot better. But they’ve also screened movies and distributed movies like Disclosure: Trans Lives On Screen, supported by many board members and members of our community. And they also announced this incredibly large artists’ fund in which they have publicly said that we are going to channel millions of dollars that it was back into the community to solve some of these inclusive crises, representation crises. So we see this all the time in companies. You know, what happens here may not be what is reflected here. We went to Netflix, from whom we hadn’t had support, and instructed them to endorse the entire screenwriting lab, a program that has been around for many, many years. It’s great, but one of the challenges is you get selected to be in the screenwriting lab, you get a mentor, you get to show one act from your movies in a creative way. But other than that, when we listened to what kind of support screenwriters really needed, the money was to live in LA, to do those writing room interviews, to stay long enough. They couldn’t afford it. So from last year Netflix undertook all submission fees for the whole thing, and after that we also gave away $10,000 for two of the fellows. This year, we’re giving each colleague $5,000. And the stories we heard back from those two [2021] individuals was that they booked their first job. They stayed here. So that’s just one example.