Boasting a jam-packed program celebrating queer music culture, through the provocation, Formative Sound and Vision, the 34th annual Melbourne Queer Film Festival runs from 14 – 24 November 2024.
The 2024 program will screen 42 feature films, 18 Australian premieres, 18 Melbourne premieres, 19 documentaries, 11 short film packages and 90 short films, plus a special a keynote by international guest of MQFF, Darryl W. Bullock, author of David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music.
Expect an unforgettable program that celebrates the way sound and vision have been a source of inspiration and transformation for LGBTQIA+ communities, and beyond.
“We’re taking over Melbourne with a dazzling line-up of films for the 2024 MQFF Program. We’ve gathered the most extraordinary new and historical LGBTQIA+ stories from around the globe that shape, form, pay homage to, and celebrate queer music culture,” said MQFF CEO, David Martin Harris.
“Plus, by popular demand, we’re delighted to bring back the MQFF Festival Lounge at ACMI for the entire season. This will be a vibrant space for LGBTQIA+ community connection, featuring fascinating public programs, DJs, karaoke and delicious food in a mirror ball-lit setting. In other words, pure queer-joy!”
2024 Melbourne Queer Film Festival Program highlights include:
The Life of Sean DeLear (2024, Austria)
Formerly fronting LA post-punk band Glue, multidisciplinary queer Black artist Sean DeLear was a blazingly colourful and exuberantly transgressive personality who dazzled the underground musical and artistic scenes in the late 90s and 2000s. The Life of Sean DeLear is a vibrantly multi-faceted, buoyantly propulsive documentary portrayal, sketched in celebratory but commendably clear-eyed style by gender-fluid filmmaker Markus Zizenbacher. While DeLear is sadly no longer with us, we can still learn from their example – this film delivers an object lesson in living life large, with multi-intersectional, punk rock aplomb. Australian Premiere!
Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (1972, USA)
This film was scarcely seen since premiering 50 years prior but was restored by the Academy Film Archive in 2022. In one of the earliest lead roles granted to a trans performer, Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn (seen in Paul Morrissey’s Trash and Women in Revolt!) puts in a riotous turn as small-town girl Eve Harrington, who quickly finds life in New York City circa 1972. This classic now rates as one of the greatest queer film rediscoveries in many long years. Australian Premiere!
Linda Perry: Let it die Here (2024, USA)
Don Hardy’s gripping documentary grants us unprecedentedly candid access to the formidable Linda Perry, illuminating the many challenges she has faced in her life and career, notwithstanding all the triumphs. Brandi Carlile joins Christina Aguilera, Dolly Parton, and Perry’s ex-wife, actor Sara Gilbert (Darlene in Roseanne and The Conners) among the talking heads in this superb, animation-enhanced tribute to a legendary singer-songwriter-producer. Australian Premiere!
Eat the Night (2024, France)
Dynamic French filmmaking due Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel return to the dark, dystopian themes of their 2018 breakout hit Jessica Forever as Pablo (Théo Cholbi), a drug dealer, and his younger sister Apolline (Lila Gueneau) escape their tenuous lives by throwing themselves into a fantastical virtual reality computer game, Darknoon. Australian Premiere!
Life is not a Competition, But I’m Winning (2023, Germany)
Julia Fuhr Mann’s experimental essay on the “marginalised bodies” of sport, in this case track, compels the viewer to pay attention to these bodies in motion and to look back with them on the fraught history of gender in athletics. As Mann’s queer athletes move from stadiums like the ‘original’ at Athens to the controversial 1936 Berlin Olympic Stadium, the hidden histories of “divergent and ambiguous bodies” are revealed. Australian Premiere!
Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (2024, Canada)
Kicking off Opening Night with a bang, is the story of Jackie Shane, a rising star in 1950s Nashville, who became a sensation in 60s Toronto, with a huge hit single in Any Other Way. However, Shane was to disappear mysteriously from public view for nigh-on 40 years. We hear from Shane herself in never-before-heard phone conversations. We’re also treated to live recordings which leave no doubt that Jackie Shane was one of the greatest soul performers of the 20th century. Melbourne Premiere!
Duino (2024, USA, Argentina, Italy)
Rounding out the 2024 Festival, Argentinian actor Juan Pablo Di Pace (The Mattachine Family and Mamma Mia) stars in this semi-autobiographical film that also marks his directorial feature debut, alongside co writer/director Andrés Pepe Estrada. Di Pace plays Matías, a filmmaker yearning for the unrequited love of Alexander (Oscar Morgan), the blazingly beautiful teen he fell head over heels for many years ago while studying on Italy’s luscious Adriatic Coast. Australian Premiere!
Heart of the Man (2024, Australia)
Queer Australian First Nations filmmaking is still rare in 2024, so this directorial debut of Butchulla man, David Cook, shot in Brisbane and featuring a predominantly LGBTQIA+ and Aboriginal cast, is cause for celebration. Chris Wundurra (Parker Little) is pushed by his intimidating father, Sammy – played by writer-director David Cook – to train for the national boxing title he didn’t himself attain, a failure connected to tragic events that robbed Chris of his mother and Sammy his wife. Sammy’s obsession with his son following this path encounters resistance, however, when Chris starts to question his sexuality and finds himself more oriented towards pursuing treading the boards at a local theatre than stepping into the ring. Melbourne Premiere!
Can’t Stop the Music (1980, USA)
By the summer of 1979, there were loud proclamations that disco was dead, with thousands turning up to a Disco Demolition Night protest, burning boogie-pressed vinyl and chanting “Disco Sucks”. The various kink-attired lads of the Village People did not get the memo, releasing their Y.M.C.A.-powered big screen adventure Can’t Stop The Music the very next year. We reckon they had the last laugh, with this denim hot pants and cropped T-shirt-sporting ripple of muscular male bodies musical – directed by Girl Crazy star Nancy Walker – the gloriously bonkers result. Sure, Valerie Perrine (Superman) and Steve Guttenberg (destined for Police Academy) hog the limelight a little as an aspiring heterosexual couple with their sights set on stardom who just so happen to hang out with the Go West heroes. But try as the studio bosses might, there’s no airbrushing out the camp fantabulousness.
“MQFF celebrates diverse voices, perspectives, and stories from Australia and around the world. VicScreen is proud to be a longstanding partner of the festival, which celebrates Melbourne’s LGBTQIA+ communities through cinema,” said VicScreen CEO, Caroline Pitcher.
The MQFF Festival Lounge returns to ACMI for a place to catch up with friends and fellow cinephiles between screenings throughout the whole of MQFF. In line with the theme of the Festival, MQFF is treating audiences to ten days of music video jukebox and queer karaoke shenanigans.
MQFF will be running a Concession Early Bird Discount available for all concession card holders for $12.50 per ticket from 18 – 21 October. On 18 and 19 November, there will be two “under 25 years” screenings for youth, with all tickets just $5.00, held at ACMI.
The Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) is the biggest and longest-running queer film festival in Australia, screening the best Australian/International queer films. MQFF aims to engage the community with the best LGBTQIA+ content in order to educate, entertain and celebrate diversity.
The 34th Melbourne Queer Film Festival runs 14 – 24 November 2024. For more information and full program, visit: www.mqff.com.au for details.
Images: Any Other Way The Jackie Shane Story (supplied) | Dunio (supplied)