BFI Flare 2021: Features Review
Each year as a team we attend BFI Flare, the UK’s largest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festival. Completely virtual this year, there were a variety of screenings, panels, and events across a 12-day period. Below, our editorial team share their thoughts on some of their favourite feature films from female and non-binary filmmakers.
Rebel Dykes (dir. Harri Shanahan & Sian Williams)
A wildly anarchic film that works to capture the experiences of the Rebel Dyke community and lesbian women of colour living amongst the Greenham Common anti-nuclear peace camps of 1970s and 80s South London. Directors Harri Shanahan and Sian Williams shrewdly document the lives of a close-knit group of lesbian punks, artists and musicians who paved the way for many of the creative scenes and expression of freedom among LGBTIQ+ nightlife today. Navigating us through first-hand experiences of squatting in Brixton and battles of anti-censorship amongst the famed S&M club Chain Reaction, the film addresses the power of protest on issues of violence, poverty, homophobia and racism within the lesbian community. Shanahan and Williams also work to highlight the importance of both trans people’s and people of colour's inclusion in clubs and the groups’ key involvement with ACT UP at the height of the aids epidemic. Rebel Dykes stands alone as a timeless addition in support of true to life LGBTIQ+ narratives in history.
Written by Am Jones
Cowboys (dir. Anna Kerrigan)
Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys is a tender family drama that challenges gender, identity and the stigma of men’s mental health in contraposition with the theme of traditional Western values and tropes.
Enter Joe (Sasha Knight), a depressed 11-year-old trans kid, who has to deal with his controlling (and absolutely in denial) mother (Jillian Bell) and his bipolar and full-of-love father (Steve Zahn). Both relationships are deteriorating very rapidly in front of our eyes – first between his parents, then with Joe and his mother, too afraid of even having a conversation with Joe, let alone acknowledge his feelings.
When things escalate, we find Joe and his dad running away “to go camping” on a horse, with not much more with them. The plan is to set off on a trek to Canada, a very ill-advised plan organised by Joe’s dad, who really is just trying to help his kid in any way possible, but fails to realise the consequences of what is actually going to turn into a kidnap.
Not long after their departure, the police gets alerted, and we get introduced to local detective Faith (portrayed by the brilliant, as usual, Ann Dowd), whose actions turn the feature into a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid type of flick. The setting also helps shape the story, with forests and breathtaking mountains and landscape shots à la Iñárritu.
Cowboys tell a heartwarming and powerful story – in doing so, it never leaves out the emotions that the characters are feeling, but gives us a chance to experience them and get into the characters’ shoes for a while.
Written by Desiree Balma
My First Summer (dir. Katie Found)
CW: Suicide
My First Summer is a tender story of first love; a summer fling tinged with tragedy. There’s Claudia (Markella Kavenagh), 17 years old, but innocent and isolated, completely sheltered from the outside world – she is skittish and anxious, like a baby deer. Then there’s Grace (Maiah Stewardson), bold and confident, cycling into Claudia’s life in a blur of brightly coloured clothes and big earrings. Claudia’s mother, an acclaimed novelist, has died, drowning herself in the local reservoir, leaving Claudia on her own – but no one else knows that Claudia exists. That is, until Grace comes along. Grace witnessed Claudia’s mother’s suicide, too, and they’re bonded by this shared, traumatic experience.
While Claudia wishes to remain hidden away in her house in the woods at any cost, Grace wants to escape from her home. She argues with her mother and she doesn’t get along with her mother’s partner – the atmosphere in the house is tense and fraught. Both girls are alone, in their own way, lonely and misunderstood. Their blossoming relationship (first a friendship, and then something more) is intense, always warped, slightly, through the lens of grief. They’re hidden away from the real world, but the knowledge that reality will catch up with them eventually hangs heavy – both on the characters and on the audience.
The two leads have great chemistry and the script perfectly captures the simultaneous intensity and tenderness of first love – they are earnest with each other, sweet and tentative. They are good for each other, too – Grace encourages Claudia to explore who she is, who she has the potential to be in a world without her mother. She is gentle and patient with her, and in return Claudia is trusting and vulnerable. They drink black coffee with marshmallows and collage the plain white walls of Claudia’s room with pictures of Joan Didion and Beyoncé. “So no one knows you exist?” Grace asks, towards the beginning of the film. “You do,” Claudia responds, simply. And, ultimately, that’s all that matters – but will it be enough?
Written by Emily Garbutt
Mama Gloria (dir. Luchina Fisher)
An intimate portrait following the life of Gloria Allen, a key figure amongst the Black transgender community who has worked graciously to support the lives of many trans women living in Chicago. Directed by Luchina Fisher, the film offers a personal insight on the joys, beauty and life-long bonds that many within the community have formed over the generations, as well as the heartbreaking realities many trans people face. Fisher carefully draws on both spoken narrative and experiences within trans youth work and the ballroom culture scene, as well as news headlines of the times and found footage depicting the height of the civil rights movements, from Martin Luther King to Marsha P. Johnson and the Stonewall riots. A vital and eye-opening watch, Gloria Allen commendably speaks out on the dangers so many of the trans community continue to face, with important conversations with other women of colour on issues of racism, inequality and violence that are still deeply impacting the safety of trans people.
Written by Am Jones
You can read more about BFI Flare here.
Article edited by Emily Garbutt
