Submissions for the 2nd Annual Virginia Queer Film Festival were accepted from all over the world, but organizers said they wanted to focus on local and regional artists with a distinct spotlight on gay southern voices.
This year’s festival features films from Spain, Canada, Mexico, France and Korea as well as across the local waters, with one documentary focused on Hampton’s queer history.
Alexcia Bailey is a member of the Board of Directors and said seeing gay characters in film is critical, especially for young people coming to terms with their sexuality.
“I know when I was younger, being gay and not really having things to look at on TV and then slowly but surely things began to come out, like ‘The L Word,’ and ‘Exes and Ohs,’ and stuff like that, that had gay characters in it, and I was like ‘Oh Wow, there are other people out there that are like me.’”
Priya Vashist also is a member of the festival’s board.
“I didn’t grow up in this country, I grew up in India and I didn’t see any queer movies growing up,” she said. “I wasn’t introduced to them until the internet and it was a very positive experience for me.”
Bailey and Vashist are filmmakers and screenwriters who produce films portraying the gay experience. Both target minority gay experiences.
Bailey has completed three short films and recently finished her first feature film script.
“My films mainly focus on the BIPOC LGBTQIA+ community … I also do feel that people of color are not as represented, even within that queer community. So it's like a box in a box,” she said.
Vashist, who has made six short films, feels similarly.
“I focus my films on experiences of queer South Asians and queer South Asian immigrants,” she said. “That is also a minority that I have not seen represented on screen a lot.”
Even though there have been breakthrough movies like “Moonlight” and “Brokeback Mountain” that appealed to mainstream audiences, there’s still a lack of queer-based cinema and even some films with queer leads and themes flop with the LGBTQ community.
Bailey said that’s to be expected.
“It could also be ... that’s not their type of movie or their favorite genre, just because it's necessarily in the LGBTQIA+ realm, doesn’t necessarily mean everybody’s going to like it,” she said. “Some people might like drama, or some people might like action-horror or what have you, so just because it’s a gay movie, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s everybody’s type of movie regardless of it being heterosexual, homosexual movie or what have you.”
And despite ongoing changes to how people see movies, the rise in streaming and the collapse of the brick and mortar movie theatre, Vashist said the future looks good for gay cinema.
“I think gay themed movies will no longer be an issue,” Vashist said. “Just looking back (at) how far we’ve come in the last 30 years, 100 years from now, I don’t think this will be an issue. I think gay themed movies will be more integrated with the rest of the stories.”
The Virginia Queer Film Festival runs Sept. 20-22 at Old Dominion University. More information can be found online.
