Love and other emotions

The 16th Dublin International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival kicks off next week with a diverse programme of Irish and international screenings and events, writes Michael Dwyer

A WELL-ESTABLISHED Dublin fixture over the August bank holiday weekend, the annual Gaze festival of lesbian and gay movies registered more than 4,000 attendances last year and continues to grow. This year's festival expands beyond its regular venue, the Irish Film Institute, to include screenings at Project and the Winding Stair. Here are some of the highlights from the bumper programme, which opens next Thursday night and continues until August 4th.

OPENING FILM

Directed by Laurie Lynd, Breakfast with Scot is a Canadian serious comedy on the themes of tolerance and acceptance. It features Tom Cavanagh as Eric, a former hockey star now working as a broadcaster and living with his sports lawyer partner (Ben Shenkman) for four years. Eric has to confront his discomfort with his sexual identity when his 11-year-old nephew Scot (Noah Bernett) arrives, wearing his late mother's jewellery and sparkly scarves.

Showing on the same programme is Prada Wedding, a short film on one woman's search for self-acceptance in "a glitzy viper's nest of bitchy drag queens".

CLOSING FILM

Matt Wolf's moving documentary, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, celebrates the life and work of the experimental musician who died of Aids in 1992. Contributors to the film include Philip Glass, and Allen Ginsberg who observed that Russell's ambition was "to write Buddhist bubblegum music". Russell's partner, Tom Lee, and director Wolf will discuss the film with the audience after the screening.

SPECIAL EVENTS

As civil partnership legislation continues to be delayed in Ireland, the festival will present a timely discussion on equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. This will follow the screening of Suddenly, Last Winter, a documentary on the national debate in Italy on gay partnership rights. The film's co-directors, Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi, will participate in the discussion. The same programme will include the Oscar-winning 2007 short documentary, Freeheld, charting the determined efforts of a dying detective to transfer her pension to her longtime partner.

Actor and screenwriter Mark O'Halloran, who wrote Adam & Paul and Garage, will introduce and give his own personal interpretation of William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), which stared Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara.

Queering the Flicks: Telling Irish Queer Stories on Film is the theme of a panel discussion on the opportunities and obstacles for Irish filmmakers in bringing gay-themed stories to the screen.

INTERNATIONAL FEATURES

A late addition to the programme, Steam observes three women from different generations as they bond after they meet in a steam room. They are played by Ally Sheedy, Ruby Dee and Kate Siegel.

Released in the US last weekend, Jacques Nolot's Before I Forget is a portrait of a French former male escort (played by Nolot), who is now 60 and has been HIV positive for more than 20 years.

Writer-director Jesse Rosen takes the leading role in The Art of Being Straight, as John, a young man who moves from Boston to Los Angeles. His life is thrown into confusion when he discovers his ex-girlfriend is involved with another woman - and when John allows himself to succumb to the advances of a male colleague at an ad agency.

Shamim Sarif's The World Unseen deals with the relationship that develops between two South Asian women, one of whom is married with children, during the apartheid regime in 1950s South Africa.

Written and directed by Karin Babinská, Dolls (Pusinsky) is a Czech road movie and coming-of-age drama following three young women as they leave home for a new life in the Netherlands.

A prize-winner at the Berlin festival earlier this year, Drifting Flowers is a Taiwanese film in which director Zero Chou observes the experiences of three women through interwoven stories.

The new picture from consistently provocative Canadian director Bruce LaBruce, Otto; Or, Up with Dead People, is set in Berlin and has the distinction of being the first gay zombie movie.

As the title suggests, The Gay Bed & Breakfast of Terror is a horror movie. The setting is a remote desert inn where the guests get more than they expected over a weekend party.

DOCUMENTARIES

Director Esther Robinson traces the brief life of her uncle in A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory. A promising young editor and film-maker, Williams was a lover of Andy Warhol and a member of his Factory set before he mysteriously disappeared in 1966.

She's a Boy I Knew charts its director's transition from Steven to Gwen Howarth and how he and his wife and family respond in what is described as "the most compelling DIY, gender-bending, feel-good film directed by a transsexual lesbian you'll see all year".

One artist and filmmaker pays tribute to another in Derek, Isaac Julien's poetic picture of the gifted Derek Jarman. Narrated by Tilda Swinton, the movie features a wealth of previously unseen material.

With Gilbert & George is a portrait of the artists filmed over 17 years by Julian Cole, who has known them since he posed as a model for them in 1986.

Directed by Irish author Emma Donoghue, Immaculate Conceptions: Inside a Lesbian Baby Boom features interview with 16 diverse parents in Canada.

IRISH FILMS

Tom Maguire's Out in Africa is a documentary on two men - one from Enniskillen, Co Femanagh, the other from South Africa - who were married last December in an Afrikaner village north of Cape Town.

Bród: Out on the Streets charts the history of Ireland's longest consecutively running Gay Pride Festival, which has been held in Galway for the past 18 years.

The festival will screen four programmes of short films over the course of the weekend.

Gaze: The 16th Dublin International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival runs from July 31st to August 4th. www.gaze.ie