Portugal’s Queer Lisboa Celebrates 30th Anniversary With Vast Showcase

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Portugal’s preeminent Queer Lisboa – International Queer Film Festival kicked off Friday with a vast program showcasing the latest in LGBTQ cinema, from established filmmakers to new voices, and a look back at the underground counterculture and revolutionary works of activist filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Lisbon’s oldest film festival, Queer Lisboa launched in 1997 at the Cinemateca Portuguesa as the Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, opening with the 1950 short film “Un chant d’amour,” the only film ever directed by French novelist and playwright Jean Genet, whose works included “Querelle de Brest,” famously adapted by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

The festival’s origins at the Portuguese Cinematheque is one of the factors that has distinguished it from other queer festivals across Europe, Queer Lisboa artistic director João Ferreira tells Variety.

“From the very beginning, I would say that the festival was not envisioned as a kind of niche or festival only for the LGBTQ community because of the institutional support that it already had from day one. So I think it’s a very particular case for a queer festival in Europe. It was certainly not the case with some festivals that started more or less at the same time, like Madrid or Paris.

“The audience was from the very beginning, a very broad audience and an audience interested in film, a cinephile audience,” Ferreira adds. “But of course, also because in the first three years it was organized by the Portuguese chapter of ILGA [the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association], it also had this very important community aspect to it.”

The festival’s perception of queer cinema has never been based merely on narrative, Ferreira notes. “It was much broader than that. We were interested in a queer gaze at the world. We were interested in a camp aesthetic. So we were looking for very different kinds of films that could fit in this idea.” It was a view that shaped what the festival ultimately became, he adds. “Then the festival was called the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, but the idea was already queer at the time, the way we looked at film.”

With a total of 94 feature, documentary and short films, the 30th edition of Queer Lisboa takes place at its regular venues, the Cinemateca Portuguesa and Cinema São Jorge, running Sept. 18-26.

Boasting a strong lineup that includes some of the year’s top LGBTQ titles, the festival opens with the Portuguese premiere of Rami Malek-starrer “The Man I Love” from Ira Sachs, whose previous films, “Passages” and “Peter Hujar’s Day,” likewise screened in Lisbon. Leah Nelson’s acclaimed animated drama “Tangles” closes the event.

With nearly a dozen sections, including five competition categories and six non-competitive sidebars, the festival offers a broad showcase. New this year is Queer Family, dedicated to kids and their families, with a focus on culturally enriching independent films that explore themes of inclusion and identity. Two Brazilian features make up the program, Allan Deberton’s Berlinale award-winner “Gugu’s World” and Priscilla Kellen’s animated “Papaya.”

It’s been a long-standing goal to attract younger audiences, says Ana David, programmer and director at Queer Lisboa.

The new section is aimed directly at families and the festival has already received positive feedback from interested parents.

“We’ll see if it’s the kids bringing their parents, or if it’s the parents bringing their kids. It’s important for us to work with young audiences who will also become the adult audiences of the festival in the future,” David says. The new section also provides the opportunity for parents and their children to have an intergenerational experience and to even talk about things after the screening, she adds.

The festival has already sold a large amount of tickets for the Queer Family screenings. “We think it’s going to work out really well,” David says.

With the increasing growth and appeal of LGBTQ cinema, Queer Lisboa has sought to find a balance between popular mainstream works, new discoveries and the more radical experimental films that have long defined queer cinema.

“We want this spectrum, the big films and very small films,” says Ferreira. “It’s part of our joy as programmers to discover these smaller and more independent, sometimes more DIY filmmakers and filmmaking, and we try to put all that in the program. It is challenging.”

While it’s much easier now to acquire films than it was 30 years ago, it’s become more difficult to filter through the huge amount of available titles and curate the 90-plus films that the festival presents, Ferreira adds.

Offering a rare treat for its 30th anniversary is an expanded Retrospectives section with 19 titles, including such works as the Wachowskis’ 1996 debut film “Bound”; Sally Potter’s “Orlando” (1992), Lisa Cholodenko’s “High Art” (1998), Patrice Chéreau’s “The Wounded Man” (1983), Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams’ British doc “Shinjuku Boys” (1995) and, from West Germany, Frank Ripploh’s 1980 classic “Taxi to the Toilet” (“Taxi zum Klo”).

This year’s showcase is especially interesting as Queer Lisboa is hitting 30 at the same time BFI Flare in London turns 40 and San Francisco’s Frameline turns 50, David notes. Those festivals, along with Paris’ Chéries-Chéris, served as inspirations for this year’s Retrospectives sidebar.

“It speaks to the longevity of queer cinema, but also the festivals that have for a long time now been promoting and expanding on the knowledge and appreciation of queer cinema,” David notes.

For Queer Lisboa, it was an opportunity to look back at early films that are rare exhibitions in Portugal even if they’re already considered canon films within queer cinema. “We wanted to offer some classic titles that people know and can engage with the retrospective, but then also offer something new for them to learn about and that can expand on their knowledge,” David adds.

An important element of that is to present the films in restored or digitized versions.

It’s the first time that “Orlando” screens at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, David points out. “And they actually have a 35mm print, so it’s amazing that we can offer an excuse for this film to be shown.”

“And to take it out of the closet,” Ferreira quips.

Also presented will be a newly restored version of João Paulo Ferreira’s 1976 subversive queer musical comedy “Fatucha Superstar,” inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Made in the wake of the revolution that swept away Portugal’s authoritarian dictatorship, the film blasphemously ridicules in ultimate kitsch fashion one of the main pillars of the former regime, the apparition of Our Lady of Fátima and the Christian symbolism that surrounded it.

Along with Óscar Alves, João Paulo Ferreira was part of the rebellious and independent gay filmmaking movement that produced the first queer films in post-revolution Portugal. Together they founded the film collective Cineground and screened their Super 8 films in Lisbon’s queer bars and night clubs in the 1970s.

Among the returning talents and exciting discoveries this year are Portuguese filmmaker André Godinho and the world premiere of his debut feature “Nothing Left,” described as a Portuguese queer version of “Punishment Park”; and German artist duo Benjamin Ramírez Pérez and Stefan Ramírez Pérez with the world premiere of “Life Is About Losing Everything,” their hybrid doc on the life and work of Canadian poet Lynn Crosbie, likewise a first feature. Both films unspool in the Queer Art Competition, which showcases experimental, boundary-busting works that “explore the limits of cinematic languages, genres, and narratives.”

Other highlights include Swiss-French feature “Summer Drift,” by Céline Carridroit and Aline Suter, and the European premiere of “Public Access,” David Shadrack Smith’s look at the people who transformed New York City TV into a groundbreaking space for self-expression during the 1970s and 80s.

This year’s diverse lineup includes special screenings of Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas” and Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” while the fest’s non-competitive Panorama sidebar presents such recent international festival hits as “Jim Queen“; “Maspalomas;” “Outerlands“; and “Prosecution.”

Competing in this year’s Queer Lisboa feature film competition are:

“Black Burns Fast,” by Sandulela Asanda (South Africa)

“On the Road,” by David Pablos (Mexico)

“Strange River,” by Jaume Claret Muxart’s (Spain, Germany)

“La Gradiva,” by Marine Atlan (France, Italy)

“Iván & Hadoum,” by Ian de la Rosa (Spain, Germany, Belgium)

“Julian,” by Cato Kusters (Belgium, The Netherlands)

“London,” by Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli (Brazil)

“Raging,” by Ryan Machado (Philippines)

The entire Queer Lisboa program can be explored here.