BENGALURU: The Bangalore Queer Film Festival (BQFF) has been an annual active cultural event in the city for 14 years. With its first edition in 2010, the festival is all set to premier its 13th edition on August 4, 5 and 6. The inaugural day will take place at the Alliance Française de Bangalore in Vasanth Nagar, while the remaining two days will happen at Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in Indiranagar.
Joshua Muyiwa, one of the organisers of the festival, finds it funny to look 14 years back when it all first started. “Fourteen years ago, there was not much space for queer content other than private screenings organised by folks who had travelled abroad and gotten some DVDs. Compared to then, there’s a specific row for LGBTQIA+ content on streaming services like Netflix. A far cry from how it was years ago, which is why we started BQFF then,” he shares.
Just like in the past few years, Muyiwa expects a high footfall. “I don’t want to oversell too much, but it’s extremely packed. More than 1,000 people come each day. And I mean the auditorium can only host about 400 occupants, so people wait in line for the films they want to see. This festival is also about meeting various people. The focus is on the films but many also come to socialise and interact with each other,” he says.
Regarding some of the highlights of this year’s rendition, Muyiwa elaborates, “This year, we have received our first film from Tibet. It is titled The Quiet Solace of Sunset, a short film directed by Tenzin Choedon. The film is in Tibetan and English and is about friendship and about discovering their sexuality. Then we again have our first film received from Myanmar named Two Souls directed by Myat Noe.
The film is about two refugees from Myanmar who are in Thailand, their relationship with their country and falling in love with each other. There is a film coming from Indonesia called Closeting. We have films coming from other Indian states as well. Bad Behaviour is one of the films coming from Bengaluru. It is made by Rency Philip along with Bhavana Rajendran and Sharanya Ramprakash. If you notice, I am mentioning a lot of names from Southeast Asia, which is a focus of the festival in many ways. We also show a lot of local films.” He mentions that a running theme prevalent at this year’s BQFF since
it’s their 13th edition, is horror films of various kinds, including queer horror.