A documentary tribute to the cult favorite “Chasing Amy,” a retrospective on Hollywood’s bygone Studio One club and a film by the San Diego Black LGBTQ+ Coalition are among the lineup for this year’s four-day San Diego LGBTQ Film Festival, which opens Sept. 7.
The 23rd annual festival presented by FilmOut San Diego will screen features, documentaries and short films at both the San Diego Natural History Museum and the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park.
Programming director Michael McQuiggan is in his 20th year at the helm and has seen the popularity of and interest in the festival mushroom. “The submission period is crazy. We have hundreds and hundreds,” he said. “It seems like everybody wants to be a filmmaker.”
In addition to the sheer number of submissions, “What I’ve noticed this year,” said McQuiggan, “is the trend for the festival circuit to be geared to younger audiences, which is what I want.”
McQuiggan cited this year’s festival’s opening-night feature film, “Glitter & Doom” by director Tom Gustafson, as an example. “It’s loud and beautifully shot,” he said. “The whole movie is based on the music of the Indigo Girls but sung only by men.” Filmed entirely in Mexico City, “Glitter & Doom” will be screened at The Nat at 7 p.m. Sept. 7 along with an opening-night party.
Director Kevin Smith made the romantic comedy “Chasing Amy” in 1997 for a couple hundred grand. The film ended up grossing more than $12 million and earning both critical and fan praise, though its depiction of female sexual fluidity was controversial in the LGBTQ+ community.
Sav Rodgers’ documentary “Chasing Chasing Amy,” screening Sept. 10 at 1 p.m. at MOPA, revisits Smith’s film from a personal-experience perspective. “It’s gentle and nuanced, really sophisticated and right on target with what the (original) film was trying to do,” said McQuiggan. “For fans of that film it’s going to be an interesting take on how it’s perceived now and how it was then.”
McGuiggan called director Marc Saltarelli’s documentary “Studio One Forever,” screening Sept. 8 at 3 p.m. at MOPA, the hottest-selling ticket of the festival: “It’s booming.” The look back at what was considered America’s first gay disco features interviews with not only members of the venue’s original staff, but celebrities including Chita Rivera and Thelma Houston.
The festival’s “San Diego Filmmaker Spotlight” is on “Intersectional Lens: The Black, Queer and Trans Experience.” Directed by Pamuela Halliwell and local filmmaker Todd A. Jackson, it screens Sept. 10 at 11 a.m. at MOPA. According to McGuiggan, this film depicts “what it’s like to be Black or trans and live in the San Diego LGBTQ community, and it’s not flattering at all. It needs to be seen.”
McGuiggan also recommended a couple of other offerings on the bill this year: from France, director Florent Gouelou’s “Three Nights a Week (Trois Nuits Par Semaine),” a film spotlighting the drag community (it screens Sept. 10 at 3 p,m. at MOPA), and Bill Oliver’s feature “Our Son,” about a divorcing gay couple and their young son, starring Billy Porter and Luke Evans. It screens Saturday at 3 p.m. at MOPA.
To see the entire festival lineup, go to filmoutsandiego.com/lgbtq-film-festival.
Coddon is a freelance writer.
San Diego LGBTQ Film Festival
When: Sept. 7-10
Where: San Diego Natural History Museum and Museum of Photographic Arts, Balboa Park
Tickets: All-access pass for all films $150; opening-night screening $50; closing-night screening $20; all other films $15
Online: filmoutsandiego.com
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