The London BFI Flare LGBTQ+ film festival: “A celebration of difference and diversity” or normative hegemony?

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the scholarship on queer spaces and queer film festivals by offering an approach that critically analyses white normativity within the queer film festival, scrutinising both who shapes these spaces and for whom they are shaped. Situating queer film festivals as political sites of counterpublics that enable potential resistance and solidarity against dominant heteronormativity and cisnormativity, this article examines whiteness and white privilege within those spaces, using London’s 2018 BFI Flare: LGBTQ+ Film Festival as a case study. In-depth discourse analysis of Flare’s 2018 festival documents and ephemera informs the article’s argument. Building upon intersectional and postcolonial feminist work on spaces and diversity politics, this piece contends that current Western queer film festivals, such as Flare, are spaces embedded in homonationalist discourse that replicate historical in/exclusion and construct racialised arenas. In this way, they perform “feel good” diversity while lacking an interrogation of normative whiteness, able-bodiedness, and cis male gayness.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer film festival
• white normativity
• homonormativity
• diversity
• discourse analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Since Flare is identifying itself as “LGBTQ+,” I’ll utilise this acronym when referring to the festival. Nevertheless, in my own text, I’ll use “LGBTIQ+,” since the living conditions of intersex people are equally, if not more so, influenced and shaped by patriarchy, the heterosexual matrix, and binary gender roles.

2. Likewise, though Flare uses the acronym “QTIPoC” in the context of the RISE event, I’ll use in my own text “QTIBPoC” to highlight the specific conditions and realities of Black people.

3. The first panel discussion of RISE has been recorded and can be found on Youtube (see below): In this session, writer-directors Blain Ho-Shain and Dior Clarke, writer Iman Qureshi, and producer Racelle Constant talk about how to develop one’s cinematic voice and discover the narrative potential of one’s lived experience and perspective on the world. The talk was chaired by director Jenn Nkiru. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmSbPeQPAc. Accessed April 112,018.

4. See further the article “BBZ: the duo repping queer women of colour” by Yero Timi-Biu on May 4, 2016 from the online magazine Gal-dem, committed to telling the stories of women and non-binary people of colour.

5. Because this study is only focusing on the racialisation of bodies in Western context, I am not including for instance The Wound (2016), which features Black queers but not in a context of racialisation.

6. Nevertheless, when looking at the programme in general, Reina Gossett's short film called Atlantic Is a Sea Of Bones (2017), is engaging with race and AIDS, however it was not assigned to the category AIDS on Film, but to the “Deaf and Disabled Queer and Trans Shorts.”

7. Pureland Foundation; the Department for Digital, Culture Media & Sport; American Airlines;

The May Fair Hotel; Renault; the Interbank LGBT Forum; Sky; Barefoot Wines; Beltane & Pop; Fever-Tree; Konditor & Cook and Pink Pepper Gin; Venue Partners and Community Partners (BFI Flare 2018, 4).

8. As Nirmal Puwar (2004, 7) points out, while “there are also, of course, considerable differences between gender and ‘race,’ the ‘glass ceiling’ has been cracked quite significantly with gender, when for ‘race’ a ‘concrete ceiling’ has just been chipped ever so slightly.” Similar observation within LGBTIQ+ festivals could be made, since (white) lesbians are becoming more and more visible in the landscape, while QTIBPoC remain highly marginalised.

9. The symbol of “Love” in “Love is a Human Right” calls back to the (homonormative) media coverage of the USA Supreme Court’s 2015 legalisation of same-sex marriage when many outlets used the hashtag #LoveWins (Ben Trott 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Fréhel Vince

Fréhel Vince is a feminist activist, an independent researcher, and a filmmaker based in Berlin, Germany. They have completed their M.A. in Gender, Media, and Culture at Goldsmiths College, University of London, on which this article is based. E-mail: [email protected]