Cancelled BFI Flare goes online with 230 films, and we are pumped

Some cinema lovers are already stuck at home over the coming weeks due to the Corona Virus pandemic, which forced the BFI Flare London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival due to start yesterday [18 March] to cancel.

But in great news for queer film fans everywhere, the festival will now become BFI Flare at Home.

From Friday, festival bookers will get the opportunity to see a number of great LGBTIQ+ shorts and features from 20-29 March that were due to screen at BFI Flare.

New work will include:

• Levan Akin’s exquisite Georgian-set romance, the Cannes-winner,
• And Then We Danced; Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s deliciously enigmatic chamber piece,
• Don’t Look Down and Daniel Karslake’s powerful documentary about four different LGBTIQ+ individuals who experience bruising encounters with organised religion,
• For They Know Not What They Do.

And other titles are due to be confirmed in the coming days, and we’ll bring you all the updates. 

Tricia Tuttle, Director of Festivals, BFI says:

‘BFI Flare is a very special and long-standing festival with a loyal and dedicated following so when the decision was made to cancel the ‘live’ festival the team knew that they wanted to share some elements of BFI Flare digitally to celebrate the spirit of BFI Flare and the incredible range of LGBTIQ+ stories from talented filmmakers being told in the UK and internationally. We want to bring some of the spirit of Flare into viewers’ living rooms.’

BFI Flare at Home will also sit alongside great short work from BFI Flare Five Films For Freedom short films. It’s all being made available in partnership with the British Council and will be rolled out over 10 days from Friday 20th March.

The BFI’s existing collection of favourites from previous BFI Flare Festivals, much loved queer film classics, and the free BFI National Archive curated LGBT Britain on Film Collection, will also be available, giving access to over 230 films in total.

“As a long-standing media partner to BFI Flare, to say Attitude was saddened at the prospect of there being no festival this year would be an understatement,” Attitude editor Cliff Jouanno adds.

“On a personal note, I have attended the festival for over fifteen years, and the buzz on the Southbank every March is something quite special. Film is magical in how it can bring people together to tell stories, so it’s wonderful that the BFI is bringing some of the magic of Flare for people around the world to enjoy at a time when the fear of isolation is hurting many of us. We’ll certainly be watching from home, and we look forward to Flare returning to the Southbank in 2021.”

But that’s not all. The BFI Flare will also be hosting live Q&A’s with filmmakers, offering daily curated programmer recommendations of work from the BFI Player Flare collections. And instead of their closing party, they will launch a curated closing night DJ set made available as a Spotify playlist, bringing the BFI Flare party vibe to house parties everywhere.

The new BFI Flare at Home programme will be available via BFI Player, the BFI’s VOD service. A special offer for BFI Player’s subscription service will be offered to audiences who had booked for BFI Flare. But anyone can sign up for a free two week trial of BFI Player to take advantage of this incredible BFI Flare collection. 

Attitude is a media partner of the BFI Flare Festival.

This is a developing story and we’ll bring you more soon.