News & Reviews

Tickets for the 34^th annual Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) are available now, boasting a jam-packed program celebrating queer music culture, through the provocation, Formative Sound and Vision. MQFF runs from 14 – 24 November and will screen 42 feature films, 18 Australian premieres, 18 Melbourne premieres, 19 documentaries, 11 short film packages and 90 short films, plus a special a keynote by international guest of MQFF, Darryl W. Bullock, author of David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music. Expect an unforgettable program that celebrates the way sound and vision have been a source of inspiration and transformation for LGBTQIA+ communities, and beyond.

David Martin Harris, MQFF CEO said: “We’re taking over Melbourne with a dazzling lineup of films for the 2024 MQFF Program. We’ve gathered the most extraordinary new and historical LGBTQIA+ stories from around the globe that shape, form, pay homage to, and celebrate queer music culture. Plus, by popular demand, we’re delighted to bring back the MQFF Festival Lounge at ACMI for the entire season. This will be a vibrant space for LGBTQIA+ community connection, featuring fascinating public programs, DJs, karaoke and delicious food in a mirror ball-lit setting. In other words, pure queer-joy!”

Program highlights include:

The Life of Sean DeLear (2024, Austria) Australian Premiere, showing at Cinema Nova on 23 November. (pictured top left)
Formerly fronting LA post-punk band Glue, multidisciplinary queer Black artist Sean DeLear was a blazingly colourful and exuberantly transgressive personality who dazzled the underground musical and artistic scenes in the late 90s and 2000s. The Life of Sean DeLear is a vibrantly multi-faceted, buoyantly propulsive documentary portrayal, sketched in celebratory but commendably clear-eyed style by gender-fluid filmmaker Markus Zizenbacher. While DeLear is sadly no longer with us, we can still learn from their example – this film delivers an object lesson in living life large, with multi-intersectional, punk rock aplomb.

Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (1972, USA) Australian Premiere, showing at ACMI on Thursday 21 November.
This film was scarcely seen since premiering 50 years prior but was restored by the Academy Film Archive in 2022. In one of the earliest lead roles granted to a trans performer, Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn (seen in Paul Morrissey’s Trash and Women in Revolt!) puts in a riotous turn as small-town girl Eve Harrington, who quickly finds life in New York City circa 1972. This classic now rates as one of the greatest queer film rediscoveries in many long years.

Linda Perry: Let it die Here (2024, USA) Australian Premiere, showing at The Capitol on 17 November.
Don Hardy’s gripping documentary grants us unprecedentedly candid access to the formidable Linda Perry, illuminating the many challenges she has faced in her life and career, notwithstanding all the triumphs. Brandi Carlile joins Christina Aguilera, Dolly Parton, and Perry’s ex-wife, actor Sara Gilbert (Darlene in Roseanne and The Conners) among the talking heads in this superb, animation-enhanced tribute to a legendary singer-songwriter-producer.

Eat the Night (2024, France) Australian Premiere, showing at ACMI on 17 November and The Capitol on 21 November.
Dynamic French filmmaking due Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel return to the dark, dystopian themes of their 2018 breakout hit Jessica Forever as Pablo (Théo Cholbi), a drug dealer, and his younger sister Apolline (Lila Gueneau) escape their tenuous lives by throwing themselves into a fantastical virtual reality computer game, “Darknoon.”

Life is not a Competition, But I’m Winning (2023, Germany), Australian Premiere, showing at ACMI on 23 November. (pictured top right)
Julia Fuhr Mann’s experimental essay on the “marginalised bodies” of sport, in this case track, compels the viewer to pay attention to these bodies in motion and to look back with them on the fraught history of gender in athletics. As Mann’s queer athletes move from stadiums like the ‘original’ at Athens to the controversial 1936 Berlin Olympic Stadium, the hidden histories of “divergent and ambiguous bodies” are revealed.

Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (2024, Canada) Melbourne Premiere, showing at ACMI on 14 November.
Kicking off Opening Night with a bang, is the story of Jackie Shane, a rising star in 1950s Nashville, who became a sensation in 60s Toronto, with a huge hit single in Any Other Way. However, Shane was to disappear mysteriously from public view for nigh-on 40 years. We hear from Shane herself in never-before-heard phone conversations. We’re also treated to live recordings which leave no doubt that Jackie Shane was one of the greatest soul performers of the 20th century.

VicScreen CEO Caroline Pitcher said: ““MQFF celebrates diverse voices, perspectives, and stories from Australia and around the world. VicScreen is proud to be a longstanding partner of the festival, which celebrates Melbourne’s LGBTQIA+ communities through cinema.” 

The MQFF Festival Lounge returns to ACMI for a place to catch up with friends and fellow cinephiles between screenings throughout the whole of MQFF. In line with the theme of the Festival, MQFF is treating audiences to ten days of music video jukebox and queer karaoke shenanigans.

MQFF will be running a Concession Early Bird Discount available for all concession card holders for $12.50 per ticket from 18 – 21 October. On 18 and 19 November, there will be two “under 25 years” screenings for youth, with all tickets just $5.00, held at ACMI.

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) is the biggest and longest-running queer film festival in Australia, screening the best Australian/International queer films. MQFF aims to engage the community with the best LGBTQIA+ content in order to educate, entertain and celebrate diversity. MQFF is proudly supported by government partners: City of Melbourne, VicScreen, Department of Families Fairness and Housing, and City of Stonnington; as well as major partners: ME Bank, Origin and Prime Video.