Film festival is 31 years and growing

Los Angeles’ premier LGBT film festival, Outfest, has been regaling moviegoers with on-screen stories of the gay experience for 31 years. From its humble origins at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater over the course of three April evenings in 1982, Outfest has evolved into a full-scale yearly film festival as well as an organization that serves as curator, year-round idea incubator and useful networking resource for area LGBT filmmakers.

Just as it is with most movies, though, the beginning is the best place to start. Thirty-one years ago, a group of UCLA students organized a screening of three films: experimental urban-adventure flick “Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man,” love-triangle drama “Making Love” and stark German sex comedy “Taxi Zum Klo.”

That very first Outfest was practically an act of protest by its organizers. “They were frustrated because they weren’t seeing images of themselves on screen,” says Outfest’s executive director, Kirsten Schaffer.

That would soon change. The following year’s installment included a couple dozen films and a handful of panel discussions, Schaffer says. By the late ’80s, Outfest had moved off campus and into a variety of theaters around Los Angeles; by the early ’90s, sponsors such as Sony Pictures Studios began lending a (financial) helping hand.

Today, 30 full- and part-time staffers work year-round, considering submissions, soliciting filmmakers and trawling film festivals such as Sundance, where they look for the best work to include in Outfest.

Outfest’s director of programming, Kristin “KP” Pepe, says the goal is to find films that transcend common tropes increasingly popping up in both gay-centric and general-interest films. “What we see this year and what we’ve seen in the past few years is fewer films featuring the token gay role and fewer coming-out films,” Pepe says. “The films we’re screening depict heartbreak, love, loneliness — the same challenges all people face, gay or straight.”

Outfest has also transcended its goal of simply showing audiences on-screen depictions of the LGBT experience. Now a full-fledged organization, Outfest works with UCLA to conserve, preserve and restore historic gay films. It also hosts a variety of workshops for young and aspiring gay screenwriters and organizes networking events for Outfest’s participants (including one, mentions Schaffer, that hooked writer Dustin Lance Black up with the eventual producers of “Milk”).

It’s still all about expression, though. There’s been a gradual shift in recent years toward a greater acceptance of lesbians, gay men, trans people and queer folks, but Outfest still remains essential in communicating the LGBT experience, Schaffer says, lest we forget how far we’ve come: “For any oppressed community, art is especially significant because it tells the story of who we are and where we come from, and there’s a lot of meaning inscribed in it.”

—Alex Weber, Brand Publishing Writer