NewFest 2008: The 20th Annual LGBT Film Festival—one of the most comprehensive forums of international LGBT film/video in the world—hits various venues June 5–15. We don’t have too many details yet (full program, schedule and ticketing information will be available online in mid-May), but we can tell you that some of the fantastic films screening this year include Drifting Flowers, Love My Life, Searching 4 Sandeep, Steam, Tru Loved and Two Mums and a Dad.
The Jacob Burns Film Center (JBFC) in Pleasantville, NY will host the fifth annual film series Out at the Movies May 15–28. The series features 15 LGBT-focused films, guest speakers and an opening night reception featuring the winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Documentary, Short Subject, Freeheld, and a short film entitled I Just Wanted To Be Somebody. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Cynthia Wade, director of Freeheld, and a reception. Speaker events also follow the screening of For the Bible Tells Me So and Philadelphia later in the series.
May 18 at the Queens Museum of Art, CINEMAROSA—Queens’ first and only queer film/video series—celebrates four years of programming independent fiction, documentary and experimental works focused on the lives and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) peoples and communities. The screenings and party celebration includes the presentation lesbian short Weeki Wachee Girls, directed by Queens-based filmmaker Kim Cummings, and other shorts from around the world.
Tune in to the tube this month for plenty of LGBT programming. On June 4, Cinemax will screen When I Knew, a deeply personal documentary about when individuals knew they were gay; and Freeheld, an award-winning film that follows the landmark legal battle of Lieutenant Laurel Hester, a dying lesbian New Jersey police officer who fights to transfer her pension to her domestic partner. Powerdyke and LA personal trainer Jackie Warner has returned to Bravo in a new season of Workout. And how long can you resist checking out the sequel to MTV’s over-the-top bisexual dating show, A Shot at Love 2 with Tila Tequila? Apparently Tila ditched the dude and is giving both the pink and blue teams another chance at “winning her heart.”
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