Our guide to the 33rd annual New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival

By Joshua Encinias

It was only a matter of time before queer cinephiles took over Brooklyn.

Since 1988, the New York City-based LGBTQ+ arts nonprofit NewFest has presented their annual film festival in Manhattan and become the city’s largest purveyor of queer film and media.

In recent years, NewFest partnered with the Brooklyn Academy of Music on the retrospective series “Queering the Canon: BIPOC New York” and hosted events like Queer Brunch with Patrik-Ian Polk’s seminal film “Punks” at Nitehawk Williamsburg.

This year, for the first time, NewFest will bring the festival to BAM and to Nitehawk’s Prospect Park theater with a new wave of queer movies, shorts, and TV shows.

“We’re excited that long-standing local community spaces such as the Lesbian Herstory Archives are right around the corner [from Nitehawk],” director of programming Nick McCarthy tells Brooklyn Magazine.

Part of NewFest’s solidarity with BAM and Nitehawk has to do with their common struggle to recover from the pandemic.

“The sense of working together to gather audiences around community-driven programming while featuring the best and boldest cinematic offerings is even more meaningful now,” says McCarthy.

Boundary-pushing feature films like “The Scary of Sixty-First” from outspoken director Dasha Nekrasova is the first movie by the Red Scare podcast co-host and “Succession” actor. “Scary” screens at Nitehawk Prospect Park this Thursday followed by a Q&A with producer Mark Rapaport and cast member Betsey Brown. More on the film below.

“We’ve seen that our Brooklyn audiences tend to be more adventurous moviegoers when it comes to formally innovative work,” says McCarthy. “We’re also excited to see younger, and more trans and non-binary, audiences attend events in Brooklyn, and therefore [we] curated towards audiences being able to exist in a safe space and see themselves reflected onscreen.”

The festival’s boldest works are also their shortest.

On Saturday, NewFest’s “The Future is Queer” program features the best short form queer sci-fi and fantasy stories at Nitehawk Prospect Park.

Put on your big church hat and come back for “Sense & Spirituality” this Sunday. The program features shorts about Muslim, Jewish and Christian queer people, explored in serious and playful ways.

This year’s festival runs in Brooklyn through Sunday, October 24. Check out ticket availability and other ticket packages on NewFest’s website. Proof of full vaccination (at least two weeks after the final dose) of any FDA- or WHO-approved vaccine is required for everyone attending.

We selected five films and shorts programs we think you should see this Thursday through Sunday at BAM and Nitehawk Prospect Park.

“Bring Down the Walls,” Director: Phil Collins.
Showing at BAM on Thursday, October 21
This documentary examines the U.S. prison system through the lens of house music, telling the story of a political collective and anti-incarceration dance party in Lower Manhattan. Filmmaker Phil Collins joins with Black queer artists and activists to chronicle the history of this public art project and its mission of exuberant survival.

Blending the ballroom culture of “Paris is Burning” with the fiery activism of “How to Survive a Plague,” “Bring Down the Walls” is a loud cry against mass incarceration, a showcase of nightlife in downtown New York, and a joyous call for equity on the dance floor and beyond.

“The Scary of Sixty-First,” Director: Dasha Nekrasova
Showing at Nitehawk Prospect Park on Thursday, October 21
A cheap Upper East Side apartment seems like a dream for roommates Addie (Betsey Brown) and Noelle (Madeline Quinn), but when the apartment’s odd history indicates it all might be ”too good to be true,” the pair begin unraveling the dark secrets of their new home and its notorious former owner.

Addressing the #MeToo movement and contemporary conspiracy theories with satire, wit, and thrills, Dasha Nekrasova’s directorial debut is a biting genre-bender that brings “Eyes Wide Shut” into the QAnon age.

This film will be followed by a Q+A with Producer Mark Rapaport and cast member Betsey Brown.

“Cut!,” Director: Marc Ferrer
Showing at Nitehawk Prospect Park on Thursday, October 21

Marcos is a struggling director desperate to produce his low-budget queer take on Italian Giallo thrillers. But when the cast and crew begin to die gruesome deaths, he becomes both a prime suspect for investigators and the killer’s potential next target.

Marc Ferrer’s vibrant horror-comedy melds mystery and unabashed pastiche with an early Almodóvarian sense of humor. Featuring Spanish icons including Samantha Hudson and La Prohibida, “Cut!” is a rollicking meta slasher showcasing the weird, wonderful world of queer artists in Spain and Catalonia.

Short films:
This weekend two programs of progressive short films come to Nitehawk Prospect Park. First up on Saturday, October 23 is “The Future is Queer,” featuring shorts from the US, Germany and Greece. Their stories range from sci-fi to fantasy and place queer people at the frontier of the new world, wherever it may take us. Some highlights include “Red String of Fate” by directors Lovina Yavari and Lance Fernandes. The short is based in the year 2090, about a robotics engineer who tries to bring her love back to life as an android. Director Thanasis Tsimpinis’ “Escaping the Fragile Planet” is about two men who have an unexpected liaison as a strange pink fog spreads, a few hours before the world ends.

On Sunday, October 24 the shorts program “Sense & Spirituality” closes out the final weekend of NewFest in Brooklyn. These short films challenge the narrative that faith and the LGBTQ+ community are entirely at odds. The stories feature gay angels, queer-inclusive mosques, and an intersex rabbi. Brooklyn filmmakers Jane Stiles and Meryl Jones Williams lead off the program with “The Love Spell” about a babysitter and young boy who cast, you guessed it, a love spell. Another stand out is “Unity Mosque” by director Nicole Teeny, about the world’s first Queer-affirming and gender-equal mosque, based in Toronto.