“Queer goes beyond LGBT”: In&Out festival director explains the difference between queer and LGBT cinema

A movie queerand what ?

What is LGBT cinema? What about LGBTQIA+ cinema?

Are all these names right? synonyms ? They highlight differencesfrom the contradictions or rather complementarity between movies?

While the LGBTQ+ In&Out film festival opened in Nice on Thursday 6 April, to miss met its director, Benoit Arnulf. At the origin of an exciting film program like protesters, originals, feminists and emancipatorshe explained to us what were the specificities of queer cinema, in the great family of LGBT cinema.

it is something very strange because it goes beyond the LGBT issue.

Meeting with Benoit Arnulf

strange cinema it disturbs, crosses boundaries and defies norms

Benoît Arnulf. In France, there are LGBT festivals and queer festivals. It is important to say that it is not the same thing and to return to the meaning of the word queer:

We are inside LGBTQIA+, Let’s meet up. In LGBTQit’s not that we don’t meet, but these are films geared more towards issues relating to sexual and gender orientations and identities. We realized that even though we were completely connected with LGBT festival programming, we wanted to try and characterize ourselves a little differently.

We like to think there is other possibilitiesthat we can widen the spectrum of representations towards which to go the uncanny, the overflowing, on the margins, in contesting the norms. And indeed, norms in sexuality are cis heterosexual norms. The In&Out festival is there to highlight this cinema that turns these norms upside down.

An LGBT film is not necessarily queer

The idea is not to focus exclusively on dramas or comedies that revolve around feelings, relationships, homosexuality or bisexuality. Or, films that address the theme of integration, inclusion, acceptance of transidentity. The films in our program fully adhere to these definitions, but they are far from limited to them..

For example, most of Émilie Jouvet’s films tell of same-sex love affairs between women, but also addresses much broader issues of the body, sexuality, the empowerment of lovers, the empowerment of individuals, and especially women through their sexuality.

Likewise, Yann Gonzalez likes it a lot trouble, in genre cinemaall those things they do his cinema is queer and not necessarily LGBT. And that, it is something very strange because it goes beyond the LGBT issue.

Yan Gonzales also started a production company with Bertrand Mandico, another director who makes films very strange, which can confuse many people. The shape of the films of him can look like violent – ​​though not really, cruel, political.

Of course, the mere act of depicting gay and lesbian love stories is necessarily political. making these sexualities visible is political. But then there’s also a real way of asking questions in a contesting way. Queer is protest.