Planet London is proud to recommend this event as one to go to in April. Fringe! was originally set up to top up the BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival after it was reduced in size, and even though the film festival is now a week and a half, we're pleased that Fringe! is back in 2012.
Date: 12-15 April 2012
A brief history of Fringe!
So Fringe! started last year as a queer community fightback to the funding cuts at the BFI's London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival when it slashed to less than half it's size in arts cuts carnage.
We were a small team of queer creatives, who were all gutted about the cuts to the main festival. So working for free, with no funding and in just 8 weeks we set up and staged a 25 event DIY film festival. The festival was eclectic and playfully political with special screenings, talks, performance and parties. In a range of venues from lovely 400 seat cinemas to pop up screening rooms in pie and mash shops - how very london! The 2011 programme is archived here: http://fringefilmfest.com/about-us/fringe-2011/whats-on-day-by-day.
None of us had any experience setting up a film festival before, so it was a crazybusy 8 weeks, with a mountain learned and only about 4 hours sleep a night. But we were surprised and thrilled when it was a heartwarmingly huge success and over 2000 people came to events across the weekend and we got lovely press in gay and mainstream media.
This year the BFI film festival was returned to it's full two weeks and we were delighted. However we decided there was definitely still a need for DIY queer fun, and for a Fringey queer film and arts festival in London. So despite still not having a penny of funding we decided to embark on another crazy mission setting up the festival for this year. I'm delighted to say we're growing it to 40 events, pulling in some of the most exciting queer film, visual arts and performance London has to offer. I'm genuinely excited by the range of events, Offbeat and mischievous, audience-focused and yet thought-provoking, the festival will celebrate the diversity and creativity of queer films and culture. Everyone who takes part from the programming team, to the curators and the performers are all still volunteers in it for the adventure.
We were a small team of queer creatives, who were all gutted about the cuts to the main festival. So working for free, with no funding and in just 8 weeks we set up and staged a 25 event DIY film festival. The festival was eclectic and playfully political with special screenings, talks, performance and parties. In a range of venues from lovely 400 seat cinemas to pop up screening rooms in pie and mash shops - how very london! The 2011 programme is archived here: http://fringefilmfest.com/about-us/fringe-2011/whats-on-day-by-day.
None of us had any experience setting up a film festival before, so it was a crazybusy 8 weeks, with a mountain learned and only about 4 hours sleep a night. But we were surprised and thrilled when it was a heartwarmingly huge success and over 2000 people came to events across the weekend and we got lovely press in gay and mainstream media.
This year the BFI film festival was returned to it's full two weeks and we were delighted. However we decided there was definitely still a need for DIY queer fun, and for a Fringey queer film and arts festival in London. So despite still not having a penny of funding we decided to embark on another crazy mission setting up the festival for this year. I'm delighted to say we're growing it to 40 events, pulling in some of the most exciting queer film, visual arts and performance London has to offer. I'm genuinely excited by the range of events, Offbeat and mischievous, audience-focused and yet thought-provoking, the festival will celebrate the diversity and creativity of queer films and culture. Everyone who takes part from the programming team, to the curators and the performers are all still volunteers in it for the adventure.
The programme and tickets will be released on 19 March 2012.
They'll be info on the Fringe website www.fringefilmfest.com | Facebook.com/fringefest | twitter.com/fringefilmfest
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