Way OUT West Film Fest, Albuquerque
October 13 – 22, 2017
Celebrating its fifteenth year, the Way OUT West Film Fest (formerly the Southwest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival) in Albuquerque will include thirty-four screenings over ten days, from October 13 through October 22. Chavela (2017), a music documentary directed by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi, brings light to the life and career of Chavela Vargas, a Mexican lesbian folk singer and sexual outlaw, drawing on never-before-seen interview footage and recollections. Tom of Finland (2017), a Finnish biopic directed by Dome Karukoski, follows Touko Laaksonen (Pekka Strang) in post-WWII Helsinki, where heteronormative pressures to marry dictate the lives of many gay men. Instead, Laaksonen begins drawing men’s bodies and finds fame and freedom in Los Angeles, signing his drawings “Tom of Finland” and eventually becoming a gay icon. In the documentary The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin (2017), director Jennifer M. Kroot interviews writers and actors who were influenced by the beloved southern fiction writer, and Maupin reflects on his life as a pioneer for gay rights in AIDS-crisis-era San Francisco. In Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country (2017), a sheep farmer in rural Britain finds companionship with a Romanian migrant worker—a Yorkshire Brokeback Mountain. In addition to these award-winning films, the festival will present collections of short films in a variety of short programs categories: Silver Linings, films by LGBTQ elders; De Colores, which celebrates people of color on screen; Gender Fabulous, a set of films about trans and gender-nonbinary experience; and several programs by LGBTQ youth. Screenings will take place at Flix Brewhouse, South Broadway Cultural Center, and Guild Cinema in Albuquerque.
