CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The GayCharlotte Film Festival returns to the Queen City for their fifth year on Thursday, featuring nearly a dozen LGBT-themed films. The event runs through Sunday, featuring documentaries, comedies and dramas.
On Thursday, the festival opens with a 7 p.m. showing of “Baby Jane?”, a campy remake of the cult horror classic starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The Thursday showing and all other films will be screened at Theatre Charlotte, 501 Queens Rd. in Charlotte.
Other films to be presented include “The Skinny,” a feature film recounting the story of five Brown University classmates and their reunion in New York City; “Going Down in LA-LA Land,” a feature exploring one young aspiring actor’s quest to make it in Hollywood; and “Cloudburst,” an award-winning film about a lesbian couple and their adventure to get married in Canada after escaping from their nursing home. A full list of films can be found at gaycharlottefilmfestival.com.
Two documentaries, “Raid of the Rainbow Lounge” and “United in Anger: A History of ACT UP,” will be screened with Q&As following.
“Raid” director Robert L. Camina, with whom qnotes spoke for a short feature in our April 12 print edition, will be in Charlotte for the North Carolina premiere of his documentary. That film will screen on Saturday at 7 p.m.
“United in Anger,” a documentary on the late 1980s and early 1990s HIV/AIDS activist group, will screen on Sunday, 1 p.m., Â include a conversation with Dale Pierce, a former staffer at Rosedale Infectious Diseases and founder of Different Roads Home, a new non-profit providing support and services to individuals with HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases. As a college student between 1988 and 1992, Pierce participated in some ACT UP activities.
“At the international HIV conference last year, there was a lot of talk around do we, as providers, advocates, community and individuals, need to get back into an ACT UP mentality,” Pierce said. “Have we become too complacent with the way we treat HIV and the way we get the word out to the community?
“That’s something I’m really interested in leading a discussion about and seeing where that goes,” he said.
Tickets for the event are $8 for each showing or $65 for all 10 films.
The film festival is presented by The LGBT Community Center of Charlotte with support from the Arts and Science Council and Charlotte Lesbian and Gay Fund.