FOLLOWING the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the British Film Institute’s Flare festival of LGBTIQ+ films moved online and drew an enthusiastic response from audiences.

Celebrating the sixth year of the #fivefilmsforfreedom campaign, Flare highlighted some of the most compelling LGBTIQ+ narratives broadcast internationally, including countries where LGBTIQ+ rights are not recognised.

By moving online, the festival drew people together in a time of anxiety to celebrate talent, spark debate and promote sexual freedom. With independent film-makers now facing something of an existential threat globally, some of the films such as Queer Qorma and Drag Ball have not yet been released but are still worth watching out for in future.

Below are my pick of the festival's best, and most of the films, Q&As and trailers can be found on the BFI’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvkgGofjDzgJy9nPZoqwKF_CnKui_7g8.

Pride + Protest (Blaise Singh, UK 2020) is a fresh new documentary feature from Rainbow Films which focuses on queer people of colour (QPOC).        

Probing into the depths of intersectionality, Pride + Protest breaks down walls of intolerance and pushes the conversation forward to broaden the agenda of the first waves of feminism, which focused on the experience of white middle-class women, and how aspects of one’s social and political identities form unique modes of discrimination in white heteronormative society.

The QPOC journey, and their actions to make positive change to discriminatory stances, takes viewers on a thrilling and vibrant ride that challenges deep-rooted and subconscious homophobia in society, from sections of the Islamic community to gay dating app Grindr.

The heteronormative society we live in challenged and the extremes of bigotry, cultural rejection and racial ostracism exposed and key QPOC actors express their true selves loudly and proudly by living their truths within queer safe spaces, where everyone can feel free to be who they are.

Straight from the archives, Drag Ball (John Samson, UK 1981) is a factual account chronicling the fashions and freedoms of LGBTQI+ life at Porchester Hall in west London, a venue for some of the capital’s most treasured and fierce queens, while A Dog Barking at the Moon (Xiang Zi, Spain 2019) is a gently paced portrait of family tradition and personal discovery.

Set in China, where the film’s subject is banned, the performance of Li Jiumei as family matriarch Naren Hua carries the film’s sometimes outrageous narrative throughout.

The matriarch’s bizarre values ultimately find solace in an exploitative Buddhist cult in an ambitious film which, mediating on queer worlds in a heteronormative society, is delivered with style and humour.

The short film Tribute (Max Disgrace and Lina Bembe, 2018) is a fragmented and sensual reimagining of a lesbian cruising ground in London. A response to Annette Kennerley's 1993 Sex Lies Religion, it comes at a time when physical spaces for lesbians to freely express their sexuality in London is scarce.

Tribute is a materialisation of this fantasy space in film form, enacted in the same historic cruising ground, Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, where Kennerley shot her film decades before — a gleeful slice of femme-gaze eroticism.

Eyelash (Jesse Lewis-Reece, UK 2019) is another adaptation, this time of the work of spoken- word poet Neil Hilborn and his emotive poem OCD.

An experimental short, Eyelash deals with mental health and love and takes a compassionate gaze into relationships as we follow “him” and “her” as they navigate the world of love and its ending,

Abigail Yartey tweets: @ValleydelaDolls