Cerise Howard was 16 years old when she saw Peter Jackson’s first film, Bad Taste, in the grand Embassy theatre in Wellington, New Zealand. It left a lasting impression.
The zero-budget film – starring Jackson himself alongside puppet aliens harvesting humans for their intergalactic fast food franchise – garnered enough of a following to catapult Jackson into the wider film industry.
For Howard, the “ridiculous splatter comedy”, as she puts it, held added appeal as it was shot at a beach near her home.
“It captured my imagination that someone local might actually be doing such a project, and then actually managed to get it into cinemas … Seeing such a film develop a local cult following really helped to draw me in as a spectator.”
Howard’s subsequent experience as a cinema writer, curator and academic culminated in her being appointed program director of this year’s 33rd Melbourne Queer film festival. Sitting down for lunch with Guardian Australia on a windy, drizzling afternoon in St Kilda’s Galleon cafe, she says she has tried to bring to this year’s festival a more historical perspective on queer film, something she describes as her “superpower”.
The theme of this year’s festival is “rewind to fast forward”. “We [LGBTQ+ people] have always been here, so it’s vital we engage with our history,” Howard says.
At the program launch, audiences were treated to a screening of the 1918 Ernst Lubitsch German silent drag comedy I don’t want to be a man, accompanied by a live bespoke soundtrack played by Melbourne musician Evelyn Ida Morris, AKA Pikelet, on the grand 1929 pipe organ.
“It mattered a lot to have this launch in Melbourne town hall – as grand a civic space as possible,” says Howard, noting disruptions to other queer events wreaked by the far right in Victoria earlier this year. “To screen a drag-themed film matters [right now].
“And one [from 1918] that features a woman experimenting with drag – it speaks volumes to the fact that we’ve always been here and people have been playing with gender for a long time.”
The language in some of the festival’s historic films “may be considered problematic today”, Howard says, pointing to terms like “sex change operation” rather than gender affirmation surgery in 1953 drama Glen or Glenda. “But it’s important we are able to collectively not just enjoy, but be educated by films of yesteryear.”
Howard is well known in both Melbourne’s film and broader arts scene as co-curator of the Melbourne Cinematheque, cofounder of the Czech and Slovak film festival of Australia and cofounding member of Tilde: Melbourne Trans and Gender Diverse film festival.
She has also performed with a number of punk acts since the late 1990s, and currently plays bass in “a queer punk rock’n’roll spectacular”, The Legend of Queen Kong.
As the biggest, and oldest, queer film festival in Australia, MQFF has never been afraid to push boundaries, and this year is no different. Provocative films in this year’s program include Femme, in which the central character seeks violent revenge for being beat up on the streets of London; and a trashy, camp animated feature from Berlin, Captain Faggotron, featuring a giant anus floating through the sky.
“We need to see our community in all its diversity, but we don’t need to see us all painted as saints – because we’re not,” she Howard. “We are complex, nuanced human beings capable of good and bad.
“We’d be doing audiences a disservice if we tried to paint a utopian vision of our lives – because no one could relate to that anyway. So the stories shouldn’t aim to be universal but particular – because in that particularity I think people can see themselves and engage more.”
Howard points to the opening night film I love you Beksman, a film ostensibly about someone “coming out as being straight”.
“It shows that just because someone may not be same-sex attracted they can still be profoundly queer,” she says. ”A film can be queer without [being] … about people who are gay or lesbian or bi – sometimes queerness can just be in the fabric of a film itself.”
While emphasising that the festival is very much a team effort, Howard says one of her primary motivations is “doing right” by a diverse queer community; being intersectional without being tokenistic. Howard wants audiences to look beyond their own identity and outside their comfort zone.
“I think through film people can come out to themselves in ways that can be both lifelong and enriching.”
Five themes at this year’s festival, as suggested by Cerise Howard
Rewind to fast forward
To know who we’re becoming, it pays to know who we’ve been. The nine landmark historical queer films from every which where and when are must-sees at MQFF33, including daring ‘90s Chinese drama East Palace, West Palace; the original French-Italian Birdcage, La Cage aux Folles; and Melbourne’s very own Head On (now 25!).
Queers and balls
Matildas-mania was an epic win, proving queers and sport needn’t be strange bedfellows. Be sure to catch Marinette, Equal the Contest and Offside and a score-settling Queers in Sport panel discussion.
Made by Melburnians
Don’t miss the Victorian premiere of Goran “Of an Age” Stolevski’s third feature, Housekeeping for Beginners (or his masterclass!). See also Sunflower, In the Meantime, Shape and Single, Out as well as shorts galore.
Gender non-conformity
From a glorious opening night romcom interrogating gender norms (I Love You, Beksman) to 10 films by non-binary and trans film-makers (including two from Australian prodigy Alice Maio Mackay), this is the most genderqueer MQFF yet!
Shorts
Who doesn’t love short shorts? Longer ones, too. We’ve 11 in-cinema shorts packages, and 13 online (the extra two compile shorts screening before features), catering to queers and cinephiles of every persuasion.
