The Gayest Film Festival of All

The 2008 Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival... is quite a mouthful. So we'll be calling it PIGLFF from now on. Anyway, the festival's official website went online yesterday, and tickets went on sale, too, so it's past time to put your schedule together! You can check out a pdf of the festival program right here (the only difference between it and the Philadelphia Film Festival program is that this one spends a lot more time pointing out how hot all the guys are in each film). Some of the films that caught our eye include: closing night film Were the World Mine, in which our main character gets cast opposite his crush, a hot rugby player, in a boys' school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, causing quite a stir in the Christian fundamentalist town—and he plans to stir things up even more by concocting a potion to make people gay based on a recipe he finds in the script; a screening of a brand new print of Midnight Cowboy, director John Schlesinger's tale of a naive male prostitute's life on the streets of New York—somehow we've never gotten around to seeing this classic film, and this presentation sounds like a special treat, as it will also feature Jon Voight's original screen test, and special appearances from cast, crew, and Schlesinger's surviving domestic partner; Bangkok Love Story, an action thriller with a romance at its heart, about a cold-blooded assassin-for-hire who falls for the police informant he's been sent to kill; Boystown, a dark comedy about a real estate agent who's been murdering elderly women, disguising them as “suicides,” and then quickly flipping their apartments to upwardly-mobile gay couples; Otto; Or, Up With Dead People, a cheeky take on the zombie genre from Canadian provocateur Bruce LaBruce; NightDragon, a frenetic crime thriller in the style of Bound in which a young prosecutor is caught in the crossfire when she discovers that her lover is a hitwoman for the vicious thug she is about to try; On the Other Hand, Death, the latest chapter in the Donald Strachey series, adapted from Richard Stevenson’s classic gay private eye novels; Polymath, or the Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman, a documentary about the noted science fiction author, Temple University creative writing professor, and relentless sex cruiser; Triple X Selects: The Best of Lesploitation, a collection of some of the most erotic and hard-to-find lesbian footage ever assembled, put together by director Michelle Johnson (L.A.-based musician and DJ Triple X), who will expound in person on her selection with a history lesson including some juicy facts about the genre and the actresses and filmmakers who worked in it; and the lesbian vampire film Vampire Diary. And those are just some of the enormous number of films being screened at PIGLFF this year. So take a look through the rest of the program and grab tickets to your favorites before they sell out!

The 2008 Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Featuring many screenings at many venues throughout the city
Thu, 7/10/08 - Tue, 7/22/08
Get Tickets

Image via the official PIGLFF website