"You've seen more gay movies than you think"

Queer Lisboa is the only portuguese national LGTB film festival. Once a year, exhibitions of the most relevant creations in the area are held in various and famous theaters and cinemas around Lisbon, providing the opportunity for the grand public to view them (since the access to these movies it's somewhat restricted. For example, I've never seen a outspoken gay movie and a major theater. I suppose that speaks for the ignorance of my fellow contrymen. But that's a whole other subject).

But the festival is more than just the movies - although all the ones being exhibited are in the run for Best Film, Best Short-Film and Best Documentary. Queer Lisboa is also about seminars with the directors, or lectures about a particular country or theme portraited in one of the movies, or even retrospectives about homosexuality in the history of cinema, amongst many other parallel pedagogical activities.

"There's lots of people that simply won't go to Queer because they think they won't like it or aren't ready to see movies with gay and lesbian characters. Which just sounds like prejudice.", explains the co-author of the campaign made to promote the festival in 2011. So then: what to do to fight that prejudice and to get people outside the LGBT community to come to the festival? 

Action, science-fiction or road movies served as an insipiration to the making of several publicity spots. The objective? To let the grand and mostly heterosexual public know that, as their slogan states, they have seen more gay movies than they think. The clips above and below were two of those spots, the first one referring to the famous movie Thelma and Louise. Fuel, the company that produced the spots, therefore managed to specialise the product being sold - in this case not exactly a product, but a event - successfuly. These very short clips leave the viewer thinking if, in all truthfulness, most of the movies he or she has seen have gay characters in it, and that there's only one way to find out: going to Queer Lisbon.

"The so called traditional cinema is full of gay characters. The difference is that the ones exhibited at Queer's already got out og the closet" (by Fuel's creative director).

(reference to Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs)

Sources:

www.queerlisboa.pt

Ana Nascimento