Some of the biggest stories at Out On Film this year came in the festival’s shortest packages.
Atlanta’s 39th annual Out On Film festival brought 155 narrative films, documentaries, shorts (short films) and special events to Landmark Midtown Art Cinema from Sept. 24 through Oct. 4, gathering LGBTQ+ filmmakers and audiences from Atlanta and beyond. Among the festival’s programming were dedicated local and trans shorts blocks, collections that approached queer life from different perspectives while demonstrating how much story can fit into only a few minutes on screen.
Atlanta filmmakers featured in Queer Georgia Peaches: Local Shorts put the city and its queer communities directly in the frame on Oct. 1st. The six-film program explored romance, mystery, faith, fear and queer resilience. Three films, A Westside Love Story, Scissors and Call and Response, received support from Out On Film’s Filmmaker Fund.
Few films embraced Atlanta as explicitly as Kerri Garrett’s A Westside Love Story. The short follows Tatum, a Clark Atlanta University student, and Zion, a nonbinary Spelman filmmaker, after an order mix-up at a neighborhood wing spot sends them on an unexpected journey through the city.
Garrett, who attended Clark Atlanta University, said the setting was integral to the story.
“This film is a love letter to Atlanta’s historic Westside, as well as Atlanta’s HBCUs, like the Atlanta University Center Consortium, and…our Black queer community, especially our HIV community,” Garrett said. “The love that we find at every corner is what honestly inspired this film.”
That Atlanta identity extended behind the camera. Garrett recorded music with Clark Atlanta University’s Mighty Marching Panthers, a band she danced with during her freshman year. Before the screening, she described the film simply: “This is Atlanta bred, Atlanta made, and all the things in between.”
Other filmmakers used the local shorts program to tell markedly different queer stories.
In My Dear Watson, writer-director Jacob McKee reimagines Sherlock Holmes as a gay teenager trying to uncover the identity of a secret admirer. McKee said the film was influenced by Glee, Heartstopper and the kinds of queer stories he wished he had growing up.
“I wanted to adapt something that I felt…would have been influential to me as a kid,” McKee said.
Writer-director Leandro Tadashi took a darker approach with True Love, a 17-minute short filmed in Athens about two ex-boyfriends whose attempt to reconnect reveals something troubling about their relationship.
“Even though the film’s called True Love, the love in the film is not so positive,” Tadashi said. His intended takeaway: “Loving someone can be really difficult. … We can lose ourselves if we are not careful.”
The festival’s Trans Shorts program expanded the scope of its storytelling on Sept. 27, featuring eight films exploring trans experiences through stories of romance, family, health care, identity and everyday life.
The program moved from a Pride party and drag show at a fraternity to vocal training, an uncomfortable trip to a nightclub bathroom and the emotional experience surrounding gender-affirming top surgery.
Together, the programs demonstrated what shorts can do particularly well: make room for stories that are highly specific without asking one character or filmmaker to represent an entire community.
That mission is central to Out On Film, according to Festival Director Jim Farmer.
“We all need to come together and experience each other’s work, and see each other’s work, and support each other,” Farmer said while looking out at a capacity crowd. “Filmmakers need this.”
Farmer said the festival prioritizes both local and visiting filmmakers and looks for films capable of provoking an emotional response while introducing audiences to new voices.
“Filmmakers use their films as art and as their voices,” Farmer said. “We need to hear those messages, and we need to stand united and support each other.”
Although the 39th annual festival has ended, Out On Film’s programming continues throughout the year through its Queer All Year series. The organization’s next event, Out On Film Presents Fright Night, will take place Friday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. at Founders Green downtown.
For Atlanta audiences, that continuation may be as important as the festival itself. A short film has only minutes to introduce a character, relationship or world. Put those films together however, Atlanta college students falling for each other, a teenage Sherlock Holmes finding queer romance, complicated relationships and trans characters navigating joy and uncertainty, and they form something larger: a portrait of queer life that refuses to be only one thing.
