BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival is 30 years old in 2016

Since starting life in 1986 as Gay’s Own Pictures, BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival (formerly BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival) has brought the best in international queer cinema to the South Bank. The festival has evolved to become one of the highlights in the LGBT cultural calendar, a place for the breadth of the community, and a few of our honoured friends, to meet and watch and talk and drink and dance and debate.

It’s a precious event that means so much to so many and to celebrate we’d like to invite all festival friends – members of the audience, filmmaking alumni, staff and volunteers past and present – to join us at BFI Southbank and tell us to camera in 30 words and in one word what the festival means to you; why queer film festivals and celebrations of LGBT culture are still relevant today and for the future, or just share a festival memory with us. We’ll use the footage in a few trailers which will be shown at BFI Southbank before and during the festival, as well as social media channels including Facebook and Twitter.

We have two filming days, Saturday 16 and Saturday 23 January between 11:00 and 14:00. If you would like to be take part please email us at bfiflare30@bfi.org.uk letting us know your availability at these times. If you can’t make the filming days we’d still love for you to submit a short video to this address, by 30 January.

Don’t worry about being camera-shy, it’s very informal, and don’t worry about memorising a pithy speech – we won’t really be counting the words!