Outfest LA 2016 set for its July 2-week run

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, now’s the time to catch the Outfest LA 2016 LGBT Film Festival running from July 7-17.

The Outfest LA filmfest will be showcasing a total of 162 films representing 19 countries, and with 43 percent of the films directed by women.

The movies will be screened at the Harmony Gold theater and Directors Guild of America on Sunset Boulevard. Others will also be shown at REDCAT downtown and the newly-renovated Ford Theatres on Cahuenga Boulevard.

Outfest LA 2016: The collective story

The 11-day film festival is organized by Outfest, an LA-based nonprofit organization founded by UCLA students in 1982 that promotes equality through LGBT stories on the screen.

Outfest Executive Director Christopher Racster and Lucy Mukerjee-Brown, the Festival Director of Programming, wrote in a message on the Outfest website that the movies document “all our story” and that “our collective voice matters.”

“Every year, we urge you to explore and to discover stories that might not, at first, seem to be about your own experience,” they said. “Our hope is that you will walk away from this year’s festival with a deeper understanding of the breadth of our community.”

Racster pointed out that: “At a time when the cultural zeitgeist is using differences to drive us apart, these films intimately show us that each of our stories matters and each needs a platform to be heard, understood and respected.”

Meanwhile, Mukerjee-Brown said that “when there is some concern about film production in Los Angeles, it was heartening to see local, independent filmmakers making use of the rich diversity of this city to propel their storytelling.”

Outfest LA 2016: Showcasing different stories

The Outfest LA 2016 filmfest will open with Clea DuVall’s The Intervention and close with a Sundance Film Festival highlight Other People, which was written and directed by Chris Kelly.

Other highlights of the festival will be Paul Feig’s all-female remake of the Ghostbusters as well as Sundance notable documentary Kiki.

Aside from movies and documentaries, the Outfest LA 2016 filmfest will also feature spotlight screenings, from Hulu’s season 2 premiere of Difficult People to comedian Tig Notaro’s series One Mississippi from Amazon.

HBO’s Looking: The Movie and The Trans List, Amazon’s season 3 premiere of Transparent, and TBS’ new comedy Search Party will also be part of the screenings.

Other highlights of the festival are Spa Night by Andrew Ahn, Esteros by Gerald “Papu” Curotto, Ava’s Impossible Things by Marina Rice Bader, and King Cobra by Justin Kelly.

There will also be digital series, like the premiere of For Ex-Lovers Only by Andrew Gitomer, and the Season 2 premiere of The Chadwick Journals by Deondray Gossett and Quincy LeNear.

Check out the latest issue of LesbianNews to see our favored picks from the Outfest LA 2016 film festival.

You can also watch the Outfest video below to see the featured films.