Outfest: Hollywood LGBTQ makes major plea

"Historically I've seen Outfest centered around white folks," Eve Xelestial Moreno-Luz said, in Los Angeles native who first learned of the Los Angeles-based queer film festival in 2013 while Googling for trans media outlets. Five years later, Moreno-Luz attended the Latinx Night, a new event in the predominantly Latinx region of East LA, which featured local queer vendors and performers alongside a screening of the new movie Skate Kitchen.

Outfest Latnix Night was just one of many attempts by the film festival to change the narrative representation in Hollywood. This year, the 11-day festival – which ended with a display of The Miseducation of Cameron Post – broadened screening and content to include underrepresented groups as part of their new initiative We're In Your Neighborhood . Two-thirds of the directors of the 234 feature films, shorts, and TV episodes were female, trans, and / or people of color.

"Much in line with the #MeToo movement, we're going to bring these underrepresented voices to "Lucy Mukerjee, Outfest's director of programming, told EW."

Mukerjee says "increased representation on screen spurred and mixed audiences". Nearly three-fourths of Latinx Outfest are waiting for the week. "Said director director Christopher Racster, who also used a program of screening Queeroes a short film web series elevating queer, trans, and POC storytelling and curated by Transparent creator Jill Soloway for Time's Up 50/50 by 2020 mission.

Across town, Footloose choreographer Jamal Sims firsted his directorial debut When the Beat Drops which won the Grand Jury prize for the Best Documentary Feature at Outfest. The movie, out August 9 on Logo, explores bucking, a dance form popular among gay men in the South. Sims says his perspective is a black, gay dancer made the outsider-resistant community trust him enough to allow him to film them. He recalls saying: "If you guys do not allow me to help you tell your own stories," somebody is gonna say it for you, and it's going to be incorrect. "

The call for accurate LGBTQ representation dominated the festival's numerous panels on various sectors of the community. During the panel Bi in the Biz, speakers struggled to think of TV's bibadual characters and actors – Brooklyn Nine-Nine 's Stephanie Beatriz and Gray's Anatomy ' s Sara Ramirez were mentioned, but Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Travon writer Free remained stumped: As a black bibadual male, he routinely feels invisible. "We're so far behind in terms of having a TV show," said Free, who's developing an HBO comedy based on his experiences Insecure ' s Issa Rae .

A few days earlier, during the LGBTQ + women in Hollywood panel, train BuzzFeed Motion Pictures producer Ashly Perez lamented badist press questions. "What cameras are you using?" How do you pick that angel? – things that other filmmakers get to talk about when their identity is taken for granted, "she said.

Angelica Hernandez for Outfest; Paul Archuleta / FilmMagic; Rich Polk / Getty Images

Outfest featured appearances by high-profile actors Miseducation 's Chloë Grace Moretz, Wild Nights with Emily ' s Molly Shannon, and US Narrative Feature winner We the Animals 'Raul Castillo. Having played a series of queer characters – including Richie on HBO's short-lived series Looking – the actor, who identifies as straight, told EW he takes it by project when signing on to play a gay character. "A great script is a great script, but it would have to be represented," Castillo said.

Transgender representation took center stage for a second year with the Trans Summit. Yance Ford, who recently became the first person to be nominated for an Academy Award, gave a keynote speech, addressing Scarlett Johansson's recent controversy. Yance credited the actress for stepping down a role in the film Rub & Tug while noting the project has seemingly stalled. He then called for the queer community's Hollywood gatekeepers to uplift its most disadvantaged members. (19659003) Out of the roughly 1,500 motion picture films Outfest received, only 10 percent feature in the lead, and even then, most are documentaries. It's one of many discouraging statistics Mukerjee hopes to change. With this year's festival now over, she's focused on continuing the year-round outreach and seeking to increase content at the next year's festival. She added: "While every year we are more and more inclusive and more voices, there's always more work to do and people to embrace."