October 11-18, 2007
Atlanta, Georgia

• Attendance
• Opening Night
• The Films
• Projection Problems
• Closing Night
• Awards

by Jay Blodgett

Out On Film, IMAGE Film and Video's annual LGBT film festival launched on October 11 for an eight day run at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema here in Atlanta. (The festival also played at a second venue, Theatre Decatur; however, I was unable to fit those screenings into my schedule.)

The Midtown Art Cinemas is an eight-screen art house, with two of the screens devoted to the film festival. The schedule wasn't too severely packed, as there was generally a 45- minute gap between the start times of the two screens, which avoided the chaos that occurred at the Atlanta Film Festival in April.

  Attendance?

Also, from the size of the opening night audience, it would seem that Out On Film (even after 20 years!) is not as avidly attended as the Atlanta Film Festival (sponsored by the same group) -- which is sort of puzzling given the relatively large gay and lesbian community in Atlanta (a culture shock in itself to me as a recent transplant from San Francisco).

I spent the past 15 years in San Francisco and annually attended Frameline's LGBT film festival, which has been referred to as "the Cannes Film Festival of queer cinema." I used to think that was an overstatement, until now. I hesitate to compare these two events (OOF and Frameline), but I'll just say that compared to the 12 to 16 screenings a day for the 11-day festival in San Francisco, IMAGE's schedule was a breeze! (There was the infamous year that Frameline extended the fest for an additional week - 17 DAYS!! - but that brought the staff and most of the audience to the brink of exhaustion. Not to mention the 'seat wars' that flared up in the Castro Theatre! But, I digress...)

Also, the benefit of screening in October in Atlanta, over S.F.'s screening up to and including Gay Pride Day in June, is that one is not crushed nor 'distracted' by the tidal wave of tourists that descend upon the city.

The final attendance tally for seven days of OOF, according to IMAGE, ended up being around 2,900. Hmmm...

READ ON FOR MORE ABOUT OPENING NIGHT >>

NOTE: As a matter of record, personal or otherwise, and to give a more complete picture of what was programmed for this year's Out On Film, I recap in detail all the features and shorts I screened at "Life with Movies and Maxxxxx."