Return of the GAZE

By Tessa Fleming

Gaze Dublin LGBT International Film Festival is returning, by popular demand, to the Light House Cinema in Smithfield tomorrow (5th December).
The festivals organiser, David Mullane said, “This is the first year of The Best of GAZE. We had such a tremendous response from our audiences during the summer festival, with many requests for rescreening’s that we decided a small mini-fest would be a great idea to bridge the gap between last August and next.”
The Best of Gaze will feature four of the festivals “most-loved” films, “The Perfect Family”, “Vito”, “Keep the Lights On” and “Wish Me Away”, all of which were filmed in U.S.A. According to Mullane, the festival “is a celebration of gay filmmaking but it also as much about gathering the gay community in a festival setting.”
With the Liberties only a stone’s throw across the Liffey from Smithfield, Gaze hope to attract an audience from D8’s gay community. According to the General Register Office, half of civilly partnered couples live in Dublin, with the majority settling down in this cosmopolitan neighbourhood.
The Very Reverend Viktor Stacey from St Patrick’s Church in D8 disagrees with this statement saying, “I wouldn’t have thought it was. I think it’s just an area like all others, with a mixture of people.”
He however, doesn’t “see the harm in it. People who want to go will go and those who don’t want to don’t have to go. Live and let live.”
With the festival growing in popularity GAZE has found itself not only a larger audience, but a wider one too. “According to our audience survey at this year’s fest, we had people from Canada to Colombia to China!”
This is the 20th year of the festival, with this year’s organiser, David Mullane viewing over 150 films all over the world in his process of selection earlier in the year.
The festival kicked off with “The Prefect Family”, a dramatic comedy which tells the story of “a devout wife and mother who has just been nominated for Catholic woman of the year,” and the lengths she will go to understand her daughters homosexuality.
The festival finishes up with two screening this evening, with “Keep the Lights on” showing at 7.30pm.