Tampa International Gay & Lesbian Film FestivalLast year was my first experience of the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (TIGLFF). I’m a student at the University of Tampa, and I’d never heard about the fest until a professor suggested films we could see and write about for extra credit.
Oct. 3-11 at Tampa Theatre, freeFall Theatre and Museum of Fine Art, St. Petersburg, tiglff.com.
The festival is a longtime tradition for the gay community in Tampa Bay, but it was all new to me: the glowing marquee, the ornate architecture, the feeling of togetherness as I sat down with fellow LGBT moviegoers to watch a documentary about Mark Bingham, the gay rugby player who was a passenger on United Flight 93 on 9/11.
Unfortunately, in 2013, I was only able to see that one film. This year, TIGLFF turns 25 years old, and I’m planning to see one film every day of the festival, which runs from Oct. 3-11. But before doing so, I wanted to talk with someone who is directly involved, and what better person to interview than Margaret Murray, who was hired as executive director this year for the second time after her first run in 2001-2003.
Murray has been passionate about film since she was a child. The first movies she remembers seeing were The Blue Bird with Elizabeth Taylor, and a short film about aerialists at the Ringling Museum of Art, where she says she was the only one in the museum audience clapping like crazy. When her parents took her to the drive-in, she’d be the only child to stay awake while others fell asleep.
Along with working at TIGLFF in the past, Murray was executive director from 2006-2009 for One in Ten, which produces the Reel Affirmations film festival in Washington D.C., which also caters to the LGBT community.
“One thing I really value in filmmaking is innovation,” she says. “If you’re telling a story in a different way, if you are filming in a different way, If the plot is structured differently, that is key to me,” Murray said. She once traveled to Eastern Europe to see where Emir Kusturica, one of her favorite filmmakers of all time, shot some of his films.
While in D.C., Murray continued to work as a programmer for TIGLFF, but after a few years she decided to come back to Tampa.
“I love it here. It is home for me. My family is here. My home is here. Every time I would come back, I would just realize how much i missed it,” Murray said.
However, as of recently, it’s not such an easy time to run a film festival, either to find venues for the films or audiences to attend them.
“A lot of arts funding has dried up. … Films have definitely suffered,” says Murray. “I understand why the megaplexes need Guardians of the Galaxy, and why they need Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. That’s their business model. I think for a long time film festivals were a small part of [that] business model, but as film festivals’ market changes, we don’t really fit in there.”
Because of this shift, TIGLFF has moved its St. Pete screenings to freeFall and the Museum of Fine Art.
But the fest has not suffered any scheduling problems at its home base, Tampa Theatre, where the festival was launched in 1990. Murray said that the theater and the festival helped each other out in the early ’90s, bringing people downtown when nothing much else was happening in the area — even if the reason they showed up was to protest the fest.
A picture of two unidentified men holding the rainbow flag with the KKK behind them was recently posted to TIGLFF’s Facebook page to show some of the pushback the festival faced in its early years.
“If you put yourself in that photo and you have your back turned to KKK protesters as a gay man, what an act of bravery that is,” said Murray. “Just to stand there with the rainbow flag and say, ‘I’m not going to let you harm anyone!’”
Murray says that the very first poster for the film festival was an image of two eyes in the dark, its message “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” because it was almost an act of civil disobedience to attend a gay and lesbian film festival in Tampa in the early ’90s. Strong police presence was also a must back in the early days.
Even though protests are not much of a problem anymore, TIGLFF attracts the random demonstrator every now and then, usually a guy with a blowhorn threatening eternal damnation. According to Murray, Florida’s mixed record on LGBT rights has been a boon for the festival.
“In a state where for a long time the gay community has felt like they have had to fight for their rights, it becomes this act of defiance,” Murray said. “You are not going to ignore me, and if you are going to ignore me legislatively, at least you are not going to ignore me artistically.”
The festival this year wants to draw more of the younger LGBT community. Murray researched ticket sales and found that 1 percent of the tickets sold were student tickets. She then made the decision to let anyone 18 and under in for free. This year’s schedule features a Youth Celebration on Oct. 4, where LGBT youths can meet others from the area.
“I get goosebumps just thinking about that. It means that you can come, you can bring your gay friends, you can bring your straight friends. Whoever. Thats something I’m really excited about,” Murray said. “Making sure that we offer a space with information that has been curated that gives gay kids that international perspective, and they know that they are safe and welcomed.”
After my interview with Murray, I began thinking about what the TIGLFF festival means to me as a gay student.
It means a place I can go to watch issues that I face. It’s where I can relate to characters and put myself in the film. It’s a place to feel welcome, where I can go to show my support, where I can meet others who are like me and some who are different.
The festival is strong, just like our community, and will remain that way for many, many years to come.
Happy 25th, TIGLFF!
Mark Sugden, a senior at the University of Tampa, is a Creative Loafing intern for Fall 2014.