In & Out (festival)
In&Out, originally called Rencontres Cinématographiques, was a queer film festival that took place every April in Nice and Cannes in France from 2009 to 2016. It was organized by the association Les Ouvreurs.
History
The beginnings of In&Out
In 2008, the Rencontres Cinématographiques festival of gay and lesbian films was organized by Benoît Arnulf, under the aegis of a local LGBT association that he co-founded, in partnership with certain Nice cinemas. Around twenty films were presented at the festival, it drew the interest of nearly a thousand spectators. Directors Jacques Nolot, Céline Sciamma, and Alessandro Avelis were also in attendance and met with fans.In&Out 2009: The first Rencontres
The success of 2008's Rencontres Cinématographiques incited Les Ouvreurs to organize an identical event the following year, under a new name In&Out. The first Rencontres In&Out took place from April 29 to May 5, 2009, in partnership with several cultural sites in Nice. Eclecticism reigned again in the programming, which proposed two retrospectives, a homage to film-maker poet Pier Paolo Pasolini, a Rocky Horror Show evening as lively in the audience as on the screen, and hitherto unreleased films. The critic Didier Roth-Bettoni attended to present his book, "L’homosexualité au cinema", and an exhibition of photographs celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.In&Out 2010: "Memory & Memoirs"
For its second edition, In&Out took place under its central theme of Memory & Memoirs with nearly 30 films screened. Two homages were made: the first to Magnus Hirschfeld, the Munich sexologist; and the second to the French writer Hervé Guibert, around a very moving and sincere oeuvre of words and images. Like each year, encounters with film-makers were organized – with Sébastien Lifshitz, Panos H. Koutras, Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, Louis Dupont, Jean-Gabriel Périot – broaching themes such as the "transgender question", the deportation of the "Pink Triangles", homosexuality in sport, and a focus on Greece. Previously unreleased films Ghosted by Monika Treut and El Nino Pez by Lucia Puenza opened and closed the festival and gave Lesbian cinema its due.In&Out 2011 : "Intimacy"
The third Rencontres In&Out was held from April 19 to April 27, 2011 and was attended by 3,348 festival-goers. The theme for the 2011 festival was Intimacy, and the festival welcomed several film-makers who work in the light of this theme. Directors João Pedro Rodrigues, Emilie Jouvet, and Vincent Dieutre, gave their iconoclastic views on sexuality, desire and amorous passion. Once again, In&Out welcomed Céline Sciamma for Tomboy, her latest film, rewarded at the Berlin Festival, and Louis Dupont, who closed his great trilogy on the aesthetics of the body with Les garçons du Lido.Audacity, eclecticism, and originality are as always in charge of the programming, two thirds of the 30 films shown at the festival were previously unreleased. This year the Festival paid homage to memory of gay and lesbian culture through the philosopher Michel Foucault, the writer Jean Genet, the German film-maker Werner Schroeter and the journalist and writer Jean Le Bitoux. There were also screenings of documentaries, with: Cuchillo de Palo by Renate Costa who reminds the viewers of the painful memory of Paraguay under the dictatorship of Stroessner; Beyond Gay, a reflection on Gay Pride Marches; or Miwa, A Japanese Icon by Pascal-Alex Vincent about Japan’s most popular actress of the 1960s. Several films presented at the festival might be called "disreputable", such as Killer Kondom by Martin Waltz or the latest two films with François Sagat: Homme au bain by Christophe Honoré, and L.A. Zombie" by Bruce LaBruce.