Out Takes

We love celebrating local films that highlight diversity and representation and ‘My Melbourne’ is one worth celebrating. Themed around four pillars – sexuality, gender, disability, and race – the anthology film ‘My Melbourne’ features four unique stories that celebrate diverse voices and talents from four Indian filmmakers who worked with emerging creatives from...

For this Out Takes Extra, Demetra spoke to Tara Thorne, the writer / director of ‘Lakeview’ which is screening as part of the QueerScreen Mardis Gras FIlm Festival On Demand program until March 10 . ‘Lakeview’ is about a queer friend group that unites for a girls’ weekend. Packed with delicious Sapphic drama and plenty of wine drunk antics, ‘Lakeview’ is an unfo...

For this Out Takes, we dedicated the entire show to the 97 th Academy Awards a.k.a. the 2025 Oscars! It’s no secret that we love the international film award season and it was another interesting take on the ‘best’ in cinema over the past 12 months and recognising what that means in the film industry but as always, we had our favourites and so it was great to take the time to dissect and discuss w...

The on demand program kicks off soon for the 2025 Mardi Gras Film Festival so we looked at two of the fabulous films on offer that will be available to stream nationally from February 28 to March 10 . First up was ‘Unusually Normal’ , a heartwarming documentary spanning eight decades that follows the lives of two lesbian grandmothers, four lesbian mothers and one lesbian granddaughter,...

For this Out Takes it was a mixed bag of reviews and interviews to celebrate the arrival of a new Aussie series based on a much loved queer coming of age novel, the latest release from Italian auteur Luca Guadagnino and the return of the Australian International Documentary Conference. First up we reviewed ‘Invisible Boys’ , the new LGBTQ coming-of-age Australian series set in the unfo...

For this Out Takes, we’re going back to the Queer Screen Mardi Gras Film Festival to look at ‘I’m Your Venus’ , a powerful film from the U.S. that is described as a vital companion piece to Jennie Livingston’s legendary 1990 ballroom documentary ‘Paris Is Burning’ . One of the iconic trans stars of that seminal film, Venus Xtravaganza, was murdered before its release and th...

It’s no secret that we love highlighting local film festivals and the talent behind it and for this Out Takes we were delighted to welcome back Artistic Director Spiro Economopoulos to tell us about the 2025 Europa Europa Film Festival which is returning for its 4th year in Melbourne and Sydney from February 12 to March 12. Spiro shared many of the program highlights including three queer fi...

For this Out Takes, we welcomed the return of the 2025 Queer Screen Mardi Gras Film Festival which is now in its 32 nd year in Sydney from February 13 to 27 with highlights from the program available on demand around the nation from February 28 to March 10. We caught up with Festival Director Lisa Rose to discuss this year’s program , her career highlights in the lead up to her delivering her fina...

The latest release from award winning Irish film and theatre director John Crowley is called ‘We Live in Time’ , starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, which is in cinemas now . These two incredible actors are brought together to tell the story of Almut and Tobias, two young Londoners who are brought together in a surprise encounter that changes their lives. Through snapshots of t...

Midsumma Festival is back in 2025 with an explosion of queer events that centre around hidden and mainstream queer culture, involving local, interstate, and international artists including a fantastic range of film events across the Midsumma season. We caught up with returning guest and friend of the show, Melbourne Queer Film Festival’s Program Director Cerise Howard, about many the fantast...

Now that award season has officially kicked off with the Golden Globes, we thought it was a good time to take a look at how it all went down; from the surprises (yay for Demi Moore!) and the major wins (looks like ‘The Brutalist’ is one to watch) to the films that are likely to be in the running for more nominations in the upcoming awards in the lead up to the 2025 Oscars. That include...

Happy New Year! With our first show for 2025, we took a look at ‘Teaches of Peaches’ which is streaming now on DocPlay . This frenetic and audacious film celebrates the world of gender-punk icon Peaches in this Teddy Award–winning documentary that screened at MIFF and MQFF in 2024. Following the 20th anniversary tour of her album ‘The Teaches of Peaches’, this film features...

Following from last week where we got together to look back at the year and state our picks for the best and worst films and TV shows of the year, we thought it would also be a great time to check in with some of our favourite guests and queer cinematic colleagues to hear what they enjoyed this year too. Sp for part 2 of the Out Takes 2024 Year in Review Best we welcomed Kristian Connelly from Cin...

With 2024 coming to a close, we took this opportunity to bring the entire team together to discuss the best and worst films and television shows of the year plus our favourite queer pop culture moment from the past 12 months. From some obvious inclusions (hello to Wicked and The Substance) to a few surprises (we love that Demetra chose live tennis as her TV highlight for the year), we covered a di...

We managed to get the whole team together for this show so we decided it was the perfect time to serve up another batch of recommendations and reviews to get you through the holidays and what is looking like a very hot summer down under.  From Aussie comedic gems like Fisk and Bump through to Queer Eye and Queer (the one with Daniel Craig), we literally had something for everyone to binge or look...

For this Out Takes, we welcomed back Dion Blackler to the show in his official capacity as our London Film Correspondent to discuss some of the highlights and lowlights from this year’s BFI London Film Festival plus some recommendations for films to check out in 2025. As one of the co-hosts of the podcast ‘In the Mood for Film’ and a lifelong lover of cinema, he knows his stuff and alw...

For this program, we spoke in depth with local Aussie queer filmmaker Timothy Despina Marshall , the writer & director of ‘In the Room Where He Waits’, about navigating a career as an independent filmmaker. Timothy shares his insights about how to make the most of winning awards and his concurrent and fulfilling career as an educator. We also had an encore presentation of our revie...

The press run for this film has been epic and with Wicked finally in cinemas we took the opportunity to celebrate part one’s release with a look at all of the elements of this much loved book and musical that has led to it finally being delivered as the movie musical that many queer people will tell you they’ve been waiting for their whole lives that will have you singing, dancing and defyin...

With MQFF 2024 in full swing, we took the opportunity to do our final round of reviews and recommendations including spotlighting a great new local film that is screening now around Australia. ‘Strange Creatures’ tells the story of Nate, a proud pansexual man who used to be close with his big brother Ged but something bad went down and the siblings haven’t spoken in years. Summoned to...

The Melbourne Queer Film Festival is Australia’s oldest and largest queer film festival and returns from November 14 to 24 with a program that celebrates the way sound and vision have been a source of inspiration and transformation for LGBTQIA+ communities and everyone across the world. MQFF Program Director Cerise Howard and MQFF Chief Executive Officer David Martin Harris joined us on the show i...

We go to great lengths to highlight the diversity and representation on offer in LGBTIQA+ cinema and for this program we looked at two very different films that showcase this perfectly. ‘Audrey’ is a new Aussie dark comedy coming to cinemas in November that will have you laughing and gasping at its in your face look at life in the suburbs for a family with big ambitions and a few queer...

With spooky season upon us, we thought it was a good time to look at some of the latest supernatural and scary content on offer including a new First Nations lead Australian psychological horror that will be in cinemas from this Halloween. ‘The Moogai’ tells the story of Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young Aboriginal couple who just welcomed their second baby into their family after a ve...

If you listen to Out Takes regularly, you know we love a film festival and one at the top of our list is MQFF a.k.a the Melbourne Queer Film Festival . It returns this year from November 14 to 24 with a program that celebrates the way sound and vision have been a source of inspiration and transformation for LGBTQIA+ communities, and everyone across the world. MQFF audiences will be treated to 42 f...

When it was announced that the latest film from the incredibly talented Melbourne based Academy Award winning filmmaker Adam Elliot was the opening night film for the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival, it was met with much excitement and the screening was incredibly well received by audiences and critics. With ‘Memoir of a Snail’ coming out in cinemas on October 17, we were de...

At Out Takes, it’s no secret we love highlighting local queer cinema and the talent behind it, so for this program we were delighted to spotlight one of our very own team members who’s new film is having its Australian premiere at this year’s Greek Film Festival . Demetra Giannakopoulos is not only our co-host but also a talented filmmaker and with ‘Love Rewind’ , she brings her debut...