1st International Side By Side LGBT Film Festival
The idea of running a film festival in Saint Petersburg first came up in a meeting between Manny de Guerre and Irina Sergeeva in the summer of 2007. A wide resonance and heated discussions arose in society as the plan of organizing the festival was announced publicly at the end of December. Director Alexandr Sokurov, rock musician Svetlana Surganova, sociologist Igor Kon, poet Marina Chen, actor Anatolij Ravikovich, human rights defender Sergey Grigoryants, politician Valeriya Novodvorskaya, British novelist Sarah Waters, British human rights defender Peter Tatchell, Israeli producer Eytan Fox, Israeli producer Gal Uchovsky, American producer John Cameron Mitchell, and LGBT-activist Nikolay Alexeyev gave their support to the film festival. Berlin International Film Festival, NewFest: New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, and Kyiv International Film Festival Molodist officially supported «Side by Side» Film Festival.
Representatives of The International Association of Cinematographers of Slavic and Orthodox People, actors Nikolai Burlyayev and Mikhail Porechenkov, producer Mark Rudinshtein, artist Oleg Basilashvili, director Yevgeniy Tatarskiy, head of the press service of the Russian Orthodox Church Mihail Moiseyev, and the head of the city committee for culture Nikolay Burov were against the film festival.
In February 2008, Dom Kino cinema, the planned venue for the screenings, terminated the preliminary agreement with the festival organizers due to “building repairs”. However, as it turned out later, the movie hall was never closed during the period. In September 2008, already after the beginning of ticket sale, PIK cinema under pressure from authorities terminated the contract without explanations. At the same time the police were conducting spot-checks at Bunker and Central Station gay clubs, during which the visitors were insulted, humiliated, and blackmailed. In October 2008, the new venues that had been found (clubs Sochi and The Palace) were closed on the eve of the festival for two weeks by fire inspections. However, right after refusing to host the event they were allowed to carry on working.
After these events, civil youth movements Oborona and LGBT-organization Coming Out sent an open letter to the governor of Saint Petersburg Valentina Matviyenko demanding her to comment on the situation. Famous St. Petersburg artists Gljuklja and Caplja also expressed their support. After hearing about the closure of the festival, they changed their programme at Dom Kino and screened a film about transgender boys Komnata Viki i Zheni. Furthermore, referring to the German reformer Martin Luther, a student group performed an action called Reformation at the Committee for Culture of Saint Petersburg.
As a result, the film festival took place ‘underground’ in a secret venue from 4 to 5 October 2008. In the course of two days art and documentary films were screened, including a panorama of Berlin International Film Festival short movie award winners. The screenings were followed by discussions in which the festival guests director John Cameron Mitchell, Rodney Swell, Maxim Zirin, representatives of the Berlin International Film Festival’s Teddy Award Klaus Ascheneller and New Fest Director Basil Tsiokos, and Russian transgender Julietta among others participated. In addition, there was a photo competition (Love in pink and blue measurement), Lida Mihailovaya’s photo project: “I am lesbian. Do people around me know about it?” and Alexander Nizovskiy’s “Drag Queens Show.”
The competition program consisted of eight feature, eight documentary and twenty-three short films, including Oscar, Cannes Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival award winners. Among them there was one Russian documentary tape and one Kazakhstan short film.
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