Isle of Man film festival to celebrate Pride month
Michelle HaywoodAn Isle of Man film festival is set to celebrate Pride month.
The Pride on Screen series will show a series of feature-length movies of personal stories at the town hall in Port St Mary over three nights from Friday.
The short film No Man Is An Island, which explores the events leading up to the decriminalisation of homosexuality on the island in 1992, will also be shown before each film.
Organiser Michelle Haywood said the festival was a chance to celebrate the occasion and acknowledge the challenges still faced by the LGBTQ+ community.
The 2014 film Pride will be shown on Friday, telling the story a group of gay activists who raised money to help families affected by the British miners' strike in 1984.
'Still challenges'
On Saturday, viewers can watch Blue Jean. The 2022 drama focusses on a PE teacher at a secondary school in Newcastle as Section 28, which forbid the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools, was implemented in the UK.
The final movie, to be shown on Sunday, is Call Me by Your Name. It follows the romantic relationship between 17-year-old Elio and Oliver, a 24-year-old assistant to Elio's archaeology professor father.
Ms Haywood said: "The festival says just because there's not a big parade doesn't mean that we're not alive to the fact that there are still challenges within our society for people depending on who they chose to love."
Despite England decriminalising homosexuality in 1967, the Isle of Man did not follow suit until 1992.
John Craine, director of No Man is an Island, said the reaction from Manx audiences had "been really humbling".
He said: "Although it feels it's something that happened 30 years ago and times have changed for the better, it still feels super relevant to today.
"It's important that the Manx viewers get to see it in a cinema because it's a story about us, it's our people, and our community."
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