Queer British Gems at Kitty’s Laundrette

Paraphysis Cinema dive into the vast and varied world of queer British film over the next four months at Kitty’s Laundrette in Liverpool. The community laundrette will play host to four wildly different films featuring names both rare and familiar, with subject matter spanning political satire, an intimate portrait of an artist, tender first romance, and pioneering trans storytelling.

September’s title arrives via Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, whose 2018 The Favourite takes us to 18th century England, and the court of Queen Anne, played by Olivia Colman, who won an Academy Award for her delicious performance. Presenting a viciously contested love triangle as new servant Abigail (Emma Stone) and longstanding attendant Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) compete for the Queen’s attention, this bawdy, explicit comedy cuts through the usual period drama pomp — The Crown, it ain’t.

Derek Jacobi stars as the eponymous British painter in Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon in October. Director John Marbury’s hallucinatory portrait of Francis Bacon focuses on his destructive, near sado-masochistic relationship with lover George Dyer (Daniel Craig). Like most of the best biopics, Bacon’s estate refused to have any involvement, and so while there are none of the artists paintings on screen, we do get a refreshingly seedy rendering of the artist’s life in 60’s Soho.

Two teenage boys discover first love in Hettie Macdonald’s 1996 Beautiful Thing, a tender romantic comedy set in the pubs and council estates of South London. Screening this November, the 1996 film provides a snapshot of gay life in nineties working class Britain, delivered with moments of joy, laughter and what Sight and Sound termed an “understated realism”.

In showing the films in reverse chronological order, audiences are invited to explore queer British history, travelling backwards to experience moments of queer joy and radical expression

According to Paraphysis Cinema, the selection of films should remind us that queer histories are never static, and demand to be recontextualised by each new audience. In showing the films in reverse chronological order, audiences are invited to explore queer British history, travelling backwards to experience moments of queer joy and radical expression, alongside historical attitudes and prejudices — while relating them to those of the present.

The last event in the season at Kitty’s Laundrette is a showing of I Want What I Want, John Dexter’s 1972 drama following a young trans woman who leaves her patriarchal home in order to live authentically. The programme notes the film as groundbreaking for its time as it depicts Wendy’s (Anne Heywood) experiences with liberation and prejudice. A real rarity, this underseen work is emblematic of the kind of adventurous, excavating curation we’ve come to expect from Paraphysis.