Luscious: Femme Brutal
Cinema Paradiso
In 1986, the BFI Flare festival started life as a series of nine films called Gay’s Own Pictures, at London’s National Film Theatre on the south bank of the Thames. Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, Madonna was topping the charts, Jeanette Winterson had just published Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit and, the year before, the US’s Samuel Goldwyn Company had released Desert Hearts, often cited as the first lesbian film where both romantic leads get a happy ending.