For 10 days in March BFI Flare, the LGBT film festival will be the best place in London. Only a year ago, such a festival of queerness might have seemed a luxury item, an amuse bouche in a menu of delectable celebrations, a crouton in the sapphic soup of splendidness that we were all enjoying as our marriages, children, lovers and general civil rights rose upon the crème fraîche of success.
This year, things look a little different. This year we are teetering atop a gruel of strangely-shaped vegetables, wondering whether we are all just about to slide back into the abyss of inedible homophobia, while a mournful band of underpaid waiters distracts the crowd with renditions of White Cliffs Of Dover on Union Jack accordions. This year we are marching for civilisation. This year we need the festival.
HEARTS