Shore Leave Film Night: Querelle

As part of LGBTQ+ history month Bijou Stories will be exploring the liminal space between land and sea, a dreamlike world of mystery and liberation, where new identities are explored and the mythology of the sea crashes into the land. This film screening brings together two examples of queer filmmakers producing hallucinatory visions where fights are choreographed and the surreal lies just beneath the surface.

Shore Leave is Bijou Stories' LGBTQ+ History Month 2022 project and includes screenings, family workshops and tours of the Maritime Museum, Greenwich. As part of Shore Leave we will be hosting an alternative tour of the Royal Maritime Museum collection on Saturday 19^th March and popping up at the Fierce Queens event on Friday 25^th March. 

Querelle

Querelle, the sailor, is on shore leave in a highly stylised version of the French port town of Brest, where he becomes entangled in a web of violence and eroticism.  The final film by prolific German director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died aged 37, is a dream-like vision of a twilight hinterland inhabited by hunky sailors, mysticism and the self-destruction that Fassbinder himself experienced. (in German, French and English, with subtitles)

104 mins. 

18 rating

Fireworks

A ground-breaking piece of queer and underground cinema explores the same themes as Querelle as a dreamer encounters a group of sailors on shore leave. A classic short film by director, gossipmonger, occultist and provocateur, Kenneth Anger.

15 minutes

18 rating

Doors: 6.25pm

Fireworks 6.40pm

Intermission 

Querelle 7.00pm

End 8.45pm

This programme is 18+ BBFC