Our love of this particular Film Festival starts with its name. The Organisers probably chose it for their own reasons, but in our dictionary 'pout' means 'to purse your lips to look petulant or sexy' and these are both very suitable reactions to whenever you watch edgy queer cinema. Hopefully with the selection that they have curated this year, it will be more of the latter, and maybe bursting into a big grin too.
The second reason why we keep this Festival on our radar is that it just doesn’t stay in London but tours the UK and takes brand new LGBT films all over the country from Edinburgh in the north to Brighton in the south and Cardiff in the west.
The progamme, supplied by film distributors Peccadillo Pictures and part funded by BFI & the National Lottery includes such goodies as '52 Tuesdays', 'Soft Lad', 'A Girl at My Door,' 'Dressed As A Girl' and 'Futuro Beach' as well as one of the best anthology of shorts we have seen for some time called 'Trick & Treat' (most of them are reviewed on www.queertiques.com.)
The whole Festival rolls out all most immediately and full details of it's schedule and where you can buy tickets can be found at http://poutfest.co.uk/the-tour/.
If you can only get to see just one of these movies then our number one tip has to be 'Dressed As A Girl' : it's a joyous and fascinating documentary on how the extraordinary performance artist Jonny Woo and his outrageous crew of performers have created a stunning alternative drag culture that has made London's East End THE place to go for the best queer entertainment today.
