The UCL East Community Cinema had a surprise visit from titan of stage and screen, Sir Ian McKellen, who popped in to watch Lucas van der Rhee’s deeply moving documentary Queerkamp, as well as a short from recent alumni Maar Dinu.
The UCL East Community Cinema is a fabulous initiative which offers free films every Wednesday night during term time. This week’s offering was curated by Spectra , who specialise in screening queer non-fiction films.
The headline piece of the night was Lucas van der Rhee and Chris Westendorp’s heartwarming documentary, Queerkamp , which explores the lives of queer teenagers in Holland attending a summer camp. Intimate and tender, the film demonstrates the power of community in affirming the identities and experiences of queer youth.
The screening included a Q&A with van der Rhee, who titillated the crowd with many a behind-the-scenes anecdote, which further underscored the transformative potential of queer summer camps as spaces of development and becoming.
A surprise visit from living legend and queer elder, Sir Ian McKellen, only added to the excitement. Sir Ian was an endlessly gracious audience member, staying around after the Q&A for some pictures with the directors.
Preceding Queerkamp was a documentary short by Maar Dinu, who recently graduated from the Ethnographic and Documentary Film MA , run by the Anthropology department here at UCL East. Their film, A Film My Body, blends digital and analogue techniques, exploring the relationship between the human body and the film’s body, both undergoing processes of transformation to reach their final form.
A common thread in both films was the trans experience, with the directors unflinchingly using the cinematic form to reflect the complex realities of what it means to be gender non-conforming in a prejudicial world. It’s an important reminder, in the current political climate, and timely too, with Trans Awareness Week having just begun.
The UCL East Community Cinema continues to offer a diverse programme termly, and with the possibility of surprise celebrity sightings, not to mention a free movie ticket in this cost-of-living crisis, this weekly event becomes ever more enticing.
This article was written by Will McKinna-Hannagan, UCL Senior Communications Officer.
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