LGTBQ+ film festival returns to Fresno’s Tower Theatre with red-carpet opening night
Fresno’s Reel Pride festival returns on Friday with a feature that’s been missing for a few years — a red-carpet opening night at the Tower Theatre.
Technically, the LGBTQ+ film festival kicks off at 11 a.m. Friday morning with a free youth film series and resource fair at Fresno City College.
It continues with a religious-themed film series and panel discussion on Saturday.
Over its three-day run, Reel Pride will screen dozens of independent and international feature-length and short films at multiple venues across the Tower District. It will also host a champagne brunch for sponsors and several late-night after parties.
But the opening-night screening — of a film called “Glitter & Doom” — marks an important return for the 34th year of the festival.
A return to the Tower Theatre
There was a time when the Tower Theater was synonymous with Reel Pride, serving as home base for the festival and as a hub for activities during its annual run. But in 2021, the organization made a conscious decision to cut ties with the theater and its management amid ongoing controversy — also weekly protests and multiple legal battles — over the sale of the theater to Adventure Church.
Many, including those in the LGBTQ+ community, felt the sale would mean the loss of a community asset and be a major hit to the culture and inclusiveness of the Tower District community.
“While the Tower District continues to have great spiritual value to many in the community, we will not continue to support the Tower Theatre under its current management structure,” the group wrote at the time, in a joint statement with Fresno Filmworks.
That sale to the church ultimately fell through and the city purchased the theater for $6.5 million.
This is the first time the organization has worked with the theater since the city took over and hired its new management team.
“Our members very much wanted us to be there,” says festival director Kathleen Arambula-Reyna. And the group is excited to back at the theater, though there are new processes in place for working with the city and there’s been a learning curve for all involved.
“We also knew that things would be different,” she says.
“Things do not travel backwards in time.”
Reel Pride’s Youth, Religious film series
Reel Pride has always been an international festival with a focus on screening films that weren’t in theaters or, in more recent years, on streaming services. This year there are films from South Africa, Germany, Israel and Brazil.
Within the festival are two film series.
One is designed for LGBTQ+ youth. It includes several short films along with the feature film “Egghead and Twinkie” and is offered for free.
The other is a religious film series, which includes a screening of the documentary “1946 - The Mistranslation that Shifted Culture.”
That film, which will be shown at 1 p.m. Saturday at Fresno City College, follows researchers as they trace the origins of the anti-gay movement among Christians and uncover archives that cast doubt on the biblical basis for LGBTQIA+ prejudice.
Following the film is an interview and panel discussion with local religious leaders moderated by Paul Swearengin.
Tickets for all three films and the panel discussion are $25.
The religious film series is a rebuttal of sorts to what Arambula-Reyna calls the weaponizing of religion from local organizations such as Cornerstone Church, which hosted a “Revealing the Rainbow” conference in March.
“The reality is,” Arambula-Reyna says, “things like these series, and being able to offer a safe place for the community, that’s really our goal at Reel Pride.”
