Some Like It Hot! (Free Queer Films Under The Stars)
11 Jul 2019.  -

Photo from “Some Like It Hot” courtesy of Inside Out LGBT Film Festival.

If you haven’t been to a Toronto Outdoor Picture Show event, grab a blanket, some snacks and prepare for a truly fun night of devouring films, nibbling popcorn and cuddling with strangers under the stars. A co-presentation of Toronto’s Inside Out LGBT Film Festival and Regent Park Films, these curated outdoor film screenings happen in public spaces such as Fort York, Christie Pits, Bell Manor Park and Corktown Common Park from July 4 to the 25th with four weekly film series on their new, (and much, much larger) outdoor screen.

There are standard classics like Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic E.T. which is double-billed with Toronto-based Cree/Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet’s short film Wakening, which depicts an unnerving and sinister dynamic between human and “the other.” Hunt For The Wilderpeople directed by Taika Waititi follows the adventures of young, rebellious Ricki, an Indigenous foster child, and his grumpy white lumberjack uncle who is left to care for him which will play alongside the quirky backwoods stop-motion short film The Guest, by Anishinabe director Nick Rodgers.

But it’s the queer classics that really bring out the campier crowds, like Billy Wilder’s epic Some Like It Hot starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon which screens on July 25th alongside Hope Thompson’s Switch, the stylized and delightfully campy lesbian film noir from Toronto’s gritty 1949 past. It tells the story of two women switchboard operators carrying on an “illicit” affair, with drama that leads to double-crosses and murder.

And if all these great films aren’t enough to get you out, there’s popcorn, food and other goodies for sale and while the films begin at sundown, it’s all preceded by a free yoga class to get you limbered up for the double-bills. All films are open captioned which all venues accommodating mobility devices and strollers plus volunteers have been provided with gender-inclusive training so that everyone can feel welcome to huddle under the big screen and soak in the magic of cinema!