Interview: Niranjan Kamatkar (GFest: The Gaywise Festival)

Next month sees the return of GFest, London’s LGBT arts festival showcasing film, visual art, and performances from across the LGBT community in London and beyond.

Now in its fifth year the festival shows no signs of waning, and this year’s line-up as strong as ever. It includes performances by Ezra Axelrod, who featured as part of this year’s Tête á Tête: The Opera Festival, hip-hop artist EvOn The Music Bully, and the London Gay Symphonic Winds. Short film screenings include works from Kim Jho Kwang-soo, one of Korea’s few openly gay filmmakers, and the return of Joe Morris, who featured in the 2009 festival. Art exhibitions will explore themes of gender identity, censorship, and surprising situations, from artists such as Art Racket, Jason C Woodson, and Wendy Elia. There are also workshops, and plenty of parties.

This is just a small selection: stretching over the course of a full fortnight, there will be plenty there to see and do across a diverse range of genres and artists.

We recently had the opportunity to talk to the festival’s artistic director, Niranjan Kamatkar.

SSG: So how did GFest come about? 

Kamatkar: The idea came from the Gaywise workshop series. We had around four to five years of biannual workshops at the Menier Chocolate Factory. We thought: why not have a fully fledged festival of these activities? That’s how we started five years ago in 2007.

What is the festival’s raison d’être? 

First and foremost it is about showing diversity and the huge amount of talent that exists in the community. There are so many fascinating aspects of stories that artists and practitioners want to share. That’s the idea, which we hope everyone will love.

How easy is it to get such a great number of talented artists on board for the festival? 

There’s a tremendous need and demand for artistic work to be shown; from artists, practitioners, film makers, multimedia artists and cross-genre practitioners. Particularly if the art or work is inspired, influenced, or affected by an individual’s sexuality, sexual orientation, or identity. We provide a platform. 

How difficult is it to whittle down the number of artists for the final selection? 

Art by Wendy Elia, one of the many artists showcased at this year's GFest: The Gaywise Festival. Picture: Courtesy of Wise Thoughts.

Every year is challenging in terms of the number of artists who want to get involved. There are a number of artists we connect to throughout the year as part of the selection process, a number who come through an expression of interest, and there are several others that we work on the proposals side of the things. It’s a huge scale to peck down to the final festival programme.

Have cuts to arts funding had any effect on the Gaywise Festival this year? 

Fundraising is always a challenging issue. But we are committed to deliver the full festival programme and ensure it’s successful. We are dependent on the LGBT community to make this year’s festival a successful event. We are doing a number of fundraising events, and we are confident we will raise enough funds to deliver this year’s festival. But fundraising from public bodies is an extremely challenging and delicate area right now. We need some more support there.

How important do you feel is the role of LGBT arts in wider society? 

Extremely important! As we go to achieving more and more equal status in all walks of society it’s important to showcase the arts and cultural side of events, and have a celebration in mainstream life as well. We need to see the diverse stories out there that are celebrated in every place and every kind of situation.

How do you feel about Brendan O’Neill’s comments in The Telegraph that gay culture is, ‘shallow, camp, and kitsch’? 

I was a bit shocked by that. He needs to see the whole range of activities that happen in gay culture, right from the popular side of the spectrum to the high-end of it. You can’t sum it up in so few words and put a stereotypical label on it.

Are there any particular artists, performances, or films you’re personally looking forward to this year? 

[laughs] Is this a trick question? Everybody’s work is unique. As organisers, what we want to see is something for everyone to connect with and enjoy. And that’s a key thing. Each and every artwork is original and there are fascinating insights in them. We’re looking forward to it all.

Is there anything unique about this year’s festival? 

We’ve been working to mark 30 years of HIV. One event is a creative workshop around HIV with a youth group from West London. The second event is happening at the Cockpit Theatre, which is looking at HIV and sex work through role play and acting. We are also addressing the very current concerns of East London homophobia and transphobia at a debate event. We always have a debate every year, but this year it’s something that is a more current topic, but looking at a wider cultural perspective and how arts and other influences are affected by it. It includes Peter Tatchell, local councillors, and practitioners. 

GFest: The Gaywise Festival will take place between 7 – 20 November 2011. For more information visit www.gaywisefestival.org.uk or follow them on Twitter @GFest.