Now in its 9th year, the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is one of the biggest and most successful gay film festivals in Europe, second only to its London equivalent. This year, the programme, to be launched by The Irish Times film critic Michael Dwyer, features an eclectic selection of features, shorts and documentaries by both Irish and international film-makers.

Highlight of the festival, according to committee member and writer Deborah Ballard, is a showing of four films by the late British Director Derek Jarman, who died in 1994 of an AIDS related condition. The festival will offer Irish cinemagoers the chance to see The Angelic Conversation, Edward II, The Garden and Blue. The latter film will be preceded by the documentary feature There We Are, John. The Jarman retrospective will be followed by a Film Forum focussing on the issues surrounding his life and work. This year the festival will feature a number of short films by Irish film-makers. These include Chicken made by Barry Dignam, Odd Suck by Collette Cullen and The Fifth by Jim Lowther. The latter film concerns the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organisation’s 10 year protest at the exclusion of Irish gay groups from the New York Patrick’s Day parade. Foreign shorts include Atomic Sake, Cock And Bull, The Girl, Urbania and Tit Bits, the latter the tale of a butch-femme lesbian relationship set in Paris.

International features on offer include Slimmed Down by US director Susan Sidelman. Sidelman is perhaps best known for Desperately Seeking Susan, the film which launched Madonna’s acting career.

Kelly McGillis is an icon for many lesbians and appears in the Australian thriller The Monkey’s Mask as a bi-sexual poetry lecturer who becomes entangled in a murder mystery.

Presque Rien is a French feature set on a beach where two young men enjoy a romance, while a beach is also the setting for the Spanish film Kranpack. This is a bittersweet tale of two boys who stay in a beachhouse and indulge in sessions of mutual masturbation, leading to recrimination as one of the pair falls in love with his less than committed friend.

This year’s festival also has several fine documentary features. Paragraph 175 is a fascinating and heart-rending tale of the thousands of lesbians and gay men who suffered under the Nazis. The title refers to Germany’s anti-sodomy law of the time. The film is directed jointly by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, the duo responsible for The Celluloid Closet, the film which chronicled the secret gay and lesbian lives of Hollywood stars. Paragraph 175 will be introduced by Dr Klaus Muller, the European Project Director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A full listing and times was unavailable at the time of going to press, but full details and membership information can be obtained from the IFC, Dublin.