AudioOut Here Dayton Film Fest celebrates 20 years of queer movie magic

For the 20th year, the Out Here Dayton Film Fest will provide cinephiles an opportunity to travel to the Miami Valley to experience queer movie magic.

Housed at THE NEON in downtown Dayton during the long weekend of Oct. 9-12, the Film Fest will host 9 different screenings featuring 24 short and feature-length films.

But more than screening the best and brightest of LGBTQ+ cinema, the Film Fest also provides a vital opportunity for LGBTQ+ Ohioans to come together.

“That building of community and strengthening of those communal bonds is really all the more powerful and essential these days as our community is more and more under attack,” said Festival Director Jonathan McNeal.

The Buckeye Flame spoke with McNeal about the history of the festival, what moviegoers can expect in 2025 and why queer cinema is so very important.

To listen, click play directly below or read our (edited) conversation beneath the audio link.

Give us the backstory on the Film Fest. 20 years is quite a bit of time!

Jonathan McNeal: So I actually had a film called The Rubi Girls, a documentary that traveled around the country. It premiered in 2003 in San Francisco and when touring with that film, I went to numerous different markets: from San Francisco to Chicago to Reno, to all kinds of cities. And I realized that we were lacking that here in Dayton.

Someone reached out to me and said they had a few dollar to put toward a film festival and they wondered if maybe we could do like a cult screening or a cult series – like a John Waters retrospective. I said, “What if we did all new material and I will find the rest of the funding? I’ll find the movies and let’s just make a queer festival.”

And that’s how the Film Fest was born. That was in 2006 and this is year 20.

Why is such a film festival needed, especially now?

It’s been needed all along: a place for us to gather, for us to find camaraderie in the community and a place to be visible.

THE NEON has always been the home of the festival and we’re right downtown Dayton. The Film Fest garners a lot of local press and we have postcards and posters and whatnot all around town. We partner with different organizations to make things happen, and that visibility is so powerful. But also that building of community and strengthening of those communal bonds is really all the more powerful and essential these days as our community is more and more under attack

You’ve seen these films evolve over the years. What are we looking forward to for this year’s festival? What’s different about the types of films that you saw come in?

There’s not a lot different per se. What’s interesting is that over the years we’ve seen the smallest attendance for our documentaries, but they almost always end up winning the Audience Award. So that’s something that I really want to make the community more aware of: that those stories that are nonfiction are often the most powerful and are the ones that connect with the audience most. So I hope people won’t shy away from seeing those films.

There are, of course, great narrative films in the mix, like Blue Moon, which is the new [Richard] Linklater film with Ethan Hawke and Margaret Qualley. That one is about Lorenz Hart on the opening night of “Oklahoma!”. [Richard] Rodgers and Hart had been a Broadway duo for years and years, doing a lot of the songs in the American songbook. But they split and that duo became Rodgers and [Oscar] Hammerstein. And Lorenz Hart was left out of the mix. So the movie takes place on the opening night of “Oklahoma!” – Rodgers and Hammerstein’s giant hit – when Hart wasn’t a part of it.

There are so many great narrative films like that, but we have really strong documentaries as well. I don’t want people to overlook those documentaries, even though the narrative ones are the ones that tend to get a little more glitzy attention.

Give us that final elevator pitch. Why LGBTQ+ movies to bring us together?

Because they’re our stories and they are so often overlooked by the mainstream media. We see gay characters in stories. We’re seeing them more and more, but they’re still often a comedic sidekick or the best friend. But gay stories are powerful, whether it’s the librarians who are on the front lines of book bans happening right now, or whether it’s our first trans congresswoman. These powerful stories need to be told and need to be celebrated. 🔥

IGNITE ACTION

• The Out Here Dayton Film Fest will be screened at THE NEON in downtown Dayton during the long weekend of Oct. 9-12. More info and tickets here.