Director: Ray Yeung Hong Kong (S.A.R of China), 2024, 93′ minutes, Cantonese with English subtitles
Angie and Pat are two women who have shared a life of love and resilience in Hong Kong for over four decades. When Pat suddenly passes away, Angie’s world is upended. Faced with mounting pressure from an unsympathetic extended family, she must navigate her grief and fight to hold on to the home that holds their cherished memories.
With poignant performances by Patra Au Ga Man, Maggie Li Lin Lin, and Tai Bo, ‘All Shall Be Well’ is a tender, heart-wrenching exploration of love, loss, and the quiet strength required to claim one’s place in the world.
This screening is co-hosted by Aberration (LGBTQ+ arts and community events in Aberystwyth). After the film there will be a short panel discussion chaired by Helen Sandler with Fran Jackson and Steph Jones and Q&A – a chance to reflect on the movie and its themes.
We are delighted to bring Aberration back to the magnificent Ceredigion Museum in Aberystwyth with ‘Crossing the Line’, programmed especially for LGBTQ+ History Month.
We’ve put together an amazing evening of stories and film, facts and fabulousness for you all. Programme below. Edrych ymlaen!
Aberration presentsCrossing The Line
An evening for LGBTQ+ History Month, Friday 28 February, Amgueddfa Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth. Doors open 6.30pm, starts 7pm. Tickets: £8 early bird (plus booking fee) or £10 on the door.
Aberration will be taking a journey around Ceredigion and beyond, including queer and trans Celtic history and mythology and some of the characters and events on our Ceredigion LGBTQ+ timeline. We are also proud to be hosting the Wales launch of a new book, 3000 Lesbians Go to York, about a much-loved national arts festival. The evening ends with a new film celebrating Aberration’s own contribution to Welsh LBGTQ+ culture and arts over more than ten years.
PROGRAMME
6.30 Doors open: Come and have a look at the Ceredigion Timeline and add your stories.
RAFFLE: Bring cash for raffle tickets in aid of All Out – lots of great prizes from local businesses and friends of Aberration including Bottle & Barrel, Medina cafe-bar, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, and our authors!
7pm Welcome from your Aberration hosts, Helen Sandler, Jane Hoy and Ruth Fowler
Cheryl Morgan: In Search of Trans Celts
Cheryl will look at evidence from archaeology, Roman writers, and Arthurian legend, to see what we can tell about how our ancestors saw gender.
7.30pm Queering the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi: power, resistance, and desire
This talk by Colin Audigé-Soutter, based on his MA thesis, illuminates the potential queer undercurrents pulsing through one of Celtic literature’s most enigmatic narratives.
8pm INTERVAL Refreshments and Bar, Raffle for All Out with amazing prizes, and another opportunity to add your story to the Ceredigion Timeline.
8.30 The Ceredigion Timeline: an interactive journey
Jane (L) and Norena
Norena Shopland describes the background to the Timeline – a project to record the LGBTQ+ history of every county in Cymru. Jane Hoy introduces some of Ceredigion’s queer characters and events, with friends of Aberration reading their words.
9pm 3000 Lesbians Go To York
Jane Traies will launch her lavishly illustrated new book, 3000 Lesbians Go to York (Tollington, 2025) about the arts festivals that drew massive crowds in the Noughties. Aberration’s own Helen Sandler, publisher of the book, will introduce Jane’s talk about the legendary weekender.
9.30 Aberration: a celebration
FILM PREMIERE! Ruth, Helen and Jane of Aberration will screen Amy Daniel’s new short film about Aberration’s fabulous first decade.
2.30pm Sunday 26 March, Aberystwyth Arts Centre: WOW Film Festival matinee
Come and watch A Home for My Heart, a sensitive documentary portrait of Suvana Sudeb, an Indian trans woman – her life with her family, friends, lover and fellow activists. Hour-long film directed by Sankhajit Biswas. Plus short.
After the film, Helen Sandler of Aberration will be chairing a Q&A in which the star and director will beam in from India to answer your questions!
Events in Cymru for ‘Long LGBTQ+ History Month’ involving Aberration or Queer Tales from Wales
March 2023 – Book now!
Tuesday 7 March, 5pm, National Library, Aberystwyth. Queer Tales from Wales present ‘A Moral Amazon: The Story of Miss Amy Dillwyn’. A novelist, industrialist and cigar smoker, Miss Dillwyn also loved her friend Olive with all her heart. ? https://www.library.wales/visit/things-to-do/events
Sun 26 March, 2.30pm, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberration will be part of a screening at WOW Festival of A Home for My Heart. This kind and moving documentary follows Suvana Sudeb, an Indian trans woman, through the ups and downs of life with family, friends, lover and comrades. With Q&A. https://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/cinema/wow-home-my-heart-15-short-film-mirrors
February 2023 (past events)
Sun 12 Feb, 12 noon, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. LezDiff celebrates History Month with films, talks and performances. Queer Tales appear with both ‘Queen of the Lake’ and ‘A Moral Amazon: The Story of Miss Amy Dillwyn’. Also on the bill are our friends Behind the Lines and Norena Shopland. https://lezdiff.org/lgbtq-history-month-event/
Sat 18 Feb, 2.30pm, Aberystwyth Arts Centre. Aberration presents: Proud Writing Workshop with Norena Shopland – writing from history. Book early, limited to 15 places.
SpringOut is programming the lesbian interest films again and delighted to be part of the Shropshire Rainbow Film Festival’s tenth birthday celebrations. We have picked films to suit different tastes – with hopefully a little overlap to tempt you to stay on and see something a bit different. As usual we have a documentary with Q & A – this year looking at Lesbian Custody cases of the 1970’s, accompanied by a lovely British short of ‘children’ (grown) nurtured in lesbian & gay households.
Friday Night (16th October 2015)
19:30 Opening Ceremony – come and join us and raise a glass to 10 years
20:00 The Way He Looks
Saturday (17th October 2015)
10:15 – 12:00 Homegrown Shorts at OMH
13.00 – Mom’s Apple Pie: the Heart of the Lesbian Custody Movement plus Q&A – programmed by SpringOut
16:30 – Jayson Bend: Queen & Country plus Q&A
20:00 – Appropriate Behaviour – programmed by SpringOut
Sunday (18th October 2015)
11:00-12:30 Around the World Shorts (at other venue)
13:30 – Victim ith Q&A
16:30 – For 80 Days – programmed by SpringOut
18:30 – Boy Meets Girl
Wednesday 18th February 2015 8pm at The Hive, Belmont, Shrewsbury
Come and join SpringOut and the Shropshire Rainbow Film Festival crew for a screening of the Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister as part of our LGBT History Month celebrations.
Free entry – please book a seat via Eventbrite – click here – so we know how many to expect
Starring Maxine Peake & Anna Madeley, this is a bold and passionate drama telling the story of Anne Lister, 1791-1840, a Yorkshire landowner, industrialist, traveller and diarist. She was a lesbian, who, despite needing to keep her orientation secret from society at large, in private defied the conventions of her times by living with her female lover.
Anne kept a detailed account of her life, her loves and her emotions in a fascinating and painfully honest 4,000,000-word journal. A sizeable portion was written in code, and the deciphering of the diaries a few years ago provides an astonishing insight into the life of the woman who has been called Britain’s first modern lesbian
Once again SpringOut has been invited to programme the lesbian interest films at the Shropshire Rainbow Film Festival and we are delighted to announce our film selection
Friday 17th October 2014 Opening Night starting with a bit of a launch party, then:
Two Girls Against the Rain – a beautiful 10 minute short film from Cambodia. The Director, Sao Sopheak is totally delighted that we are screening it.
After almost 30 years of civil war and the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Traditional values and customs such as arranged marriages are upheld. This short film is the first locally produced documentary, which gives a voice to members of the lesbian community.
Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf – In this eccentric all-female romantic comedy, charismatic filmmaker Anna, who we first meet dressed in a giant vagina costume, is facing a crisis. She has neither job nor girlfriend, and lives in her friend’s garage in Los Angeles. Just when she’s about to throw in the towel, she meets Katia who becomes her muse, sending her into a self-reflective, and semi-self-indulgent, navel-gazing spiral in which she decides to make a film in order to woo her!
She is inspired to write and direct an all-female remake of Edward Albee’s Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? the film of the play that tracks the excruciatingly painful breakdown of George and Martha’s marriage in a claustrophobic domestic drama.
Surrounded by beautiful women as cast and crew including, Anna destroys everything to get to the bottom of what is truly stopping her from love and life. The film’s epigraph, “for beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself”—a quotation from Virginia Woolf—epitomizes Anna’s storyline. She is struggling with the classic work and (love) life balance. Can she ‘have it all’ or has she ‘had it all’ all along? Who is she and what is she supposed to be.
WAVW is dark and parodic and exquisitely intelligent at the same time with sharp yet subtle nods to past literary and pop cultures, performed by the wonderfully talented ensemble. As one critic raves ‘Guinevere Turner playing a lesbian actress playing Elizabeth Burton playing Albee’s Georgie is flat-out phenomenal; she nails the deadpan satire of the Hollywood actress’. You can buy tickets here: Opening Night
Saturday 18th October 2014
We are so totally delighted to have found a couple of films about the lesbian movers and shakers in our lifetimes to screen at this year’s Rainbow Film Festival – wow are they amazing! You can buy tickets here: Saturday special
First off – No Secret Anymore – Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were partners in love and political struggle for over fifty years. With incisive interviews, rare archival images and warmhearted humor, No Secret Anymore reveals their inspiring public work, as well as their charming private relationship. It is a delightful way to meet these legendary lesbians, known as the founders of the modern lesbian civil rights movement. When they courageously launched the Daughters of Bilitis in 1955, it became the first public organisation for lesbians in America.
Here’s a sneaky preview:
Followed by a chat with the ever popular Chair Jane Traies and then the second half of the double bill:
Some Ground To Stand On – This film is so rarely seen – and hard to get hold of – that the only copy we can get starts with a little shake but you’ll be pleased to know it settles down. There is no trailer available so you’ll just have to trust us that it is worth a watch.
Screening as part of a double bill with No Secret Anymore, this compelling documentary tells the life story of Blue Lunden, a working class lesbian activist whose odyssey of personal transformation parallels lesbians’ changing roles over the past 40 years. Starting with Blue’s experience of being run out of the 1950’s New Orleans gay bar scene for wearing men’s clothing, interviews photos, and archival footage trace her experiences: giving up her child for adoption and getting her back; getting sober; and coming into her own as a lesbian rights feminist, and anti-nuclear activist. Filmed when she was 61 and living in Sugarloaf Women’s Village, Blue reflects on aging, activism, and a life spent “doing what she wanted” in this touching, inspiring look at a generation’s struggle for a lesbian identity and consciousness.
Sunday 19th October 2014 The Children’s Hour (AKA The Loudest Whisper) – An old black and white classic for a Sunday matinee, starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine – quite pioneering for its day and based on a Scottish experience.
Karen and Martha are best friends, fresh out of college and establishing a new private girls’ school. Everything seems to be working out – until some of the pupils overhear an argument where Martha’s Aunt Lily accuses her and Karen of an “unnatural relationship”. Mary, a troubled and vengeful child, hears the story and tells her guardian grandmother who spreads the gossip further. Soon all the parents withdraw their children from the school and the fight begins.The future of the school is brought into question, and Karen faces losing her fianceé (James Garner).
Based on the 1934 play of the same name by Lillian Hellman, the story is inspired by the 1809 account of two Scottish school teachers whose lives were destroyed when one of their students accused them of engaging in a lesbian relationship, though they eventually won their case. At the time of the play’s premiere (1934) in New York State, the mention of homosexuality on stage was illegal, but authorities chose to overlook its subject matter when the Broadway production was acclaimed by the critics.
SpringOut has been asked to work with the Shropshire Rainbow Film Festival again in 2014. We will be programming the lesbian interest films and are looking forward to working with the team again. The festival takes place in Shrewsbury 17 – 19 October – a date for the diary.
The Shropshire Rainbow Film Festival was a great success. SpringOut programmed some of the films and discussion sessions. We brought Canadian Film-maker, Heather Tobin over to introduce her film Route of Acceptance and lead a discussion after the screening. She was an absolute delight and a good sport, helping out ‘on the sofa’ with Rainbow Film Festival’s Will Allaway to discuss the shorts on the Sunday
Heather Tobin on the sofa
The festival was a roaring success with more tickets sold (bums on seats) than ever before and great feedback. Our other two films were Stud Life – a Black British film made by Cambell X and a must-show for us, and Margarita – a jolly sell-out on Saturday night