Throughout the last few decades, films focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) issues have largely circulated beneath the radar of mainstream media. For the independent filmmakers of this underground culture, success redefines itself. Their work remains mostly unacknowledged, sent to film festivals in hopes of getting a DVD release. If they’re lucky, a distributor may release the film in foreign countries. Nationwide theater releases remain only a distant possibility. More than anything, the LGBTQ film community thrives instead on the celebration of its existence.

Atlanta’s own Out on Film festival, which opens tonight at the Midtown Art Cinema and will continue through Oct. 8, dedicates itself to showcasing a diverse range of quality films centering around LGBTQ themes.

“I look at what I’m doing, really, as a responsibility,” says Jim Farmer, the director of this year’s festival, in an interview with the Wheel. “I want to give the community the best possible festival we have.”

A self-proclaimed film geek, the 44-year-old movie publicist took on the festival director job when the company that used to present Out on Film handed control over to the gay community.

Farmer saw the festival as an opportunity to assert the presence of gay films in Atlanta.

“It’s imperative that we have festivals like this, with films that are by the community and about the community. A lot of these films will never get a chance to play in a movie theater,” Farmer says.

After working in the film industry as a publicist for five years, Farmer is all too aware of how gays and lesbians are portrayed in mainstream media.

“When ‘Brokeback Mountain’ came out everyone thought, ‘Oh God, the gates are opening. We’re here! There are going to be gay movies every couple of months,’” Farmer recalls. “That didn’t really happen. Yeah, gay and lesbians are certainly more in the mainstream, but we’re not mainstream yet.”

Furthermore, the roles that gays do get in mainstream media fail to satisfy the LGBTQ community. College senior Joe O’Geen, a student worker in the Emory LGBTQ office, noted current gay roles as stereotypical.

“A lot of these roles are oversexed and fixed on appearance,” O’Geen said. “They’re always white and either flamboyant or Adonis-like.”

One victim of this type-casting currently stars in the new breakout television show “Glee.” Newcomer Chris Colfer plays a gay fashionista whose sharp tongue and superiority harken to other gay characters like Jack from “Will & Grace” and Marc from “Ugly Betty.”

“I like to think of the message [in ‘Glee’] as a positive one — to be who you are — but I don’t know that the depiction of Kurt is positive,” O’Geen said. “I think [film festivals] are great because they portray various messages.”

Farmer agrees, noting that the importance of representing diversity guided the selection process. Although Out on Film will present 26 feature films and 13 shorts, the festival received at least three times as many submissions for each category.

The diversity certainly shows. The film selections range from a musical number, aptly titled “The Big Gay Musical,” to a documentary about a 1993 gay hate crime to a Swedish film about two gay men who adopt a 15-year-old homophobic teenager.

Also included in the selection is an adaptation of the novel Dream Boy, written by Emory creative writing professor Jim Grimsley. A story about two gay teenagers set in the rural South during the 1970s, the film adaptation has an especially relevant place in this Southern film festival.

“A lot of the modern stories about the South aren’t really depicting the whole region,” Grimsley says. “My intention was to broaden peoples’ ideas of what’s in the South and what they know about it.”

“Dream Boy” has made the rounds at numerous film festivals, receiving positive attention from viewers in Berlin, Milan and Athens, Greece. Its distributor, Regent, plans to release the movie theatrically in the U.S. in spring 2010.

Despite the acclaim, the production of “Dream Boy” didn’t come without its troubles.

“The story scared people,” Grimsley says. “When the shooting started … the local folks would find out we were shooting a gay movie and they were out to withdraw permission to use their farm. The film crew basically had to be as quiet as they could be about the film’s content.”

Despite the setbacks that come with making gay films, festivals like Out on Film set out to make the finished product worth the effort.

“It’s important to have film festivals such as these. We’re here to serve a purpose and that is to produce and give back to the community,” Farmer says. In addition to offering the community quality gay films, the festival also helps boost awareness of October as LGBTQ History Month.

At its heart, Out on Film encourages LGBTQ filmmakers’ dedication to their community. If slack-wristed, well-dressed prima donnas remain the best portrayal of gays mainstream media can manage, maybe a film festival or two can show us what gay life is really about.

— Contact Ginny Chae.