With Girls Who Experiment, GAZE brings you a programme of five Womens’ experimental shorts showcasing a fascinating mix of visually stunning, deeply inspiring and wonderfully absurd films. In Nataly Lebouleux’s Illuminate, a doll finds herself caught up in a series of events that soon reveal to her the secrets of her true nature. It has to do with sex. But is that all? Twists and turns take a simple “coming-out” story into the magical fairytale world of stop-frame animation. A pioneer of lesbian-feminist experimental cinema, Barbara Hammer has created eighty-plus films since the start of her career at age thirty and is dedicated as ever to making the invisible visible. In A Horse is Not A Metaphor(Part of the GAZE Queer Heroes strand), she reflects on the fragility of life and her recent battle with cancer, reclaiming a childhood dream of horses and going back to nature for hope, reflection and healing. Cowboys, purring cats, goatherds, masks and ingenious set design all combine to bring us experimental intrigue in the three films by the incredibly inventive Lilli Hartman. The 16th Dublin International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival One of the strongest showcases of new LGBT cinema in Europe, the Dublin International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival provides a great focal point to meet, discuss and enjoy great queer cinema from home and around the world.
