The St. Petersburg festival of LGBT films "Side By Side" now has a channel on YouTube. This is the first step to opening a new site of forums about film, which took place "semi-underground" in fall 2008.
This year, we hope, nothing will hinder the opening. It will be problematic to prevent the festival since these venues have already been confirmed: The Consulate of Great Britain, Goethe Institute, the Danish Cultural Institute and so on. The festival even secured a movie theater on Ligovskiy Avenue.
The 2nd International LGBT film festival "Side By Side" will take place from the 23rd to the 31st of October, 2009.
Feature and documentary films from Germany, Spain, France, Britain, Israel, Canada, United States and New Zealand will be included in the competition. As part of the retrospective portion of the festival, "Film of the Weimar Republic," films which have become classics of silent cinema from the collection of the Museum of Cinema in Munich will be shown.
Panel participants will include sociologists, cultural experts and gay activists from Russia and other parts of the world.
Translated by Timothy Grishin