There have been hundreds of lesbian and gay directors since the beginning of cinema, and the new season of Film Qlub aims to celebrate some of the best.

A director is not always the only, or even the main, creative mind behind a film – a film is a collective project. But many individuals have developed a line of work that became associated with them, and some queer directors have pulled together creative teams which have produced scorchingly beautiful (in and out) films.

This season, Film Qlub will see how lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men have embraced queer visual signs in the characterisation and imagery of their films, seeing how these directors, working from that common pool, have tried to do things differently, both visually and in terms of storytelling.

The chosen ten directors have made an invaluable but not always fully acknowledged contribution to the history of cinema, as well as to LGBTQ art and culture. From Alla Nazimova’s glorification of camp, to Kenneth McPherson’s queering of time, Jackeline Audry’s respect for the damned, Greta Schiller’s portrait of Paris as a lesbian of leisure, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s pansexual fairy tale, Gus Van Sant’s ode to interconnectedness and fluidity, Marta Balletbó-Coll’s anti-epic of daily gay life, Vincent Minelli’s pastel-coloured song to survival, Dee Rees’ boxing match with the coming-of-age genre, and Xavier Dolan’s x-ray of The Tantrum as weapon of self destruction, this band of brothers and sisters never met, but they fought together as shock troops attacking the system from all corners.

In this season, Film Qlub will spend some time with ten ambitious queer directors and the films they helped create, proving that gay aesthetics and gay politics can be a springboard to help propel everyone onto a richer and fairer world.

 The launch of Dublin Film Qlub’s Season of Gay Directors is on October 18, with films the third Saturday of every month until July 18 at the New Theatre Temple Bar, Dublin 2. Find out more here.