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Pride Week in Bristol

4th July 2011 Print
Bristol Pride

Pride Week Sat 9 – Sun 17 July, is a cultural festival showcasing the best international LGBT performers and artists, and celebrating the best creative talent from the South West.

The first Pride Week in 2010 proved a huge success, featuring sell-out events across the top venues in Bristol, attracting crowds of 20,000 and finishing the year as the Best Festival in the region (Venue Magazine).

Building on the 2010 line-up Pride Week 2011 includes high quality theatre, film, art, sports and comedy events, and culminates in the most vibrant festival in the South West, Pride Day on Saturday 16 July.

Some highlights of Pride Week 2011 are listed below.

The 1940s return to the Tobacco Factory on Monday 11 and Tuesday 12 July. The downstairs bar is transformed into a vintage fair, complete with jitterbugging dancers, music stalls and bunting, period costume, a stall illustrating Pride events through the ages, and more. Meanwhile, upstairs the Tobacco Factory Theatre hosts local playwright Bea Robert’s hit play ‘The Darkling Plain’.  A wartime love-story, ‘The Darkling Plain’ fuses Coward-esque ‘40’s melodrama, with slapstick comedy and darkly comic pathos.
Metropolis, Bristol’s comedy central, hosts Amy Lamé and Friends on Thursday 14 July. Amy Lamé is an outrageous, acerbic and devastatingly witty comedian.  When not challenging and charming audiences the Sony-award winning Amy ‘Mayoress of Camden’ Lamé is a regular on Radio 4, and features on TV shows including Richard and Judy, Loose Women and Celebrity Fit Club. This rare Bristol performance from Amy is a major coup for Pride, and the strong supporting bill features up-and-coming comedians David Morgan, Rosie Wilby and Rose France. The colourful choir Sing Out Bristol open the night.

This year Pride brings a selection of films to Pride Week, screening both classics and new, films to Bristol. Spanning the Watershed, the Cube and the Arnolfini, the film festival has a broad appeal from film aficionados to activists and old-fashioned romantics.

Local film maker Christian Martin’s new film ‘Buffering’ receives its UK premiere on Saturday 9 July at the Watershed as part of the Pride Launch. ‘Buffering’ is an award winning comedy examining current sexual mores with wit and verve. Also showing at the Watershed are ‘The Four Faced Liar’ (Saturday 9), the powerful HIV documentary ‘We Were Here’ (Tuesday 12) and ‘Edie and Thea’ (Sunday 17).  Due to overwhelming demand Jonathan Harvey’s modern classic ‘Beautiful Thing’ is screened at the Arnolfini (Wednesday 13).  And on Sunday 10 July Pride Bristol pays its respects to the late Elizabeth Taylor, with a special screening of ‘Cat On A Hot Tin Roof’ at the Cube.

Pride Bristol team up with the acclaimed nomadic gallery Antlers this year to bring Art to Pride Week. The special exhibition ‘Anatomy’ showcases six artists who explore human structure as a means to gaining greater insight into human nature. The exquisite exhibition includes painting, sculpture and drawing, and the gallery previews at 2-4 Park Street on Saturday  9 July.

Pride Programming Director, Dr Anna Rutherford, said:

“The Pride Team are passionate about the arts. We create a cultural festival that tells the rich stories of LGBT lives and connects inspirational people with audiences. Last year was brilliant, there’s something very special about the friendly welcoming atmosphere at Pride events. In 2010 we saw large audiences, and this year we’re even more thrilled with the line-up. It’s been great to see the event gaining national coverage this year, putting the city and Pride on the same page as some of the best cultural events in Europe.”

In total, 23 events make up Pride Week 2011.
 
For more information and full listings, visit: pridebristol.org

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Bristol Pride