Queer Film Festival  Get the party started when Summertime opens the Vancouver Queer Film Festival at the Vancouver Playhouse next Thursday (August 11). Catherine Corsini’s warm and sexy drama drops a French farm girl, Delphine, into the feminist underground of Paris circa ’71. Liberation, in this case, includes a love affair with Spanish teacher  Carole, rendered with affecting honesty by actors Izïa Higelin and Cécile de France. For the lineup of over 60 films, playing until August 21, visit www.queerfilmfestival.ca/. 

Life, Animated  Roger Ross Williams’s doc tells the story of Owen Suskind, whose relationship with Disney classics like The Lion King provided a way out of the isolation of severe autism. Life, Animated begins its Vancity Theatre run on Friday (August 5).

DGC Master Class: Catherine Hardwicke  Following last month’s sit-down with Rachel Talalay, the DGC brings Catherine Hardwicke, director of the mighty Thirteen (plus a little thing called Twilight), to the Vancity Theatre on Saturday (August 6).

The Elephant Man/Veronika Voss  A killer double brings together David Lynch’s underappreciated, Victorian-era bio with the penultimate film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, both in glorious black and white, at the Vancity Theatre on Monday (August 8). 

Kiss of Death  As the vicious Tommy Udo, Richard Widmark did about as little as you possibly could to advance the rights of the physically disabled. Along with Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, Henry Hathaway’s hard-assed 1947 thriller begins the Cinematheque’s latest and always welcome film noir series on Thursday (August 4). The program runs until August 22 and includes Shadow of a Doubt and Underworld U.S.A. among its other grimy delights.