The Long Island Gay & Lesbian Film Festival to showcase 8 new films

Eight new films spanning the rainbow of LGBT experience — including a Sundance prize-winner, a campy comedy and two documentaries about transgender people — are being screened at the 20th annual Long Island Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Friday through Sunday at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington.

“Over the years there’s become a greater awareness of the diversity of the community and I think that’s represented in the festival,” Cinema co-director Dylan Skolnick said.

Receptions and music performances are scheduled throughout the weekend.

Friday

THE FEELS (2017)

7:15 p.m.

Seven friends at a bachelorette weekend getaway trade quips, revelations and partners, in a film Variety called a “sapphically tilted variation on ‘Big Chill’-type dramedy” with an emphasis on “shaggy humor.”

SEE PHOTOS50 movies that have filmed on Long Island

A VERY SORDID WEDDING (2017)

9 p.m.

A Texas Bible belt town gets its first taste of gay, interracial marriage in a broad, campy comedy featuring colorful characters and numerous subplots.

Saturday

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON (2017)

3 p.m.

In this Netflix documentary, transgender activist Victoria Cruz uncovers details about the mysterious death of Johnson, a leader of the 1969 Stonewall rebellion who was found dead in 1992 in the Hudson River. The police ruled Johnson’s death a suicide, but foul play was suspected, prompting protests by Manhattan’s gay, lesbian and transgender communities.

CHAVELA (2017, Spanish with English subtitles)

5:15 p.m.

The film centers on a 1991 interview with gender-bending Ranchera singer Chavela Vargas, a recovering alcoholic who made a triumphant comeback as a Lifetime Achievement Grammy winner, and muse to Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar.

SIGNATURE MOVE (2017, in Spanish and English)

7 p.m.

A Pakistani Muslim woman and a Mexican-American woman fall in love, derailing family expectations, in a film Variety called “a lightweight but likable cross-cultural lesbian romance.”

BEACH RATS (2017)

9:15 p.m.

Eliza Hittman won the 2017 Sundance Film Festival’s directing award for this character study about a 19-year-old Coney Island man leading a double life, dating a young woman and at night secretly hooking up online with older men. Rogerebert.com called the film “a potent blend of eroticism, pent-up feelings and good old-fashioned appreciation of beauty.”

Sunday

HAPPINESS ADJACENT (2017)

5:30 p.m.

A shipboard romance blossoms between two men — one recovering from a breakup, the other a bisexual vacationing with his wife. Is this just a holiday fling or the start of something more?

TOM OF FINLAND (2017)

8 p.m.

A documentary recounts the life and loves of Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen, whose erotic drawings helped shape the fantasies of a generation of gay men.