Outfest is one of the few LGBTQIA+ arts, media, and entertainment organizations created to empower and encourage developing artists to achieve their dreams in telling their stories to the world. It produces two film festivals, a streaming platform, and runs educational services for filmmakers in Los Angeles.

With the help of a grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (the first donation was made available back in 2010), Outfest has collaborated with 1,000 artists. It restored over 41,000 items and 26 films through the UCLA Legacy Project, set up to raise funds to preserve LGBTQ-themed films. It’s the only program in the world dedicated to preserving lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender moving images. Their statistics are impressive. Sixty-six percent of the films were made by women, people of color, transgender and non-binary communities.

Their mission is loud and clear. It says: “Outfest creates visibility to diverse IA stories and empowers storytellers, building empathy to drive meaningful social change.”

This nonprofit organization was founded in 1982 by John Ramirez and Stuart Timmons but its origin story was conceived on the cusp of the AIDS epidemic, in 1979, when Ramirez and Timmons, two students at UCLA, put together a gay film festival on campus. Back then they called it the Gay and Lesbian Media Festival and Conference. The name changed to Outfest in 1994.

They’ve come a long way since their first event. These days, Outfest is a well-respected as well-established global presence in the entertainment field. With a staff of 16 and a board of 25 directors, Outfest operates year-round to ensure the viability and sustainability of its organization.

Their flagship event is a 10 to 14-day film festival in Los Angeles, usually in August. In 2016, Outfest held its first traveling festival in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the Academy of Music Theater. That proved to be an enormous success. During COVID, like all public events in 2020, they continued their output online and partnered with Film Independent to launch the United in Pride digital film festival. Additionally, they produced pop-up drive-ins in the Malibu mountains and partnered with Frameline, the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Film Festival; as well as the Inside Out Film and Video Festival, launching the North American Queer Festival Alliance. In 2021, Outfest came back to festivities as a hybrid event.

Along with the Legacy program, The HFPA also supports Outset: The Young Filmmakers Project, in which 16–24-year-old emerging filmmakers embark on a hands-on lab experience over six months. Their work streams on the Outfest platform, which boasts the best in Queer cinema.

Another arm of the Outfest organization is the Outfest Fusion Film Festival, their second-largest event. It screens around 10 features and 40 short films over 5 days. There are also several workshops, masterclasses, a One Minute Movie Contest, and live performances.

Tarik Yetken, Outfest’s Director of Development, explains that “Outfest LA is the ‘big party’ and Fusion is key to who we are and what we do.” Outfest LA attracts the more established filmmakers while Fusion pivots to emerging talent and is gaining momentum exponentially due to its focus on Queer and Transgender, as well as Black, indigenous and people of color.

Outfest’s continued support of the LGBTQIA+ talent has provided a steppingstone to encourage and establish these communities, so that they can be seen and understood by mainstream audiences.

Appreciative of the HFPA’s involvement, Yetken stated: “The funding of the HFPA is so integral to the support that goes into this small cohort of young filmmakers getting their first film made. We’re very grateful.”