Last night, LOCO unveiled their programme, alongside a swish new website. With twelve days of comedy focused cinema, events, parties and a terrific training weekend for young filmmakers, (more on this soon) LOCO is one of the friendliest, most convivial film festivals in London. As they put it at their launch, “it’s about meeting filmmakers, screening good films, making partnerships and bring people together.”

We’ve flicked through their lovely print brochure and picked five possible highlights amongst the programme.

Shortbus 10th Anniversary Screening

It’s been 10 years since the release of John Cameron Mitchell’s (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Rabbit Hole) now seminal seeming Shortbus. A New York set, ensemble comedy-drama, Shortbus follows an expansive group of Brooklyners who meet for weekly underground gatherings, that prove as much sexually as artistically expressive. Most discussion of the film at the time surrounded the fairly explicit, largely unsimulated sex scenes, which weren’t shocking so much for their inclusion, (plenty of films were made with unstimulated sex before 2006), but more for the realisation that this sort of sex should probably have played a bigger role in mainstream comedy before. A lot of explicit screen sex in theatrical cinema was found in arthouse films, often in a violent or depressing context – but right from the opening tracking shot that passes overhead one raucous couple, a dominatrix humiliating a partner, and someone engaging in clumsy autofellatio – Shortbus celebrated sex without making too large a fuss about it. See it now 10 years later at LOCO’s anniversary screening.

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel

Between 1959 and 1979, director François Truffaut and actor Jean-Pierre Léaud collaborated on four feature films and one short. Audiences saw Léaud’s character Antoine Doinel grow up on screen, tracking him through a difficult childhood in The 400 Blows, his teenage engagement with music, cinema and love in Antoine and Colette; early adulthood romantic misadventure in Stolen Kisses; post-divorce reflection and recollection in Love on the Run; and finally his struggles with temptation amidst the challenge of marriage and fatherhood in Bed and Board. As part of a wider celebration of French comic cinema, LOCO present the entire Antoine Doinel saga, a screen history well worth following along with.

Drop Dead Gorgeous

Screening at LOCO in partnership with The Bechdel Test Fest, blackly comic beauty pageant mockumentary Drop Dead Gorgeous plays on 35mm at the Prince Charles Cinema, with a panel discussion on female-led comedies before the film. Somewhat maligned on its release in 1999, Drop Dead Gorgeous gained a large following on home video and is now considered a cult classic, the cast featuring a host of women who are now household names such as Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, Kirstie Alley, Allison Janney, Ellen Barkin, Brittany Murphy and Amy Adams. Rarely screened in its original format, Drop Dead Gorgeous at the PCC should be one of the more raucous, straight up enjoyable screenings at LOCO.

Funny Girls / Shorts Sunday

Amidst the large offering of short film at LOCO, two programmes stand out. Firstly, Funny Girls, a programme of shorts created through Creative England’s iShorts initiative, has five comedy shorts made by female directors who undertook the development and production mentorship and workshop, utilising the £10,000 budget provided. Secondly, Shorts Sunday, a day long event playing some of the best funny film shorts from the last year, many of which were made by SP members. Come to the BFI Southbank’s Blue Room for the day, and a catch up on a year’s worth of laughs whilst meeting the filmmakers who made the films in between programmes.

Alice Lowe Triple Bill

Comic actress Alice Lowe will be a familiar face to those who’ve been to LOCO before, and will likely become known to first time visitors too, appearing in three films in the festival this year. She stars first in the much acclaimed, utterly bizarre Aaaaaaaah, directed by her Sightseers co-star Steve Oram, and will be present with the rest of the cast and director at that screening. Also featuring Lowe, Burn Burn Burn, an independent British comedy feature that played in the London Film Festival last year, about two girls on a road trip North following the death of a mutual friend. Lastly, the much anticipated Black Mountain Poets, in which Lowe is a co-lead in a semi-improvised jaunt about pals posing as poets in a Welsh writing retreat. Swing Lowe.

LOCO Film Festival runs 20th April to 1st May. You can browse their full programme on the site.