A note about our venues

We\’re nothing if not determined. Over the years we\’ve met many challenges. As a community and as an organization. We\’re entirely built on volunteer power; we don\’t own our own venue; and we don\’t own any technology as a committee, except a laptop. We\’ve kept it lean and mean – that poses challenges- but it also makes us ready for change. Our challenge the past few years has been venues. Going back only 15 years when we were at Rainbow, the festival grew and one theatre could no longer accommodate all of the women who wanted to attend, so we asked for an additional theatre at Rainbow Cinemas and started watching together, separately. When Rainbow Cinemas was purchased by another company, they upgraded their seating (which is wonderful), but it reduced the number of seats available to the festival so we had to shift last year to TWO theatres and TWO venues. This year, we heard your feedback and wanted to bring back the buzz of having everybody in one place. To do this we\’ve had to do a bit more pivoting and to shift the dates to May. To wit, we have arranged to have ONE theatre, ONE location at Western University (sort of, keep reading). We\’re excited because it means that we have everyone back together in ONE theatre. This location change also means that other venues will change and we\’d like you to watch out for that.

To help navigate those changes, for those things that require additional attention we\’ve placed  symbol on our events page. Please read these carefully.

Our theatre venue for Friday night and Saturday afternoon, is at Western University; however, our theatre venue for Sunday is at the Carousel Room at the Western Fair Grounds AND at Aeolian Hall. The skinny is, that for those people who are at the Western Fair Grounds for the Brunch and Jennie McNulty, they can stay and watch the movies after brunch. For those people who don\’t attend the Brunch, they will watch the movies at Aeolian Hall to accommodate our Open to Everyone venue for the Sunday films. For those of you from London this will all be a snap because you are familiar with the city. For those of you who are intrepid travellers from outside the city, there are a couple of things you can do – find a London buddy and have them guide you to the venues; charge your smart phone and use the GPS to get you from A to B. Use the more primitive, but visually pleasing, road maps.

Things that may catch you up: There are 3 days of movies and three potential venues: Althouse College Auditorium, Western University; and Sunday at Western Fair Carousel Room OR Aeolian Hall. Please do not confuse Western University with the Western Fair. Two separate locations with kilometres between them. We want to make sure that you show up at the proper venue at the proper time.

Our venues are not permanent changes to the Festival, but rather what was available to us this year in order to bring everybody together again.

We have worked hard to accomodate everybody. We would rather have had everybody at the same place ALL THE TIME, but without gads of cash to buy a Lesbian Community Centre with Pool, it wasn\’t to be this year. You\’ll see more of London. You\’ll meet more people. You can pivot with the best of them. Road curving ahead. We\’re happy that you\’re along for the ride.