Grove and Pines Film Festival

Grove and Pines Film Festival The Grove & Pines Film Festival honors Fire Island’s legacy as a queer refuge, elevating LGBTQ+ stories. Proud to be a 501(c)(3) Non Profit

We’re excited to bring your stories and connect our communities.

Don’t miss the ferry, filmmakers. Last Call!Submissions close tomorrow, May 31. Best Narrative, Best Documentary, Best H...
05/30/2026

Don’t miss the ferry, filmmakers.
Last Call!

Submissions close tomorrow, May 31.

Best Narrative, Best Documentary, Best Horror Short, Best Music, Best Episodic, and Best of Local Fire Island are all waiting for your work.
Submit via the FilmFreeway link in our bio.

05/28/2026

Tomorrow is Laverne Cox’s birthday, time to celebrate this trailblazing woman!

The salon scene from the final season of Orange Is the New Black is one of the most quietly perfect moments in the series: Sophia, freshly out, scissors in hand, telling Piper she’s not looking back. It’s warm and completely her.

Laverne was the first openly transgender person nominated for a Primetime Emmy in an acting category. She’s also an Emmy-winning producer, a documentarian, and one of the most important voices in LGBTQ advocacy of the past decade. That combination of talent and purpose is exactly the kind of work this festival exists to celebrate.

Happy birthday Laverne! 🧡🥳



***rcinema

Behind every great festival is a group of people with taste, perspective, and a deep love for storytelling.Sheena Oglesb...
05/28/2026

Behind every great festival is a group of people with taste, perspective, and a deep love for storytelling.

Sheena Oglesby, Tyler Cunningham, Zak Sommerfield, and Zakiya Cook are four of the many creatives helping us build Grove & Pines from the ground up — bringing their voices, experiences, and passion for q***r storytelling to our inaugural year on Fire Island.

We can’t wait for you to see what they help discover.


05/28/2026

Premiering on May 28, 1919, Different from the Others is considered one of the earliest surviving films to portray homosexuality sympathetically. Directed by Richard Oswald and co-written with sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, the film follows a violinist being blackmailed under Paragraph 175, the law that criminalized homosexuality in Germany at the time.

The film was later censored, banned, and largely destroyed by the N***s during broader efforts to erase LGBTQ history. These clips come from the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s restored version of the film, created through the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project.

More than 100 years later, its survival is a reminder of why preserving q***r stories — and the spaces that celebrate them — still matters.

The Cherry Grove Community House and Theatre has been a home for q***r art, performance, and community since 1946. One o...
05/27/2026

The Cherry Grove Community House and Theatre has been a home for q***r art, performance, and community since 1946. One of ten National Historic Landmarks representing LGBTQ+ civil rights struggles in the United States, it is the oldest continuously operating gay summer theater in the country. This September, it becomes our screen.
***rhistory

05/27/2026

Happy Birthday to the White Witch herself, Stevie Nicks.

Few artists have meant more to q***r culture than Stevie. Her music, style, mysticism, vulnerability, and unapologetic individuality created a world where outsiders, misfits, and dreamers could feel seen.

That’s why this moment from American Horror Story: Coven resonates so deeply. Misty Day doesn’t just listen to “Rhiannon” — she finds herself in it. The longing, sensitivity, magic, loneliness, and desire to belong. It’s less about witchcraft and more about recognition. That blend of fantasy, emotion, camp, identity, and chosen family is exactly the kind of storytelling spirit that inspires us at Grove & Pines Film Festival.

Happy Birthday, Stevie. Thank you for making generations of people feel a little more magical.

Donate like you're tipping a Go-Go because WE'RE HALFWAY THERE!$5,000 raised. $5,000 to go. And every dollar you give be...
05/26/2026

Donate like you're tipping a Go-Go because WE'RE HALFWAY THERE!

$5,000 raised. $5,000 to go. And every dollar you give between now and the finish line gets matched dollar for dollar by a founding supporter, up to $10K.

Give $25, they give $25. Give $100, they give $100.

Help us bring the inaugural Grove & Pines Film Festival to Fire Island this September and support q***r cinema, community, and the Erin Carine Grant for Q***r Creatives.

Donation link in bio.

05/25/2026

Today marks the 2014 premiere of The Normal Heart on HBO.

In The Normal Heart, Julia Roberts plays Dr. Emma Brookner, a researcher watching her patients die while the government looks the other way. In this scene, she stands before a room of officials and says, in effect: I see what you’re doing. I’m naming it. And I’m not leaving.
The character is drawn directly from the life of Dr. Linda Laubenstein, one of the first physicians in the United States to identify and treat AIDS patients in the early 1980s, and among the first to publish research linking the disease to Kaposi’s sarcoma. She died in 1992 at 45.

In 2013, Ryan Murphy shot parts of this film in the Fire Island Pines. The production crew even recruited locals as extras for a 1981 White Party beach scene. For Murphy, the choice wasn’t just logistical. He had spent years trying to get this story made and has said he first read Larry Kramer’s play at 18 and never let it go.

The film received 16 Emmy nominations and won Outstanding Television Movie. Murphy accepted and said the whole thing rested on one person: Larry Kramer.

***rfilm

Cherry Grove shaped a lot of us. For Erin, it was a place with many cherished memories. An out and proud q***r woman who...
05/25/2026

Cherry Grove shaped a lot of us. For Erin, it was a place with many cherished memories. An out and proud q***r woman who loved this community deeply and believed in the artists living inside it.

The Erin Carine Grant for Q***r Creatives is how we carry her forward. A $5,000 award presented at the Grove & Pines Film Festival, given to a filmmaker telling a story that is courageous, honest, and authentically their own.

Applications are open through June 10.

***rFilm ***rStorytelling

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New York, NY

Website

https://filmfreeway.com/GroveandPinesFilmFestival, http://www.groveandpines

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