The Last Outing

After 17 years at the helm of one of the most celebrated queer film festivals in the world, Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival founder, artistic director, and heart-and-soul Scott Dinger is moving on.

"It's something that I've toyed with in the back of my mind for the past few years," Dinger told the Chronicle. "It's like anything, really, in that after a while you find yourself in a position where you're not being challenged, and also, for the festival, I think it may be time to bring someone in who has new ideas and a new excitement, especially from the programming standpoint."

Dinger's tenure with aGLIFF has seen the fest move from its humble origins as a for-profit venture of the Dobie Theatre, which Dinger owned until selling to the Landmark Theatres chain in 1999, to become one of the premier venues for gay and lesbian filmmaking in the world, playing host to legions of celebrated and iconoclastic directors known and unknown, from Gregg Araki to John Waters. The parties were legendary, sure, but it was (and remains) Dinger's professional skill and commitment to showcasing the very best queer cinema has to offer that made every summer feel like just another sweaty prelude to Dinger's main event at the Dobie Theatre.

What's next for the man with the golden ticket?

"I'm with the festival until the end of the year," Dinger says, "and then I'm looking to bring in a new artistic director. I don't know if I'll be moving from here or not, but I want to stay in the film industry, whether it's exhibition, distribution, working for queer TV, or whatever it may be. But I feel pretty confident that I'll find something where I can make a difference and bring something to the table."

No successor to Dinger has been chosen as of yet, but with the dovetailing of Austin's prominent gay and lesbian and film communities the résumés are already pouring in. The job is a big one; the shoes, even bigger. And you know what they say about a guy with big feet: He's got big socks, too.

"I was talking to someone the other day," added Dinger, "about how you get into these festivals and become so close to it with the nuts and bolts and deadlines and whatnot, and in the end it's the little things that pull you back and make you realize what you started doing it for in the first place. There's one young man who first showed up with his mother five years ago when he was 13 years old, and they've been coming faithfully to every festival since then. I got an e-mail from his mother a few days ago saying that he's about to leave for college up in Massachusetts, and they'll only be able to see a few films at the beginning of the festival this year. We had a chance to catch up, and he told me that going to aGLIFF when he was 13 was really his very first exposure to queer cinema, this young gay man, and that it meant a tremendous amount to him. Sometimes you get to where you think you're just showing movies, but that really just put it all into perspective for me."