"Well, last year would have been great, too," she says of a Toronto filmfest lineup that included Ang Lee's landmark Brokeback Mountain, a love story between two cowboys.

"Ang Lee has the reputation for defying gravity," Huang says of the film that became a box-office hit, a critical triumph and an Oscar contender (she thinks homophobia did do the film in for the best picture Oscar, though).

So Queer Lounge, which decided to tackle Toronto by first staging events, is hosting a public mega-party on Sunday night at the Phoenix Concert Theatre from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. (Tix available from Ticketmaster).

Like the film itself, the party will be bustling with drag queens and queer folk from both the New York and Toronto communities. Among the performers will be Mitchell himself, doing some Hedwig material, as well as Bitch and the Exciting Conclusions, the Wau Wau Sisters and CBC radio host and musician-actress Sook-Yin Lee of Toronto, who stars in the film.

There is talk about setting up "a grope room" in which performers will simulate sex scenes from the film. Any way it turns, it promises to be one of the most outrageous events of Toronto's festival.

But the real purpose behind Queer Lounge and its events -- including Monday's Hawksley Workman concert in honour of Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox's The Bubble -- will be to focus attention on films with gay themes. And to make gay filmamkers feel at home in the festival, Huang says.

Gays in the film industry used "to be shunned by homophobes," she says. Then the gay community "self-ghettoized itself," making too many films in which the whole point was just to be gay.

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