MONTREAL — A master class lead by bad boy Bruce LaBruce, and docs about Patti Smith and Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz, are part of the imaginative lineup at Image+Nation, Canada’s oldest queer cinema festival.

‘LaBruce has made an enormous impact on queer cinema in Canada and around the world,’ says the festival’s chief programmer Katharine Setzer, adding that LaBruce is more ‘user friendly’ now than earlier in his career, a fact that parallels the softening of queer politics in the past two decades.

‘We are no longer living in a potent AIDS crisis. Canadian gays and lesbians can now marry and have children, says Setzer. ‘We are still political, but being gay and lesbian is more normal now. Things have evolved.’

As a result, much of the 21st Image+Nation, which runs to Nov. 30, isn’t focused on the theme of coming out, says Setzer. For example, the festival’s closing film, The New Twenty by Chris Mason Johnson, features the stories of five friends in their late 20s living in New York City. ‘It’s an ensemble piece based on five characters. Two are gay, but their sexuality is simply part of what makes them human. It’s not hitting the viewer over the head about being gay.’

The festival will also feature Tom Gustafson’s Were the World Mine, a gay musical based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream slated for major release.

Setzer also recommends the doc Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens, a portrait of the famed photographer by her sister Barbara Leibovitz, and The Beirut Apt, about Lebanon’s suppressed gays and lesbians.

American director Daryl Wein’s Sex Positive is a compelling portrait of Richard Berkowitz, a New York City hustler-turned-activist who fought hard to spread the word about safe sex practices, and Steven Sebring’s Patti Smith: Dream of Life, which features Smith’s own musings on the human experience and spirituality.