A brand-new queer film festival is landing on Fire Island this week, bringing three days of screenings, panels, and parties to Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines starting Friday. The inaugural Grove & Pines Film Festival runs September 18 through September 20, 2026, spread across two of the country's most storied LGBTQ+ summer communities.
According to Time Out, the festival, known as GAPFF, will bring three days of screenings, parties, and live events to the island community roughly 60 miles east of Manhattan. The lineup includes four feature-length films and 42 short films spanning comedy, horror, animation, and documentaries, with names like Alan Cumming, Cheyenne Jackson, Johnny Sibilly, and Miss Peppermint attached to the programming, per the same outlet's report.
A New Prize for Queer Filmmakers
Among the festival's new offerings is the $5,000 Erin Carine Grant for Queer Creatives, an annual award for queer artists and creatives, according to the Grove and Pines Film Festival. The grant is named for Erin Carine, whose support of queer artistry helped inspire the festival's mission, the organization notes.
Programming highlights include a documentary about Miss Peppermint, Time Out reports. Also on the schedule are Bookends, starring Noam Ash and Charlie Barnett, and Sex in Drag, which follows performer Sherry Vine.
Built on Historic Ground
Screenings in Cherry Grove will unfold at the Cherry Grove Community House, a venue created in 1946 when residents floated a former barn across Long Island's Great South Bay before adding a theater wing three years later, according to the National Park Service. That stage is described as the first American venue to feature theatrical productions by gay performers for both gay and straight audiences, and Time Out separately reports it as the country's oldest continuously operating LGBTQ+ theater.
The Cherry Grove Community House and Theatre earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in June 2013, becoming one of the first sites nationally recognized for its significance in LGBTQ civil rights and social history, Out Traveler reports. The listing was advocated for by U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, per the same account.
Over in Fire Island Pines, festival screenings will take place inside Whyte Hall's 172-seat Brandon Fradd Theater, on a site that has served as a community gathering space since 1854, according to the Fire Island Pines Property Owners Association. The site originally housed a U.S. Life-Saving Service station before the current community center was rebuilt in 2007, the association notes.
From Criminalized Refuge to National Circuit
Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines evolved into one of the country's most famous LGBTQ+ summer destinations after providing a seaside refuge for queer New Yorkers facing discrimination and criminalization, Time Out reports. That history was not always welcoming: during the mid-20th century, Suffolk County law enforcement averaged 60 summer arrests a year of gay men in Cherry Grove, often publishing defendants' names in local newspapers, according to Fire Island News.
Organizers designed the new festival to expand Fire Island's cultural calendar beyond peak beach season and to put Cherry Grove and the Pines on the same national festival circuit as Provincetown and Palm Springs, according to Long Island Wave. The outlet reports that organizers also framed the event as a response to shrinking institutional funding for LGBTQ+ arts nationwide. Comedian Brad Loekle, who sits on the festival's board and performed early in his career in Cherry Grove, said the gathering is partly a response to the country's current political climate, per Time Out, and added that the festival gives back to communities and honors personal and artistic history.
The Grove & Pines Film Festival is organized as a community-led 501(c)(3) non-profit, Long Island Wave reports.
Getting There and What's Included
Transportation between Cherry Grove and the Pines includes water taxis and ferries, and festival pass holders receive discounts. Loekle detailed pass-holder discounts, including discounts on water-taxi rides and at The Grove Hotel. Time Out also reports that additional late-night ferries will run each evening of the festival, and that festival pass holders receive discounts at participating businesses and on water-taxi rides between the two communities.
Passes include full access to filmmaker panel discussions at no extra charge, alongside screenings, according to the festival's own schedule. Unlike many larger festivals, Long Island Wave notes, panel discussions are folded into general admission rather than sold as a separate ticket.
A three-day weekend pass costs $140 and a single day pass costs $50, Time Out reports, though the top-tier Director's Cut Pass has already sold out. A companion GAPFF app includes schedules, maps, and transportation information and works offline, according to the outlet. Tickets and the full schedule are available through the Grove & Pines Film Festival website.
