“When was the last time a movie channel in Hong Kong devoted time to showing specialized programs for gay and lesbian audiences?” asks the maverick Movie Movie channel, tongue in cheek.

It’s a rhetorical question of course.

Though the special administrative region has its own gay pride, gay bars and gay icons, no movie channel would consider exclusively airing LGBT films, no matter how popular they are.

But entertainment history is being scripted from this month as Movie Movie, a TV channel run by Broadway Cinematheque, Hong Kong’s only art house movie cinema, teams up with Dim Sum, the magazine focusing on gay themes, to host “A Queer Summer”.

The gay film festival, the first of its kind for Hong Kong’s TV industry, kicked off last week and will continue till September. The channel is presenting two gay films every Saturday and Sunday night to make the genre more accessible to the Hong Kong public.

Keeping in mind the possibly predominantly Chinese-speaking viewership, the films have Chinese subtitles. Moreover, they will be available on demand, to be watched any time.

Gary Mak, Broadway Cinematheque’s managing director, says it’s difficult to watch gay films in Hong Kong. Most movie channels do not air such films, neither do the popular theaters. Those that do tend to screen them only infrequently.

“Movie Movie (which started broadcasting about a year ago) fills the void,” Mak says. “They show the queer films that other channels do not, as well as the international art house hits that film buffs, like myself, love to watch.

“We feel that fewer and fewer gay films are shown in theaters. We want to keep gay images in the public eye.”

The channel says this is not just screening gay movies but an initiative to change the way people view the LGBT community in Hong Kong.

“Local channels here tend to be more conservative and when gay people are on a local television show, they tend to be laughed at,” says Joycelyn Choi, director of marketing and programming for Movie Movie.

“We are more daring than local channels.”

She says that in keeping with other parts of the world, that are now changing their attitude to the community, Hong Kong too has started to evolve.

Last year, pop singer Denise Ho disclosed she was gay in the city’s Pride. Another popular singer Anthony Wong also came out last year during a concert.

Hong Kong’s legislative assembly saw the election in September 2012 of an openly gay former TV celebrity, Raymond Chan.

Choi says this shows that Hong Kong is becoming more aware and accepting of the gay community.

“The world is changing, so why isn’t Hong Kong television?” she asks.

The films to be screened during the two-month-long bonanza include “Two Weddings and a Funeral”, a Korean film about a gay man and lesbian who pretend to be a couple so that the woman can adopt a child; “Lost in Paradise”, an intense Vietnamese drama with a gay love triangle against the background of male prostitution as well as the story of a female sex worker and a mentally challenged man; and “Love is the Devil”, British painter Francis Bacon’s biopic in which Daniel Craig plays his lover.