Founded in 1991, it is the largest queer film event in the Southern Hemisphere, in 2015 attracting around 23,000 attendees at key locations around Melbourne.

The Midsumma board asked filmmaker Lawrence Johnston and lesbian bar owner Pat Longmore to be the first festival co-directors.

The 1992 Festival also screened at the National Theatre and opened with the film adaptation of David Leavitt's novel The Lost Language of Cranes.

In early 1992 the film festival took up residence at Hares & Hyenas bookshop in Commercial Road, South Yarra, which was founded by Crusader Hillis and Rowland Thomson a few months before in December 1991.

Teenage Sadie Benning was a festival guest with their short films shot on the toy Fischer-Price PXL camera.

In September 1992 they met with UK actor and writer Madeleine Swain, her partner of the time, Suzie Goodman, and film enthusiast Frances O'Connor.

In 2003 the name was changed to Melbourne Queer Film Festival and in 2004 the screenings moved to the new ACMI with opening nights at the Astor Theatre.

In 2011, MQFF headed to the Art Deco Sun Theatre in inner west Footscray with a satellite festival over a weekend in late August.