[caption id="" align="alignright" width="336"] Black, Cohen and Van Sant at GLAAD Media Awards[/caption]

Milk director Gus Van Sant will attend the Side by Side LGBT Film Festival in St. Petersburg later this month, but a bomb scare delayed opening night for more than an hour.

Nearly 1,000 attendees were evacuated from the Warshavsky Express entertainment centrere on Thursday evening, when a false bomb threat delayed the opening-night movie,Diederik Ebbinge's Matterhorn, for 90 minutes.

But, the show went on eventually.

"Aggressive opponents of LGBT also gathered near the cinema," reports Queer Russia. Police and SWAT teams searched the venue and, when explosives were not discovered, festivalgoers were allowed to return.

Van Sant, along with Milk producer Bruce Cohen and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, will be on hand for a special screening of the Oscar-winning biopic on November 30.

Said Cohen:

Our hope in screening the 2009 Academy Award winning film Milk -- about the late civil rights leader, Harvey Milk -- is to encourage respectful conversations that might create deeper understanding. Cinema has that power. For this reason, we would like to bring our film to your country and participate in the meaningful dialogue we feel certain this screening will create between the people of our great nations.”

An unnamed 37-year-old suspect has been detained by police, and faces up to three years in jail.

Below, check out the promo reel  for the Side by Side LGBT Film Festival, running through November 30.

h/t: GLAAD