Vancouver Queer Film Festival explores urgent issues affecting queer, trans, and Two-Spirit people worldwide
Out on Screen’s 33rd annual festival features more than 90 films from 20 countries, highlighting queer artistic and activist histories and subcultures
Well Rounded. Photo via VQFF
The 33rd annual Vancouver Queer Film Festival is running from August 12 to 22.
With the theme of “longing”, this year’s fest explores the most urgent social and political issues affecting queer, trans and Two-Spirit people around the globe.
Curated by artistic director Anoushka Ratnarajah and festival programmer Nya Lewis, the selections also touch on universal themes of love, loss, and legacy.
“One of the greatest challenges facing the work of VQFF and the filmmakers we love is the rise of discriminatory ideologies and policies wielded against our communities around the world, and the toll that violence takes on our spirits,” says Ratnarajah. “Artists are responding to crisis in the best ways they know how: by sharing our stories, and speaking their truths.”
With more than 90 films from 20 countries, the festival shines a spotlight on queer artistic and activist histories and subcultures.
VQFF 2021, with the support of presenting sponsor RBC, features six Spotlight Programs, eight Special Presentations, sixteen Feature Films, seven Short Film Programs. There are also several Workshops and Industry Panels, including a Queer Film 101 primer; a presentation from VQFF’s sibling program, Out In Schools; and panels addressing a range of topics from representation to food to politics.
Unapologetic. Photo via VQFF
VQFF is thrilled to present a screening of local feature documentary, Well Rounded, which brings fat queers to the front, with interviews from artists to health professionals. Directed by Shana Myara and featuring hilarious, vulnerable, and insightful stories from Mi’kmaw comedian and broadcaster Candy Palmater, multidisciplinary performer Ivory, and local queers including style icon Lydia Okello and comedian Joanne Tsung, this documentary balances the personal impacts of fatphobia with scientific facts.
Black queer stories and their filmmakers shine on screens this year as well. Fabulous, directed by Audrey-Jean Baptiste, is a documentary that follows Lasseindra Ninja, a professional vogue dancer who returns to her home country of French Guiana to teach the beauty and drama of vogue to her own queer community. Director Ashley O’Shay portrays a powerful fight for justice in Unapologetic, which follows the lives of two young Black activists and their fight for racial equity amid the worldwide reckoning with police brutality. A spotlight on Black and African directors and filmmakers shaping cinematic storytelling across the diaspora, Obsidian, is an opportunity for Vancouver audiences to share in the intersectional and nuanced power of Black Queer artistic expression. And there’s much more.
VQFF will be presented online in a video-on-demand (VOD) format, with a few small in-person events. Most films will be available throughout the 11-day celebration, with all content available for streaming across British Columbia. The festival will continue to follow the guidance of the Public Health Office to ensure a COVID-19 safe viewing experience.
Vancouver Queer Film Festival is presented by Out On Screen—a Vancouver-based non-profit, charitable society—on the unceded traditional and ancestral homelands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Tickets, passes, and more details are available at www.queerfilmfestival.ca.
Post sponsored by Out on Screen.