A Regina-based queer film festival wants viewers to know there’s more than one way to look at sexuality, gender and race. That’s why an upcoming queer film festival will explore and question the concept of identity during its stop in Victoria Jan. 18 to 19.
Hosted by Queer City Cinema (QCC) and Open Space, attendees of Qaleidoscope: Queer Film on Tour will see “images, characters, ideas and realities collide in fantastical, personal and playful ways.”
The festival last came to Victoria in 2011 and according to its Facebook page is returning this month with “experimental, artistically rigorous, heavy hitting and thoughtful” films covering feminism, racism, class, identity politics, colonization, gender, sexuality and more.
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“Our mandate is to show work that a lot of other queer film festivals across Canada and even the world aren’t really showing,” said Gary Varro, QCC artistic and executive director. “[The] work is more personal, more intimate. There’s quite a bit of experimental work and work that doesn’t necessarily read or is explicitly queer.”
Film and art enthusiasts will take in films from the last five years of the festival – anything from dramatic shorts and animation to feature-length short documentaries and dramatic features – all of which ask audiences to question convention and think beyond the status quo.
“It’s a way to address the fluidity of identity,” Varro said. “How we all, regardless of our gender identity or sexual orientation, float amongst different ways of being over the course of our lives … It’s about being human, really. And human nature.”
On its website, QCC describes its legacy of breaking down barriers by “representing daring and uncharted visual territory, humorous and subversive characters, otherworldly and fantastical places and images, pleasurable provocations, sexual scenarios and different and challenging perspectives on identity in a world all too ready to judge and oppress.”
The event is 18-plus and is hosted at Open Space located at 510 Fort St. Tickets are available by donation at the door.
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