2014 FESTIVAL

Adults Only (27 mins)
Visions of a past relationship leave Matthew (Heath Daniels) broken and isolated until an intimate encounter at a porn arcade opens a peephole to unexpected possibilities.

 

A Jihad for Love (81 mins)

In a time when Islam is under tremendous attack from within and without, “A Jihad for Love” is a daring documentary filmed in twelve countries and nine languages. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma has gone where the silence is loudest, filming with great risk in nations where government permission to make this film was not an option.

 

All Out! Dancing in Dulais (24 mins)
The South Wales miners’ strike of 1984-1985 saw the formation of a curious alliance between a plucky group of young homosexuals from London and miners in Dulais Valley. In Dancing in Dulais, an initial wariness on the part of the young gays, the miners, and the miners’ families gives way, through sometimes delicate interactions, to a loving and purposeful solidarity.

 

Alphabet Club (34 mins)
Alphabet Club is the second instalment of The Dancing Bear Trilogy, a series of multi-disciplinary experimental queer films by Jamie Fletcher. Each film aims to engage and encourage different audiences in conversations, discussions and dialogues about LGBTQ issues. Alphabet Club uses contemporary dance, poetry and opera to explore perceptions of the gay scene, queer stereotypes, gender and identity.

 

Being Stavros (10 mins)
When Stavros decides to enter the Mr Gay UK beauty pageant nothing goes quite to plan. This is the story of one man’s unbreakable spirit – a tale of triumph, heartbreak and how to wear your underpants.

 

Camp Beaverton: Meet the Beavers (84 mins)
The Beavers create an experimental community camp that hosts hugely popular events. These events include play parties, clit-tail social hours, educational workshops, and the infamous Strap-on-a-thon, possibly the largest play party for women on the planet. They are a close community of queers, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender and straight women engaged in radical self expression, open communication and exploring their personal and sexual boundaries.

 

Dyketactics Revisited (7 mins)
Bodies move freely through an ambiguous urban “utopia”…or do they? Shot on 16mm film and digital video, allow yourself to be led through the space where bodies exist independent of social codes

 

Eden (11 mins)
Genesis 2:8. “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and therehe put the man whom he had formed”. In this story, João and Pedro live in this garden. One of them is aboutto leave because someoneate the forbidden fruit…

 

Lesben im Alter (60 mins)
The documentary portraits three old lesbians: Hannelore Keydel, a former professional runner, Christel Rieseberg, the owner of one of the the first Lesbian bars in Post War Berlin and Wienke Zitzlaff, a political activist though out her life.

 

MAMIS: A Family Portrait (20 mins)
Being gay in Cuba was never easy. It is even more difficult when gay couples wanting to become parents as the rest of heterosexual people do. MAMIS is the story of four women who are tired of being treated as second-class citizens. It is a story about two generations of Cuban mothers who have decided to live their lives how they want to, despite the prejudices of the society. It is about personal rebellion, but also of resignation.

Max und die Anderen (77 mins)
Berlin. Max is 61. He loves sex. Sex with escort guests. Sex with his leather friends. Sex with his Ukrainian boyfriend Dima, 25 years his junior. Sex with his old friend Jan. They all come to the playroom in his Kreuzberg apartment. Luckily, Max was once a lieutenant colonel in the German army, so he’s good at ordering his life. But when a routine check up during one of Dima’s visits to Berlin delivers some shocking news, Max’s ordered life starts to come apart at the seams.

 

Miniaturas (15 mins)
A daughter discovers her mother has an interestingly shaped bikini line whilst preparing for her funeral. Taking it as a sign that she had a lover much hilarity ensues. 

  

Moralists Instruction Musical (25 mins)
Gothenburg´s hardest activist like you´ve never seen them before. We get to follow some aerobics instructors on a crusade against hetero-sexism. Like a homoerotic meeting between Jane Fonda and Ulrike Meinhof. The film encourages and gives suggestions for ways to respond to the upholders of gender binaries and hetero-enforcers, and their constant repetition of for example, are you a guy or girl? A movie for all of us who are faced with sexism, trans / homophobia and guitar guys on everyday occasions and at parties.

  

Orchids: My Intersex Adventure (60 mins)
Documentary filmmaker, Phoebe Hart, comes clean on her journey of self-discovery to embrace her future and reconcile the past shame and family secrecy surrounding her intersex condition. Despite her mother’s outright refusal to be in the film, Phoebe decides she must push on with her quest to resolve her life story and connect with other intersex people on camera. 

 

Out at Work (15 mins)
Coming out at work is not as simple as it sounds, for the characters in this animated film resource pack which offers a simple introduction to the Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation, Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. This film tells the stories of six workers in a variety of jobs. They come from very different backgrounds, and each has their own way of dealing with prejudice against lesbians, gays and bisexuals. Made in Harehills – Leeds! 

 

Out Here (65 mins)
A documentary look at the hearts and hard work of queer farmers in the U.S. Made over the past five years, the film highlights queer farmers in both rural and urban communities throughout the country. The movie focuses on seven queer farms and farmers including Sandor Katz, fermentation expert and author of “Wild Fermentation,” and Karen Washington- NYC food justice hero and former President of the New York City Community Garden Coalition. 

 

Pay It No Mind (54 mins)
This feature-length documentary focuses on revolutionary trans-activist, Marsha “Pay it No Mind” Johnson, a Stonewall instigator, Andy Warhol model, drag queen, sex worker, starving actress, and Saint. “Pay It” captures the legendary gay/human rights activist as she recounts her life at the forefront of The Stonewall Riots in the 1960s, the creation of S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Sylvia Rivera in the ’70s, and a New York City activist throughout the ’80s and early ’90s. 

 

Queerer Than Thou (8 mins)
Queerer Than Thou is a comedy that tackles the age-old question of Who is the queerest of them all?. With a cast representing many diverse aspects of LGBT/Queer communities, Queerer Than Thou explores the boundaries of identity, and the tensions that frequently exist along these borderlands.

 

Real Heroes (83 mins)
A group of B-string superheroes go on a reality show in hopes of hitting the big time. 

 

Rue Curiol (34 mins)
Touria, Joséphine and Dominique are transsexuals. They come from French Polynesia and have been working for many years as prostitutes on Curiol street in Marseille. At a time where their street is undergoing far-reaching changes, they tell us about their lives and their trade.

 

Silk Thread Martyrs (5 mins)
Concept film, collection of garments based on traditional Palestinian dress. The entire project was a queer reading of dress, death, mourning and masculinity under Israeli Occupation.

 

Sins Invalid (32 mins)
Sins Invalid witnesses a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists. Since 2006, its performances have explored themes of sexuality, beauty, and the disabled body, impacting thousands through live performance. Sins Invalid is as an entryway into the absurdly taboo topic of sexuality and disability, manifesting a new paradigm of disability justice.

 

Something-in-between (44 mins)
An exploration of gender transformation, medical and social transition, and the societal expectations of fulfilling a “masculine” gender role.

 

Stay Positive (8 mins)
A teenager gets tested for HIV after being pressured into a church blood drive by his religious grandmother.

 

Stop the Clause Demos 1987/88 (6 mins)
Back in 1987 the inclusion of Clause 28 in a local government bill brought thousands on to the streets of Leeds, Manchester and London. A Gay Switchboard volunteer who worked for YTV at the time put together this video of the marches.

 

Sylvia Rivera Talk (4 mins)
Sylvia Rivera speaking her mind after some old-timey radical feminists and transphobes of the day attempted to block her right to speak at the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day rally.

 

Talking to My Best Friend (13 mins)
Two trans women, best friends in the truest sense of the word: they were born in the same year, grew up together in the same city, have the same sexual orientation, chose to live their lives their own way and to see their highest dreams come true: to be women. They will risk anything, but no one knows what is going to happen.

 

The Abominable Crime (67 mins)
At heart, is a story about a mother’s love for her child and an activist’s troubled love for his country. It also gives voice to gay Jamaicans who, in the face of endemic anti-gay violence, are forced to flee their homeland.

 

The Cost of Gender (14 mins)
Stories of transgender people living in the USA faced with health care discrimination at home, who look to Thailand for better options.

 

The Package (19 mins)
At a new school Leandro and Jefferson form an instant attachment and soon realise that theirs is no ordinary friendship. But young Jeff has something to tell. If they want to be together there’s one irreversible thing Leandro must deal with. Something that is a part of the package.

 

The Phallometer (7 mins)
A refugee is captured by border guards on the Czech border crossing. During the interrogation he admits that he is gay and thereby is subjected to an absurd entry examination, called a “phallometric test”…. the story is based on facts!

 

United in Anger (93 mins)
A History of ACT UP is an inspiring documentary about the birth and life of the AIDS activist movement from the perspective of the people in the trenches fighting the epidemic. Utilizing oral histories of members of ACT UP, as well as rare archival footage, the film depicts the efforts of ACT UP as it battles corporate greed, social indifference, and government negligence.

 

Valencia (105 mins)
Valencia is a collaboration between a national community of queer filmmakers to adapt the underground classic memoir into a kaleidoscopic vision of San Francisco’s Mission District in the early 90s during the rise of a punk lesbian diaspora told through the experiences of Michelle, a single rootless twenty-something searching for sex and love, drugs and adventure.

 

Veil of Silence (37 mins)
On the brink of an impending law that could re-write their destinies, young group of sexual minorities in Nigeria defy all odds in the pursuit of happiness.

 

Vow of Silence (27 mins)
Vow of Silence tells the story of Jade, a heartbroken composer who takes a vow of silence to win back the heart of Isis, her true love. Vow of Silence is a music driven story, placing queer women of color at the center of the narrative

 

Who’s Afraid of Vagina Wolf? (85 mins)
In this eccentric all-female romantic comedy, charismatic filmmaker Anna faces a midlife crisis. She has neither job nor girlfriend, and lives in her friend’s garage in Los Angeles. Just when she’s about to throw in the towel, she meets Katia who becomes her muse, inspiring her to write and direct an all-female remake of Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?

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