Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning "strange" or "peculiar", queer came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
Midsumma is Victoria's premier queer arts and cultural organisation, bringing together a diverse mix of LGBTQIA+ artists, performers, communities and audiences. The primary event, Midsumma Festival, usually runs over 22 days in Melbourne's summer (January/February) with an explosion of queer events that center around both hidden and mainstream queer culture, involving local, interstate and international artists. The festival program comprises a curated Midsumma Presents program plus the community-driven Open-access stream, and is made up of diverse art forms and genres, including visual arts, live music, theatre, spoken word, cabaret, film, parties, sport, social events, and public forums. In addition to the primary festival in summer, Midsumma works year-round to provide artists, social-changers and culture-makers with support and tools to create, present and promote their work.
NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival put on by The New Festival, Inc., is one of the most comprehensive forums of national and international LGBT film/video in the world.
Feast Festival is a LGBTI Festival held annually in the South Australian capital of Adelaide. The event is one of Australia's four major queer festivals, alongside Perth's Pride Festival, Melbourne's Midsumma and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
The Frameline Film Festival began as a storefront event in 1976. The first film festival, named the Gay Film Festival of Super-8 Films, was held in 1977. The festival is organized by Frameline, a nonprofit media arts organization whose mission statement is "to change the world through the power of queer cinema". It is the oldest LGBTQ+ film festival in the world.
Tonie Walsh is an LGBT rights activist, journalist, disc jockey, founding editor of Gay Community News (Dublin) and founder of the Irish Queer Archive.
Out On Screen is an LGBT-oriented arts organization based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It began as a small, community-based film festival in 1988 and was registered as a BC society in 1989, in anticipation of the 1990 Gay Games. Since then, Out On Screen has evolved to become a professional arts organization with two key program initiatives: the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, the annual queer film festival in Vancouver, and Out In Schools, a province-wide educational program aimed primarily at high school students, but with program delivery across the education system, that employs film and video to address homophobia, transphobia, and bullying.
The Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival (formerly the Fairy Tales International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival) is an annual event held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Since its founding in 1999, the festival has attracted over 35,000 attendees. It is currently the longest running LGBT film festival in Alberta.
GFEST - Gaywise FESTival is the premier LGBT annual cross-arts festival in London, UK —a platform for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer artists, organizations and venues to promote LGBT and queer arts.
Brisbane Pride Festival started in 1990 as a means of organising and promoting public events and activities that contribute to queer culture. The first event was held as a rally and gay pride march through the streets of Brisbane, ending with a small gathering at Musgrave Park, South Brisbane.
National Queer Arts Festival (NQAF) is an annual queer festival in San Francisco organized by the Queer Cultural Center and established in 1998 to coincide with Pride Month.
Hannah Free is a 2009 American lesbian romance film, adapted from Claudia Allen's play of the same name and starring Sharon Gless, Maureen Gallagher, Kelli Strickland, Ann Hagemann, Taylor Miller, and Jax Jackson.
The Queer Arts Festival is a multi-disciplinary arts festival produced annually in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Derby Crazy Love is a Canadian documentary film directed by Maya Gallus and Justine Pimlott of Red Queen Productions, and distributed by Women Make Movies. The film explores flat track roller derby, and its third-wave feminist empowerment. It was initially released on November 14, 2013, at the Montreal International Documentary Festival.
image+nation. LGBTQueer Montreal is an annual eleven-day film festival, which takes place in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Held in November each year, the festival is dedicated to sharing the stories and experiences of LGBTQ+ people and is the first festival of its kind in Canada.
The Melbourne Queer Film Festival is an annual LGBT film festival held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Held in November, the festival is regarded as the largest queer film event in the Southern Hemisphere. The festival attracts around 23,000 attendees at key locations around Melbourne.
Queer City Cinema is an annual film festival in Regina, Saskatchewan, which presents a program of LGBTQ film. Established in 1996 by Gary Varro, the festival was presented every two years at first before becoming an annual event. In recent years, the main festival has been presented concurrently with Performatorium, a festival of LGBTQ performance art.
Nadia Huggins was born in 1984 in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. She now resides in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Nadia Huggins is a self-taught photographer and graphic designer who has worked extensively throughout the Caribbean. She was awarded the Festival Caribbeen de L'image du Mémorial Acte Jury Prize in Guadeloupe in 2015.
The Toronto Queer Film Festival is an LGBT film festival held annually in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Launched in 2016 by a collective of artists and activists who perceived the programming of the city's established Inside Out Film and Video Festival to be too mainstream and commercialized, the event stages a program of independent feature and short films and videos over several days in the fall of each year, focusing primarily on works created from an alternative or activist perspective.
Raphael Khouri Is a Jordanian queer, transgender documentary playwright, journalist, activist, and theatre artist.
