Wotever DIY FilmFest 2015

Wotever DIY Film Festival
Full site with program and info here!

Here are the programs that include my movies:
Thursday, August 20, 2015 at the British Film Institute (yes, you read that right)
“The Wotever DIY Film Festival (WDIYFF) presents a selection of the most memorable low and no-budget queer film from the last three years. Hilarious, tragic, sexy, angry, serious or playful – these diverse shorts reflect a multitude of perspectives from within the LGBTQ community. Celebrating queer creativity, expression and innovation, the WDIYFF proves you don’t need a huge budget to produce a great film.”

The BFI Southbank printed schedule.
I am excited and happily terrified that Kayleigh O’Keefe will be in this program, I admire her so much. In a world where art is more a commodity that a site of public engagement and critique, O’Keefe ‘holds our feet to the fire’ (or wherever she’d like them to be) with brilliant humor. I love her. I hope the BFI is a little afraid of what we might concoct to disrupt “business as usual” at such an important cultural institution.

Saturday, August 22, 2015 1:30pm at the Cinema Museum
Space, Place, DIY: A Three-way Retrospective of Bev Zalcock and Sara Chambers, Val Phoenix and Krissy Mahan
Films and Q&A with filmmakers
“Ideas of community and place have rarely been as pertinent as they are now as we witness the turbo-gentrification of urban areas and rapid loss of queer spaces. In this retrospective, some of our favourite, DIY, lesbian or queer-identified filmmakers explore connections to space, place and time and depict the complex relationship between female or queer bodies and the urban or pastoral environments. In particular, these films embody an ultra-DIY ethic and experimentalism which forms an inspiring example of what can be achieved on little or no budget.”
(I’m not sure which films will be shown but I’m sure Faggotgirl will be scorching the screen at least once…)

Saturday August 22 7:30pm @ Cinema Museum
The Personal is Political
“The Personal is Political is a fact most queers live with every day, especially if facing intersecting oppressions such as race, gender or disability. These films are about a politics that is both individual and universal in how it isolates and unites us. It’s about queer people of all identities finding their own way in the world, whether it’s through dance (Private Dancer, He’s the Greatest Dancer), music (I’m Not Your Inspiration), sexual exploration (Push Me), telling your story (Bedding Andrew) and ultimately through each other; in friendship (MingMong – about coming of age and rejection), family (Guao) and loved ones. These films showcase queer people’s explorations within this.”
“Faggotgirl in Winter” is part of this program, in which Faggotgirl tries to walk down an icy sidewalk and board a bus on cold New York morning.
I hope I get to meet Sandra Alland, Curator / Disability Liason of “Cachin Cachan Cahunga!”
Cachín Cachán Cachunga! is an independent Scottish arts company that produces visual, recorded and live art by intersectional LGBTQ+ people.
CCC is dedicated to producing high-quality artistic works about and by trans*, intersex and queer people – with an added emphasis on people who also identify as migrant, minority ethnic, racialised, people of colour, working class, working poor, Deaf, ill, crip and/or disabled. We mentor and collaborate. We encourage risk-taking and experimentation.
Cachín Cachán Cachunga! is committed to producing accessible arts events for both audiences and artists. We aim to provide level access, Braille, large print, audio description, film subtitling, surtitling, BSL interpretation, and quiet space. We celebrate intersectional identities, and encourage both emerging and established artists from our communities to develop their practice in a safe yet artistically challenging environment.

Sunday August 23 1:30pm @ Cinema Museum
Act Up
My dear friends and apartment-mates, YaliniDream and JenDog Lonewolf, collaborating as DreamWolf, made a video of their performance poem “I Choose Peace.” This is included in this program. I helped with some camera work (on the roof of the building we live in).

Sunday, August 23rd 7:30pm @ Cinema Museum

INTERGEN
“Representing the different stages of queer life, and how generations relate to each other, these films look at what it is to grow up queer, to find your place in the world, to look back with regret, or forward with unexpected opportunity, to experience new adventures whatever your age. From childhood memories of Re(Trace) and teenage musical obsessions of A Melodrama in Four Parts to new beginnings between erstwhile friends (Milkshake & Memories) and the age-old lust of old-age (End of Season Sale), these stories span the time of your life.”
My video (the most ambitious I’ve attempted) “1987, Summer” will be screening in this program.
I am thrilled that I will be showing in this progam with Jac Nunns and Angie West – Looking At You Productions. They’ve been on the film festival circuit this year with their film “Female Masculinity Appreciation Society” and I’m eager to see their new work.

I am proud to write that my movies have been accepted into this festival. I am thrilled that the event is held at The Cinema Museum. This is an accessible space, and the building also functioned as a family shelter for Charlie Chaplin when his family was destitute. I admire his films.
I am also struggling with what is the appropriate response to the week’s events in the USA. I wonder if taking care of my mom and making movies is enough of a moral/ethical use of my time as a white American. Black women’s bodies have always been mutilated by the state and the people protected by the state, and these days no one can deny this historic and current fact (anymore).

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