SQIFF
Clockwise from top: Carlos Jáuregui: The Unforgettable Fag, Gaysian Superheroes, Chavela; below: Signature Move ‘We hope to achieve a space we have some control over and can make safe and inclusive’
24 THE LIST 1 Sep–31 Oct 2017
<< Elsewhere on the programme, you’ll i nd a variety of short i lms that survey the LGBTQ+ experience in Switching Teams (30 Sep), Dei ant Dykes (30 Sep) and Queer Scotland III (1 Oct). The massively popular Feminist Porn Night (29 Sep) will also be returning with a screening of Berlin vampire erotica Enactone, with director Sky Deep in attendance. The following night, SQIFF will be teaming up with Glasgow School of Art Pornography Society for M4M, a night of queer sex on camera, with rare archive clips from prominent gay porn company productions also featured.
SQIFF’s porn strand was the subject of much attention last year, when tabloids honed in on the festival’s workshop with Vex Ashley, falsely claiming that the festival’s entire funding budget was spent on the 90-minute event. It kickstarted an important conversation, not just about tabloid hypocrisy, but about queer porn and how it differs from the mainstream. Speaking to us last year, SQIFF co-founder Helen Wright said, ‘Generally speaking, alternative/feminist/queer porn features actors who are treated well and fully consulted over what they perform, with an emphasis on the importance of their own pleasure, and such work critiques and explores porn i lm language. For example, mainstream porn can have a tendency to promote white, skinny, able-bodied, normatively attractive and feminine women as objects of desire. Alternative porn might feature a wider range of women, including those who have larger bodies, disabilities, are not white, and might be butch or masculine-presenting.
‘Queer and feminist porn is drowned out of the conversation by those wishing to pretend it doesn’t exist,’ Wright continued. ‘You can see this in the way the tabloids covered our workshop because they didn’t make any distinction between mainstream porn and what we are showing and promoting, beyond giving our festival name. This seems part of an overall attempt to pretend alternative voices don’t exist for the benei t of those who don’t want to be challenged in their lives or views. We hope to achieve a space that we have some control over and can make safe and inclusive for LGBTQ+ people: misleading tabloid articles threaten that space and in so doing show why the festival is necessary.’
But back to this year: there will be a range of free workshops to take part in that are designed specii cally for LGBTQ+ creatives including a masterclass with Emmy- nominated producer Catherine Gund (30 Sep) and a session on low-budget i lmmaking with Lasse Långström. The festival will also be celebrating the life and work of artist, activist and drag king Diane Torr (1 Oct) as well as the work of two British-South Asian queer women i lmmakers in Gaysian Superheroes (30 Sep). We Are Failing (28 Sep) is an evening inspired by Jack Halberstam’s book The Queer Art of Failure, which encourages LGBTQ+ individuals to assert their right to failure. To round off all the educational and moving events on offer, the festival has organised two parties with Free Pride taking over The Art School on Fri 29 Sep and Lock Up Your Daughters returning for the Babadook Ball at Drygate (30 Sep).
If you can’t wait until the end of September or won’t get a chance to make it through to Glasgow, SQIFF will be bringing a selection of queer movies to venues across Scotland including Dundee, Aberdeen and Stornoway from 21–26 Sep. Highlights from this teaser period include The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin and German-Mongolian drama Don’t Look At Me That Way.
Scottish Queer International Film Festival, various venues, Glasgow, Wed 27 Sep–Sun 1 Oct, sqiff.org