 |
| Real Boy, showing at this year's SQIFF |
The Scottish Queer International Film Festival will open in Glasgow's CCA tomorrow (29 September) with a strong programme of features, shorts, events and parties to be attended by special guests from around the world. We spoke to festival director Helen Wright, who has been with it since its inception last year, to find out what's in store.
The festival was the brainchild of a group of friends involved in queer arts work in Scotland. They say great minds think alike, and perhaps that's why it came along in the same year as Glitch, which covers similar territory, but Helen is sanguine about this, praising the latter for its focus on people of colour and international issues. As far as she's concerned, the more the merrier. The festival circuit may always be busy, but it's often the only place that outsider art of this kind gets noticed, and there's a clear public appetite for it.
"It was hard work!" she says of the first edition, but adds that audience numbers reached 1,800 - not bad at all for a first time event. Word was spread with the aid of organisations like the Scottish Transgender Alliance and LGBT Health and Wellbeing, but it wasn't just LGBTI people who took an interest. "We did audience feedback and about two thirds identified as LGBTI or queer, so a third weren't, which is apparently quite typical of festivals like this around the world. We say that the festival is open and welcoming to everyone but it is a balancing act because we recognise that LGBTI and queer people need to feel safe and often suffer when they're out in public spaces. We didn't have any issues last year."
As far as the films are concerned, she says, "we try to have a good mix. We're actively looking for work by and about people with more marginalised identities such as deaf and disabled people and people of colour who are also queer, as well as having a mix of things like comedy and drama. This year we've got a horror strand which is going to be really good. We've also got a strand looking at the history of cinema and including films whose queerness might not be obvious because it couldn't be at the time. A lot of classic films can be read that way.
"We've also got lots of documentaries. They're an important way of exploring LGBTI and queer issues because they're more authentic."
Authenticity can also be found in making sure that the vices of marginalised people come through directly, she adds, offering the example of lesbian filmmaking, with lesbian directors producing work that can be very different from mainstream cinema which has lesbian characters in films with straight, cisgender male directors.
"I'm also looking forward to some of the web series we plan to showcase," Helen says, mentioning They, a series put together by SQIFF's own Asten Holmes-Elliott. "It's set in Glasgow and has trans and non-binary actors playing the roles of a trans woman and a non-binary person. The filmmaker is queer themselves so it's an authentic portrayal and i think it's very good for Scotland that that kind of thing is being made here."
Casting trans people in trans roles might not sound revolutionary, and some trans actors are wary of being pigeonholed that way, but it's important in a context where trans actors often struggle to get work at all, and concerns have been raised around the fact that casting men as trans women in films like Dallas Buyers' Club and The Danish Girl sends the message that trans women are really men, reinforcing prejudice that too often leads to violence. Jeffrey Tambor, star of Amazon's Transparent, recently said that he hopes he will be the last man ever cast in such a way.
Helen says that she's particularly excited about the festival's closing film, Real Boy, a documentary following a young trans musician. "I like how it focuses on his relationships with his best friend, who is also a young trans man, and his friendship with an older trans man, Joe Stephens, who will be attending the festival and doing a Q&A. I also like the way it depicts his relationship with his mother, who is really against him at the start of the film but is won round to some extent."
The festival includes a strand dedicated to films produced in Scotland, and there will be a Best Scottish Short award judged by a jury. The winner of this will be automatically nominated for the Best British Short Award at the Iris Prize in Cardiff.
Helen is keen to emphasise the work that has gone into making the festival accessible to as many people as possible. "All the venues have good access for wheelchairs and people with mobility issues. All the films are screening with subtitles to make the event more accessible for deaf and hard of hearing people, and there are audio descriptions for Real Boy and Intersexion. We'll also have BSL interpretation.
"It's been quite an exhausting endeavour so far but I'm very excited. We have amazing guests and amazing volunteers. It's a really, really nice atmosphere and I'm really looking forward to it!"
