Sqifflix & Chill
2020-06-12 17:00 - 2020-07-12 17:00 UTC
Click here to access the full programme.
Our shorts programme Sqifflix & Chill, as the title suggests, includes a varied bunch of films about romantic love, its joys, pain, and complexities. Sweet stories of intense connection are found in Selina Robertson’s Couple Time and Dickie Heart’s Passengers. Some of the painful and problematic aspects of love and dating are considered in Sam Berliner’s Dating Sucks about seeking love whilst trans, and Rob Eagle’s Harding & his camera, which investigates traces of illicit love in archives and the white gaze. Violent and oppressive structures that try to curtail who gets to be with who are the core of Adrian Garcia Gomez’s Mikveh about governments refusing to recognise certain relationships, and Kiana Kalantar-Hormozi’s Poly Amour, which decontructs conventional romantic structures. For a dark comedy approach to the madness that sometimes interferes with people’s love life, Netflix & Chips is about a woman with a hot date who can’t get her chip shop job off her mind.
All films have English language subtitles or captions. See notes for below for each film’s language/s, level of accessibility for blind and partially sighted people, age recommendation, content notes, and if the film contains flashing lights or sound levels that might be disturbing for some. These notes are also found on each film’s page on vimeo.
The films are all free to watch with thanks to the filmmakers. Click here to donate to LGBT Unity Scotland to support LGBTQIA+ refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants.

Couple Time (6m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Selina Robertson, Country: UK, Year: 2015
A suitcase full of Super 8 memories from Berlin.
Language/s: English (not spoken) and German

Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: No spoken English; mostly visual ideas and onscreen text; mix of bright and dark images.

Sound design access notes: None

Age recommendation: 12+
Content note: None

Dating Sucks: A Genderqueer Misadventure (13m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Sam Berliner, Country: USA, Year: 2013
Dating Sucks: A Genderqueer Misadventure is Episode 1 of an animated documentary webseries about the successes, failures, and incredible confusion of trying to date as a genderqueer/trans person.
Language/s: English
Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: Lots of voiceover; bright images.
Sound design access notes: None
Age recommendation: 12+
Content note: Discussion of sex and queerphobia.

Mikveh (6m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Adrian Garcia Gomez, Country: USA, Year: 2016
In this reinterpretation of the mikveh – a purifying ritual bath performed by Jewish brides about to marry – the filmmaker and his husband’s immersions are disrupted by a government which refuses to recognise their marriage.
Language/s: No spoken language

Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: No dialogue – just sound effects; quite bright images.
Sound design access notes: Some abrasive and repetitive sound effects.

Age recommendation: 12+
Content note: None

Harding & his camera (12m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Rob Eagle, Country: Palestine, Israel, Year: 2017
An ambiguous ‘love story’ documentary told through the 1930s archive of a British archaeologist who took a camera on his digs in the British Mandate for Palestine and fell in love with his Bedouin assistant.
Language/s: English

Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: Lots of voiceover/dialogue and bright images.

Sound design access notes: None
Age recommendation: 18+
Content note: Discussion of racism.

Poly Amour (7m) (version with audio description integrated) [click here to watch]
Dir: Kiana Kalantar-Hormozi, Country: UK, Year: 2016
How capable are we to love boundlessly? This film explores polyamory, deconstructing conventional stereotypes of the romantic relationship structure.
Language/s: English

Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: Lots of voiceover/dialogue and quite bright images. Version with integrated audio description.

Sound design access notes: Loud, abrasive sound effects at start of film.
Age recommendation: 12+
Content note: Depiction of anti-polyamory sentiments.
Passengers (5m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Dickie Hearts, Country: UK, Year: 2015
A cab driver puts up with a series of irksome hearing passengers before picking up a cute guy more on his wavelength.
Language/s: American Sign Language and English

Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: Limited dialogue, mostly in ASL with subtitles; mostly bright images.

Sound design access notes: None
Age recommendation: 12+
Content note: Depiction of ableism.
Netflix & Chips (6m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Lock Up Your Daughters, Country: UK, Year: 2015
A woman who works in a chip shop has a hot date but can’t get her job off her mind.
Language/s: English

Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: Limited dialogue with lots of visual storytelling; mostly bright images.

Sound design access notes: None
Age recommendation: 12+
Content note: Depiction of mental health issues.

Sqifflix: Vision Portraits
2020-06-15 00:00 - 2020-06-21 23:30
Vision Portraits is a vivid and hypnotic exploration by filmmaker Rodney Evans illuminating the compelling stories of four visually impaired artists – photographer John Dugdale, dancer Kayla Hamilton, writer Ryan Knighton, and the filmmaker himself. Evans contrasts their journeys with his own personal and professional one as a filmmaker gradually losing his vision and as a gay man. Evans’ self-reflexive approach emphasises how each artist adapted creatively and thrived as their process evolved with their unique perspectives. An important film for anyone interested in disability aesthetics, demonstrating how blindness and visual impairment bring about distinct artistic viewpoints.
We are pleased to be hosting a live Q&A with director Rodney Evans on Saturday 20 June at 7pm. The Q&A will take place on SQIFF’s Facebook page at facebook.com/sqiff. Hosted by Amelia Cavallo, theatre practioner, academic, and co-founder of Quiplash.
In partnership with LGBT Health & Wellbeing. Supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, and funded by Screen Scotland and Lottery funding from the BFI.
Vision Portraits will be available online 15 to 21 June. Tickets are priced on a sliding scale £0-£8 on a pay what you can basis. To book, please use the button below. We will email a link to the film to ticket holders and this will be available to view/experience at any time between 15 to 21 June.

Access
Film has English audio with English language captions.
Audio description available. We will send the version of Vision Portraits that has audio description built into the soundtrack to all ticket holders.
Film is otherwise relatively accessible to blind and partially sighted audiences with some visual storytelling but a reasonable amount of explanatory dialogue and voiceover and bright images.
Age recommendation of N/C 12+.
Content note: Discussion of ableism.
Live Q&A with BSL interpretation and live captioning.

Sqifflix: More Love from Neelu
2020-06-22 17:00 - 2020-07-22 17:00
Click here to access the full programme.
Our special shorts programme More Love from Neelu showcases films by award-winning artist and filmmaker Neelu Bhuman, whose feature film TRANSFINITE we are screening online 25 – 28 June. Neelu’s work explores social and political themes as they play out in close relations. Playfully evoking insights into the workings of difference in intimacy, their films blend viewpoints ranging from race, gender, sexuality, culture, class, and romance.
In FU377, the dignity of queer people in India is under attack through Section 377, which the Supreme Court had recently re-introduced, re-criminalising ‘gay sex,’ when the film was made in 2014. Meanwhile, an adorable Indian mother is totally down with gay sex and wheels out some choice lines for her heartbroken queer daughter in an effort to cheer her up.
More Love. Less Prepackaged Bullshit. (2017) is set to the soul beat of Assata Shakur, and features a trio resisting dystopia with a bowl of joy, intimacy, and love.
Neelu’s 2016 short ṣadāqa is a kaleidoscopic view of friendship transcending borders.
All films have English language subtitles or captions. See notes for below for each film’s language/s, level of accessibility for blind and partially sighted people, age recommendation, content notes, and if the film contains flashing lights or sound levels that might be disturbing for some. These notes are also found on each film’s page on vimeo.
The films are all free to watch with thanks to Neelu Bhuman. Click here to donate to LGBT Unity Scotland to support LGBTQIA+ refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants. Click here to donate to the Wahala Film Fund, a film completion fund for Queer, Transgender and Intersex People of Colour filmmakers based in UK, Europe and the Global South co-founded by Neelu Bhuman.

FU377 (5m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Neelu Bhuman, Country: UK, Year: 2014
Basic dignity of queer people in India is under attack, yet again. The scorching IPC Section 377 is re-unleashed to police to criminalise “gay sex” in India. While the law and the Supreme Court dated themselves back a few hundred years, an adorable Indian mother has her knowledge of “gay sex” in mint condition, wheeling out a tidbit or two for her heartbroken queer daughter in an effort to cheer her up. The pair are shocked into action by the Supreme Court’s latest rejection.
Language/s: English

Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: Quite a lot of dialogue with some visual ideas; bright images.

Sound design access notes: None

Age recommendation: 15+
Content note: Reference to sex.

More Love. Less Prepackaged Bullshit. (1m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Neelu Bhuman, Country: USA, Year: 2017
Set to the soul beat of Assata Shakur, a trio resists dystopia with a bowl of joy, intimacy and love.
Language/s: English
Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: No dialogue – only music lyrics and sound effects; quite bright images.
Sound design access notes: None
Age recommendation: 12+
Content note: None

ṣadāqa (5m) [click here to watch]
Dir: Neelu Bhuman, Country: UK, Year: 2016
A kaleidoscopic view of friendship transcending borders.
Language/s: English and Arabic

Accessibility for blind and partially sighted people: Small amount of English dialogue and some Arabic but mostly visual ideas; quite bright images.
Sound design access notes: None

Age recommendation: 12+
Content note: None

Sqifflix: TRANSFINITE + shorts
2020-06-25 00:00 - 2020-06-28 23:30
TRANSFINITE is a sci-fi omnibus feature film by Neelu Bhuman composed of seven standalone short stories where supernatural trans and queer people from various cultures use their powers to protect, love, teach, fight, and thrive. Most of us have been in situations where we feel completely powerless and deeply frustrated with the unfairness of it all. Sometimes we have lost control of life and sometimes we find a way to use our rage, resentment, and frustrations to grow a beautiful garden. In TRANSFINITE, the protagonists, like smooth warriors, choose to find that inner power and use it to transform undesirable situations into desirable ones in a snap.
Screening with shorts FETISH and Something In The Closet. In Topher Campbell’s FETISH a multi-dimensional being bestrides the streets of New York in defiance and celebration as he embodies the past, present and future of Blackness. Featuring a mesmerising original score by Mercury Prize Award Winner’s Young fathers. Something In The Closet directed by Nosa Eke is about a queer teenager struggling with her sexuality, as desires manifest their way from the depths of her eerie closet into reality.
We are pleased to be hosting a live discussion with Black queer UK artists’ responses to the films on Saturday 27 June at 7pm. The discussion will take place on SQIFF’s Facebook page at facebook.com/sqiff. Hosted by writer and programmer Harvey Dimond with filmmaker Nosa Eke and other guests tbc.

In partnership with LGBT Health & Wellbeing. Supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, and funded by Screen Scotland and Lottery funding from the BFI.
TRANSFINITE + shorts will be available online 25 to 28 June. Tickets are priced on a sliding scale £0-£8 on a pay what you can basis. Films are viewable within UK and Ireland only. To book, please use the button below. We will email a link to the film to ticket holders and this will be available to view at any time between 25 to 28 June.

Access
Films have English, Navajo, Swahili, Spanish, Asura (in Japanese), and Tagalog audio with English language subtitles or captions.
Films are less accessible to blind and partially sighted audiences with lots of visual storytelling and large non-English language sections.
Loud and abrasive sound effects throughout the films.
Age recommendation of N/C 15+.
Content note: Discussion of racism including anti-blackness and violence; depiction of homophobia, transphobia, racism including anti-blackness, mild and/or animated violence, nudity, sex, vomit, and urine.
Live discussion with BSL interpretation and live captioning.

SQIFF Shorts: A is for Asexual
2020-07-15 10:00 - 2020-07-17 10:00
We are taking part in DIVE IN Cinema, a two-week online screening series in collaboration with other film festivals and exhibitors in Scotland.
DIVE IN Cinema will offer a mixture of features and short films across fiction, documentary and experimental work, as well as a few filmmaker conversations. Each screening will be programmed by one of the contributing exhibitors and will be available on demand for 48 hours from its start time, with a new programme released at 10am every day.
SQIFF’s programme is called A is for Asexual and will be available to view online for 48 hours from 10am on Wednesday 15 July.
Highlighting new work around perhaps the most under-represented identity in queer cinema, this programme celebrates films by and about asexual people of colour. Garima Kaul’s documentary Desire? explores the wide range of experiences of asexual individuals and communities in India, whilst multi-award-winning Brazilian film Infinite While It Lasts follows the budding relationship between asexual Danny and allosexual Seiji.
Click here to register to access all the films in DIVE IN Cinema for free. All screenings are FREE to view, however DIVE IN are collecting donations for Scottish charities The Unity Centre and Ubuntu Women Shelter. The Unity Centre provides advice and support to asylum seekers and migrants in Scotland. Ubuntu Women Shelter is a Glasgow-based charity that provides emergency accommodation needs for women with no recourse to public funds. There is a payment link to donate when you enter the hub.
Screenings are captioned for d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences. Content notes per film will be listed on the online platform as appropriate.
Desire? (30m)
Dir: Garima Kaul, Country: India, Year: 2019
The everyday realities of some people who identify as asexual, creating small ruptures in the homogenising culture of hyper and heteronormative sexuality.
Language/s: English, Hindi

Content note: Depiction of asexual denial and acephobia; discussion of asexual denial, acephobia, homophobia, sexual/emotional abuse, masturbation, and caste discrimination.

Fixers – Asexuality (3m)
Dir: Fixers, Country: UK, Year: 2013
Fixers are young people using their past to fix the future.
Language/s: English
Content note: Depiction of asexual denial; discussion of asexual denial and suicide.

Infinite While It Lasts (17m)
Dir: Akira Kamiki, Country: Brazil, Year: 2019
After falling in love at a party, Danny and Seiji just want to be together, but their differences might prove stronger than their feelings.
Language/s: Portuguese

Content note: None

All The Feels!: Ultimate Queer Fanvid Playlist
2020-10-05 00:00 - 2020-10-18 23:30
Fanvids are short films using music, edited by fans in an expression of all the feels around their favourite fandoms. Even with today’s films and television bursting with more queer characters than ever, we still fight for true recognition, representation, and stories that go beyond the sometimes disappointing and limiting storylines we are given. Every fanvid is a DIY work of art, combining music and clever edits to celebrate favourite shows, rework plots, commiserate in collective sadness, and whatever feels there are to be had!
Curated by Tara Brown, queer crip Black fat femme and Fringe! Queer film & arts fest and freelance film curator.
Click here for Tara’s YouTube playlist.
ACCESS
This playlist has an age recommendation of N/C 12+.
The fanvids have English audio. Some have English language captions or a transcript. Transcript of the other vids coming soon. With apologies for the lack of captions on all videos thanks to YouTube removing the option for community captions. Click here to sign a petition for YouTube to reverse this decision.
The playlist is 34 minutes long.
Content notes: Discussion of homophobia, biphobia, and racism; depiction of brief nudity, sex, violence, and blood.

The videos in All the Feels!: Ultimate Queer Fanvid Playlist include some loud music and fast editing.

We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

SQIFF 2020 Vimeo on Demand Film Programme
2020-10-05 00:00 - 2020-10-18 23:59
Click here to access our full film programme on Vimeo on Demand.
Most of our film programme will be available via Vimeo on Demand for 2 weeks from 5 to 18 October. You can access films in the programme at any time during this period. Films on our Vimeo on Demand will be accessible within the UK only.

To watch films on our Vimeo on Demand channel, you will need to create a Vimeo account, which is free and quick to set up. Click here and then click the option to ‘Join for free.’ You will need access to an email address to be able to join.

You will be asked to choose what you pay for each film or film programme on our Vimeo on Demand channel. You enter the amount you want to pay starting from £1 every time you rent a film. If you need to access films for free, get in touch with us and we will send a code for the films you want to access, no proof of circumstance required. You will have up until 18 October to watch films once you have rented them.

If you need assistance with accessing films or events online, including how to use vimeo or Zoom, you can get in touch with our Access & Support Team between 10am and 5pm every day of the Festival. You can contact them by emailing info[at]sqiff.org or by phone on 07883 737 362.
If you want to contact us to ask any questions before the Festival starts, email info[at]sqiff.org.

Click here to download the SQIFF 2020 brochure for the full list of films on Vimeo on Demand.
Click here to download a text-only version of the brochure.
Click here for an audio version of the brochure.

OR here’s a list of all the films and shorts programme with links!:

Every Utopia is a Dystopia: Science Fiction Worlds
Ashley
45 minutes, Dir: Jamie Crewe, N/C 12+, UK, 2020, English language
“Dragging a wheelie case behind them, Ashley arrives at an isolated, beachside cottage. They hope that this weekend in the countryside might be the change they need: a change f rom depression, f rom heartbreak, f rom the pain of a shifting identity. As the weekend unfolds, however, their hope wavers: things go wrong in their body, or perhaps in their mind — or perhaps there really is something, outside, developing an appetite for them…” Ashley by Jamie Crewe was created for the 2019/20 Margaret Tait Award, Scotland’s most prestigious moving image prize for artists.
Flaming Ears (coming soon!)
84 minutes, Dirs: Ursula Pürrer, Dietmar Schipek, Ashley Hans Scheirl, N/C 18+, Austria, 1991, German and English languages
Flaming Ears is a pop sci-fi lesbian, fantasy feature set in the year 2700 in the fictive, burnt-out city of Asche. It follows the tangled lives of three women: Spy, a comic book artist; Volly, a performance artist and sexed-up pyromaniac; and Nun, an amoral alien with a predilection for reptiles. It’s a story of love and revenge, and an anti-romantic plea for love in its many forms. It’s also a story laced with sex, violence, and a pulsating soundtrack, a cyberdyke movie stimulating both the body and the brain.
Keyboard Fantasies: the Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story
63 minutes, Dir: Posy Dixon, N/C 12+, UK, 2019, English language
As a sci-fi-obsessed queer living in near isolation, Glenn Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realised far before its time. Three decades on the musician began to receive emails f rom people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan and a reissue of Keyboard Fantasies, the music had finally found its audience two generations down the line. Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story sees the protagonist commit his life and music to screen for the first time – an intimate coming of age story spinning pain and suffering of prejudice into rhythm, hope, and joy.
Click here to access the version of Keyboard Fantasies with audio description.
Many Black Moons Ago, To Go…
Selection of films
A digital exhibition programme of Afrofuturist films and writings in response to the re/imagining of Black alternative future(s). Curated by Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, researcher, and curator Natasha Thembiso Ruwona.
PEOPLE HAVE COME
60 minutes, Dir: Jamie Crewe, N/C 12+, UK, 2020, English language
As part of the Margaret Tait Award, Jamie Crewe produced a recorded artist’s talk in which they discuss a technique that recurs throughout their practice. They named the technique PEOPLE HAVE COME, and it describes courting and avoiding publicness. For certain kinds of people the desire to be seen, recognised, and understood is as powerful as the urge to hide, be illegible, and repel investigation. In reference to Ashley, their Margaret Tait Award 2019/20 commission, as well as to other works and experiences, this talk traces eruptions of this ambivalent seam in Jamie’s life and practice.
Prototypes I & II (coming soon!)
104 minutes, Dir: Doireann O’Malley, N/C 12+, UK, 2018, English language
Doireann O’Malley’s most recent body of work is a trilogy titled Prototypes I, II and III which explore gender and its manifestations in a post-speculative mind/body assemblage of scenes, set within the modernist Interbau housing development in the Hansaviertel area of Berlin. The films explore new perspectives on trans identity through the lens of a post psychoanalytic, schizo-analytic methodology, entangling rhizomatic forms of thought, systems theory, consciousness, machine learning, and quantum transformation.

SQIFF Shorts: Every Utopia is a Dystopia
70 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, English and Spanish languages

K and L are cultural conservationists working in a not-so-distant future to preserve the artefacts and histories that are being systematically destroyed by a totalitarian government. When they are in a deadly car accident, time splinters into parallel realities, separating them. Tonia Stanwell arrives at the government agency where she will apply to turn 36, a feat few Black trans women like her have reached. A queer utopia named Stonewall Nation has been founded by a generation of activists and artists in a world where AIDS never happened. Tales using classic sci-fi set ups to transmit queer ideas feature in this shorts compilation.

Queering the Script
93 minutes, Dir: Gabrielle Zilkha, N/C 12+, Canada/USA, 2019, English
language

Queerness on television has moved f rom subtext in series such as Xena: Warrior Princess, to all-out multi season relationships between women, as seen on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost Girl, and Carmilla. But things still aren’t perfect. In 2016, a record number of queer women died on fictional shows, which broke the hearts of queer fans and launched a successful fight for better, more diverse LGTBQ2S+ representation. Stars such as Ilene Chaiken, Stephanie Beatriz, Lucy Lawless, and Angelica Ross join with the voices of numerous kickass fangirls in this fast-paced history of queer women’s representation in contemporary television.
Cruising the Future: Shu Lea Cheang Retrospective
Fluidø
84 minutes, Dir: Shu Lea Cheang, N/C 18+, Germany, 2017, English, French, and German languages
In a post-AIDS future of 2060, the Government has declared the era AIDS FREE but mutated AIDS viruses have given birth to the ZERO GEN: genetically evolved, genderfluid humans whose white fluid is a hypernarcotic. A new war on drugs sees the ZERO GEN declared illegal. The Government dispatches drug-resistant replicants for round-up arrest missions. When one of these government android’s immunity breaks down and its pleasure centres are activated, the story becomes a tangled multi-thread plot and the ZERO GENs are caught among underground drug lords, glitched super agents, a scheming corporation, and a corrupt government.
I.K.U.
88 minutes, Dir: Shu Lea Cheang, N/C 18+, Japan, 2000, English and Japanese languages
Envisioned as a sequel to Blade Runner, I.K.U. scandalised audiences when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Following the adventures of seven sexy replicants as they attempt to gather data for the I.K.U. system (which enables touchless orgasms), I.K.U. is a cyberpunk fuck film for the internet generation. “I.K.U. is a phenomenon that wants to refuse definition and… crosses all categories – geographic, physical, conceptual – with a demented flourish. As much trans-genre as it is trans-gender, I.K.U. also wants to merge video and film into a fresh digital universe large-scale enough to overwhelm the viewer.” B. Ruby Rich, Rhizome.

Queer Ecologies
Fire and Flood
120 minutes, Dir: Vanessa Raditz, N/C 15+, USA, 2020, English and Spanish languages
Fire & Flood: Queer Resilience in the era of climate change tells the story of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the fires in Santa Rosa, California, two near simultaneous climate-related disasters in the fall of 2017, through the voices of LGBTQ people who lived through them and were part of the community response. The film explores the vulnerability of LGBTQ communities to climate disasters and also lifts up queer and trans strategies for resilience, transition, and survival.
Click here to access the version of Fire and Flood with bilingual Spanish and English subtitles.
SQIFF Shorts: Belonging in Nature / Belonging in Europe
67 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, English, Swedish, Portuguese, and German languages
A selection of short films made in Europe that investigate intersections and articulations of queerness and the natural world. A pack of Swedish animals sanitise an abandoned space. Two young soldiers are deployed on an island that is plagued by an uncontrollable growth of hydrangeas. Three young women, living in three separate parallel universes, depend on one another to survive. The inhabitants of a gender-fluid utopian society explore what queer politics can learn f rom environmental matters.
SQIFF Shorts: Indigenous Ecofeminisms
61 minutes, Various directors, N/C 12+, English, Anishinaabe, and Portuguese languages
A series of shorts that follow the stories of queer and trans indigenous people as they navigate life on earth during climate crisis. A non-binary Anishinaabe activist attempts to revive ceremonial harvesting rituals with a 10,000-year-old Sasquatch in suburban Ontario. A queer indigenous writer and performance artist documents the ways in which Canada’s extraction industry destroys indigenous lands and parallels the child apprehension industry. And a group of young people in Brazil enjoy the outdoors over New Years; drawing, playing instruments, laying in the sun, cutting each other’s hair, and chatting shit about men.
The Garden
92 minutes, Dir: Derek Jarman, 12A, UK, 1990, English language
‘Paradise haunts gardens’, writes Derek Jarman, ‘and it haunts mine.’ Jarman was a film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener, and author, whose work, dwelling on themes of sexuality and violence, reflected his reality as an HIV-positive man living in Thatcher’s Britain. His own garden-paradise was situated in the flat, bleak, often desolate expanse of shingle that faces the Dungeness nuclear power station. This intimate insight into Jarman’s inner world was shot on Super8 with the help of friends and collaborators, movingly utilising a cast of iconic, religious figures that include Jesus, Judas, and the Madonna, and a cast of queer icons. Screening with 1993 short film featuring Jarman, The Clearing (7 minutes).
Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure
79 minutes, Dirs: Beth Stephens, Annie Sprinkle, N/C 18+, USA, 2018, English language
With a poetic blend of curiosity, humour, sensuality, and concern, this film chronicles the pleasures and politics of H2O f rom an ecosexual perspective. Travel with Annie, a former sex worker, Beth, a professor, and their dog Butch, in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit, as they explore the role of water. Ecosexuality shifts the metaphor “Earth as Mother” to “Earth as Lover” to create a more reciprocal and empathetic relationship with the natural world. Along the way, Annie and Beth interact with a diverse range of folks including performance artists, biologists, water treatment plant workers, scholars, and others, climaxing in a shocking event that reaffirms the power of water, life, and the earth.

Islands and Oceans
Leitis in Waiting
72 minutes, N/C 12+, Dirs: Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, 2018, English and Tongan languages
Tonga, an island group in the South Pacific, has long considered trans women, known as leitis, an integral part of its culture, often carrying significant social status. But recent Western religious influences have seen their identities being increasingly challenged. This documentary traces their proud cultural history and highlights developments in their struggles against discrimination.
Tchindas
94 minutes, N/C 15+, Dirs: Pablo García Pérez de Lara, Marc Serena, Cape Verde, 2015, Cape Verdean Creole language
Tchindas explores queer identity and acceptance in the Cape Verde archipelago, and follows Tchinda, a transgender woman who is a national heroine, as she prepares for Carnival month. The camera closely follows Tchinda and her cohorts – an engaging, closely knit group of trans women and gay men – as they take the lead in preparing their neighbourhood for the festivities.

Daydreams and Testamonials: Queer South America
Cracks in the Patriarchy (coming soon!)
78 minutes, N/C 12+, Dir: Cagdas Celtikli, Kai Münch, Argentina, 2020, Spanish language
Through comprehensive interviews focused on seven individuals f rom different backgrounds, this documentary examines the LGBTQI+ community in Buenos Aires, Argentina. History and biography meld with the fiercely political as we learn of several overlapping struggles in the vast city. From the fight for gender recognition by the trans community to ongoing struggles to fight racism both within the LGBTQI+ scene and beyond; from the experiences of travestis in art and theatre to the massive movement to decriminalise abortion; the history, culture, and politics of the LGBTQI+ community are drawn into sharp focus. Yet in this great variety of perspectives and histories lies a shared goal: a safer, freer society for all.
Fabiana
89 minutes, N/C 12+, Dir: Brunna Laboissière, Brazil, 2018, Portuguese language
For over three decades, Fabiana has lived a nomadic life as a trans woman trucker in Brazil. She has crossed the vast country hundreds of times over, never staying anywhere for too long. Confident and adventurous, she’s at home amongst the mostly-male truckers she encounters, and often hooks up with other women in her travels. But is she ready to finally settle down, when the open road has been her life? This documentary joins her on her last few journeys on the eve of retirement, sharing the connections and intimacies of her life.

Feature films
Blindsided
60 minutes, N/C 15+, Dir: Lisa Olivieri, USA, 2015, English language
A documentary narrative about Patricia Livingstone, a deafblind, lesbian artist facing a series of losses and gains. The film weaves intimate, real time scenes shot over the course of eight years with home videos and photographs, relaying the story of a woman whose spark did not fade even in the face of hardship and loss. Screening with local short film, Blind Spot (20 minutes), exploring and attempting to simulate the experience of visual impairment.

Click here to access the version of Blindsided and Blind Spot with audio description.

Breaking Fast
92 minutes, N/C 15+, Dir: Mike Mosallam, USA, 2020, English and Arabic languages
Mo, a practicing Muslim living in West Hollywood, is learning to navigate life post-heartbreak. Enter Kal, an All-American guy who surprises Mo by offering to break fast with him during the holy month of Ramadan. As they learn more about each other, they fall in love over what they have in common and what they don’t. The genesis of the feature film came about from overwhelming positive responses to the short film by the director, which SQIFF screened at our 2019 Festival. The film aims to be the first of its kind to feature a practicing Muslim character who is gay and not dealing with those two things in conflict but rather in harmony.
Click here to access the version of Breaking Fast with audio description.
Game on: queer disruptions in sport
67 minutes, N/C 15+, Dir: Maria Takacs, Hungary, 2020, English, Hungarian, and German languages
Game on: queer disruptions in sport is a documentary which shines a light on the experiences of those with diverse identities within grassroots sport. The film features the stories of gay runners Csaba and Benjamin f rom Hungary; Natalie, a Scottish lesbian boxer; Pol, an intersex rower f rom Bulgaria; and a German trans woman footballer called Jessi. Their stories are unique but bring up themes that are typical for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) people in sport.
Lingua Franca
95 minutes, N/C 15+, Dir: Isabel Sandoval, USA, Philippines, 2019, English, Tagalog, and Russian languages
In this beguiling drama, an undocumented Filipina immigrant paranoid about deportation works as a caregiver to a Russian-Jewish grandmother in Brooklyn. When the American man she’s secretly paying for a green card marriage backs out, she becomes involved with a cis male slaughterhouse worker who is unaware she’s transgender.
Pride & Protest
90 minutes, N/C 15+, Dir: Blaise Singh, UK, 2020, English language
Pride & Protest is a documentary about QTIPOC communities and activists in Britain today and struggles surrounding the politics of desire, self-care, and found family. In the wake of the Birmingham protests against LGBTIQ+ relationship education in primary schools, director Blaise Singh follows various queer people of colour as they challenge homophobia and racism in their communities. They speak out against internalised shame and lack of representation, and we follow them trying to figure out their place in the world in the build up to UK Black Pride.
Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street
100 minutes, N/C 15+, Dirs: Roman Chimienti, USA, 2019, English language
At the time of release, The Advocate dubbed 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge the gayest horror film ever made. For the film’s closeted young star, Mark Patton, such a tag was a stark reminder about the homophobia rampant in Hollywood at the time—and the painful experience he had making the high-profile film and living through the polarising critical aftermath. This new documentary highlights Patton’s time in the horror spotlight, and Patton—who co- produced the film with Roman Chimienti, a NYC-based sound engineer—sets the record straight about this controversial sequel, which ended his acting career just as it was about to begin.
The Cancer Journals Revisited
98 minutes, N/C 15+, Dir: Lana Lin, USA, 2018, English, Spanish, and German languages
The Cancer Journals Revisited is prompted by the question of what it means to re-visit and re-vision Black lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde’s classic 1980 memoir of her breast cancer experience today. At the invitation of filmmaker Lana Lin, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, twenty-seven writers, artists, activists, health care advocates, and current and former patients recite Lorde’s manifesto aloud on camera, collectively dramatising it and producing an oration for the screen. The film is both a critical commentary and a poetic reflection upon the precarious conditions of survival within the intimate and politicised public sphere of illness.
The Wound + South African Shorts
88 minutes, 15, Dir: John Trengrove, South Af rica, 2017, Xhosa language
Despite a rich queer history and long fight to guarantee the rights of queer people under the first democratic government of Nelson Mandela, queer and trans South Africans face many challenges, which intersect with class and cultural identities. This screening attests to those challenges but demonstrates that love and support comes f rom surprising and subversive places. The Wound explores the relationship between traditional Xhosa initiation rituals and queer identity, also alluded to in My Transgender Life (12m) by Yonela Simetu. The Men Who Speak Gayle (11m) celebrates a secret language used during the apartheid era to hide queer identities f rom the authorities.

Short films
A Funny Thing Happened
37 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, English language
The mother of a queer daughter moves into a nursing home leading to a shocking – and buzzing – revelation. A date leads to a stand off as two lesbian women try their damnest to out-queer each other. In a campy western town, a lady blacksmith and her naughty paramour get up to no good in a who-rides-who tale with a twist. A drag wardrobe malfunction leads to unexpected consequences. And a satire of lesbian vampire and lesbian nun films comically exposes poor representation in cinema. A wee short shorts screening at 37 minutes for those who need a shot of humour in their lives!
Click here to access a version of A Funny Thing Happened with audio description.
Bridges to the Past
63 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, English and French languages
Providing access to queer history, which is often obscured and hidden f rom us, is one of the main rationales for putting on a queer film festival. In this selection of shorts there’s a chance to learn about histories including those of LGBTQ+ individuals living in West Yorkshire f rom the 60s to the present day, and of trans people in the 1950s US, whose case files have only recently been unearthed. A quite different documentary tale about a group of queers and migrants squatting a house in Toulouse haunted by a misogynist murder cements the programme’s overall reflection on historical inheritance as a concept.
Family Ties (coming soon!)
68 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, English, Portuguese, and Tagalog languages
Navigating the risk of rejection and trying to forge understanding form a large part of queer people’s relationships with their biological families. A British-Nigerian man conf ronts such a possibility of rejection when his mother finds out about his sexuality. Brandon, a queer Filipino-American grandson, meditates through his anxiety of having to call and wish his grandmother Happy Birthday. And more tales of family bonds versus woe.
Gods and/or Monsters: Queer East Film Festival (coming soon!)
76 minutes, Various directors, N/C 18+, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and English languages
After having to postpone its first full edition (originally scheduled for April/May 2020), the London-based Queer East Film Festival has been undertaking an ambitious series of online screenings over the past few months. Now, QEFF takes its first virtual visit to Scotland, presenting a wild and wonderful programme of short films that give a breathtaking glimpse into just some of what East Asian queer cinema has to offer. Showcasing new and rediscovered works – and some things in between – it features daring touches of the supernatural, the horrific, the surreal, and the downright weird. Curated by Queer East’s director and programmer Yi Wang, this selection is equal parts shocking, touching, and bittersweet – and not for the faint of heart!
Healing
49 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, English and Malagasy languages
Chado hones in on the moments when a child navigates the uncomfortable space between themself and their care-givers. In Razana, Solo returns to Madagascar after the death of their lover. Confronting their late partner’s family in line with their final wishes, Solo must reconcile with grief, homophobia, and compassion. Yellow Peril: Queer Destinyexplores themes of racism, gender, self-actualisation, and the ways in which Asian diaspora navigate multicultural living. The impact of community arts and organising and themes of access and fulfilment are explored in Trans Happiness is Real. These films all deal with healing and searching for inner contentment.
Love or Something Like It
71 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, Korean, English, Portuguese, and Hindi languages
The vagaries of romantic love crossed with sexual desire are probed in this collection. A mother assists her Disabled son to masturbate and discovers his sexual preference. Experimental images of toys and animations played on monitors are used to explore the subconscious influences of childhood memories on intimate relationships. A poetry film made entirely with a cell phone conveys the regret and longing of a Brazilian immigrant in London. A middle-aged man makes his weekly visit to the neighbourhood barber shop so he can be touched by his crush. And three queers on a countryside holiday carry out a utopian experiment in the form of a three-way romantic relationship.
Queer Scotland
57 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, Arabic, English, and British Sign languages
We are always proud to present some of the astonishing queer filmmaking made by local talent. This year features meditation on the queer body and its owner’s cultural history, the potential for zine culture to assist in the recovery f rom mental health difficulties, being censored when writing LGBTQ characters, living as a gay man in the era of 1950s McCarthyism, feminist sci-fi baby- making adventures, love on the mind of an admirer, and Deaf identities.
Rhythms (coming soon!)
59 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, English language
Poetry, dancing, music, the rhythms of queer clubbing… A series of trans poetry performed by its authors delves deep into gritty issues. A documentary chronicles the life of a man who came out in his late 60s and loves to dance more than anything else. A queer singer-songwriter considers what it means to rethink your gender labels through gender affirming top surgery. On the first tube home, Tam relives his night out clubbing via his phone. A dance teacher and choreographer by day discusses how his drag performances by night have influenced him. And a belly dancer f rom a small Kurdish community in Turkey talks about the meaning of dance in his life.
Transdimensional Voices
32 minutes, Various directors, N/C 15+, English language
This collection of shorts uplifts trans* voices and showcases a wide range of trans* identifying talent based within Glasgow. Jamie Crewe’s “The Ideal Bar” — “Le Narcisse” — “Alec’s” touches on experiences of transphobia and LGBTQIA+ solidarity and conflict. Sorcha Clelland presents Where the Red Fern Grows, interrogating performance, queer club space aesthetics, and the consistent demolition of community spaces which seek to aid queer voices. Powder Snowdrop Catatonic is a performance featuring various camp characters by Sgàire Wood. The films cover a multitude of themes, depending on the viewer’s perception of the work.

Many Black Moons Ago, To Go...
2020-10-05 00:00 - 2020-10-18 23:59
Time as it is Queer.
Blackness as it is Queer.
What comes next after the end of the world?
A digital exhibition programme of Afrofuturist films and writings in response to the re/imagining of Black alternative future(s). Curated by Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, researcher, and curator Natasha Thembiso Ruwona. Sign up to receive a link to access the exhibition website during the festival dates, 5th to 18th October.
Short films available as part of the exhibition across the 2 weeks include NEGRUM3 (2018) by Diego Paulino, Reifying Desire 5 (2012) by Jacolby Satterwhite, and Time Travel Experiments Pt. 2 (2017) by Black Quantum Futurism. Born in Flames (1983), depicting a future where a socialist government gains power and a group of women decides to organize and rebel, will be available to view as part of the exhibition on our Vimeo on Demand channel 12th to 13th October. Please note all films will screen with English language captions. Further access information will be available on the film’s Vimeo on Demand pages.

There will be artists’ responses to the programme by Sequoia Barnes and Naomi Gessesse.
Sequoia Barnes’ work is predominately centered around making processes, rituals, and modes of fashioning. Trained in semiotics, she deploys research through praxis often in her artistic explorations of black diasporic symbolisms, storytelling as performance, and positioning the creative process as a performance/ritual. Her scholarly work currently explores the design techniques and aesthetic semiotics of late fashion designer, Patrick Kelly. Her most recent artistic works include her artist responses to Senga Nengudi (Fruitmarket Gallery) and Nick Cave (Tramway) with performative works entitled Sew Me A Quilt. Tell You A Story. (2019) and The Burden I Bear Is Heavy (2019), respectively.
Naomi Gessesse is a movie watcher and Aries sun from Glasgow. They have written for several publications and wrote an undergraduate thesis on the politics of space at the lgbtqia+ film festival. Naomi now works for Berwick Film And Media Arts Festival while continuing to write.
A reading group led by Martha Williams on Sunday 18 October will conclude the series. Click here to book a free ticket to the reading group event, Call & Reponse. The event will have BSL interpretation, live captioning, and live audio description. The films in the exhibition all have English language captions.
Born in Flames is preserved by Anthology Film Archives with restoration funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation. Distributed by Cinenova.

SQIFF 2020 Opening Film: Pride & Protest
2020-10-05 19:00 - 21:15
Pride & Protest is a documentary about QTIPOC communities and activists in Britain today and struggles surrounding the politics of desire, self-care, and found family. In the wake of the Birmingham protests against LGBTIQ+ relationship education in primary schools, director Blaise Singh follows various queer people of colour as they challenge homophobia and racism in their communities. They speak out against internalised shame and lack of representation, and we follow them trying to figure out their place in the world in the build up to UK Black Pride.
We are screening the film as a live watch party on Zoom. We are very happy to be joined by director Blaise Singh for a Q&A after the film. Pride & Protest will also be available on SQIFF’s Vimeo on Demand channel between 5 and 18 October.
Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 15+.
The film has English audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
This event has live audio description. We will send instructions on how to access the live AD to all ticket holders before the event. Contact us by emailing info@sqiff.org if you would like any more information about live AD during the Festival.
The film has lots of dialogue and voiceover, all English language, and mostly bright images.
The film is 90 minutes long with a 10 minute introduction at the start, a 5 minute comfort break after the film, and a Q&A lasting approximately 30 minutes.
Content notes: Discussion of racism, homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia; depiction of homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, and brief racist violence.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Watch Party: Tchindas
2020-10-06 19:00 - 21:30
Tchindas explores queer identity and acceptance in the Cape Verde archipelago, and follows Tchinda, a transgender woman who is a national heroine, as she prepares for Carnival month. The camera closely follows Tchinda and her cohorts – an engaging, closely knit group of trans women and gay men – as they take the lead in preparing their neighbourhood for the festivities. Screening with short The Whole World is Turning (21m) by Ada M. Patterson.
Followed by a conversation with Ada M. Patterson examining the themes raised. Ada M. Patterson (Bridgetown, 1994) is a visual artist and writer based between Barbados, London and Rotterdam. They work with masquerade, textiles, performance, video and poetry, telling new stories or rethinking old stories in new recuperative ways. Click here for Ada’s Instagram.
Part of Islands and Oceans curated by Harvey Dimond. Tchindas and The Whole World is Turning will also be available on SQIFF’s Vimeo on Demand channel between 5 and 18 October. Supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, and funded by Screen Scotland and Lottery funding from the BFI.
Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 15+.
The films have Cape Verdean Creole audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
The films are 115 minutes long with a brief introduction at the start, a 5 minute comfort break after the film, and a discussion lasting approximately 30 minutes.
Content notes: discussion of homophobia, transphobia, and swearing.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info[at]sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info[at]sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Workshop: Film Criticism with Valerie Complex and Becca Harrison SOLD OUT
2020-10-07 18:00 - 19:30
**Please note this event is now sold out. You can join a waiting list by clicking Buy Tickets below and we will contact you if a space becomes available**
Film critics Valerie Complex (Variety, AwardsWatch, Pride.com) and Becca Harrison (Sight & Sound, The Mary Sue, BBC Scotland) will hold a workshop for emerging critics that introduces different forms, styles, and practices of writing for the press. Drawing on their experience as freelancers for a wide range of outlets, including work on Portrait of a Lady on Fire and queer desire in Star Wars, they’ll open with a conversation about the usefulness of film criticism in today’s online culture, and offer tips and advice on developing a portfolio. The session will cover issues such as research, pitching, PR communications, writing in a house style, and – importantly – getting paid. They’ll also encourage attendees to discuss their work and aspirations as critics, and ask any questions about the industry.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This workshop has an age recommendation of 18+.
BSL interpretation and live captioning are provided for the workshop.
The workshop is 90 minutes long with a comfort break in the middle.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info[at]sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info[at]sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Watch Party: Cracks in the Patriarchy
2020-10-07 20:30 - 22:20
Through comprehensive interviews focused on seven individuals from different backgrounds, this documentary examines the LGBTQI+ community in Buenos Aires, Argentina. History and biography meld with the fiercely political as we learn of several overlapping struggles in the vast city. From the fight for gender recognition by the trans community to ongoing struggles to fight racism both within the LGBTQI+ scene and beyond; from the experiences of travestis in art and theatre to the massive movement to decriminalise abortion; the history, culture and politics of the LGBTQI+ community are drawn into sharp focus. Yet in this great variety of perspectives and histories lies a shared goal: a safer, freer society for all.
Followed by a filmmaker Q&A. Part of Daydreams and Testimonials: Queer South America, curated by lesbian Argentinian translator, writer, and comedian A.B. Silvera. Cracks in the Patriarchy will also be available on SQIFF’s Vimeo on Demand channel between 5 and 18 October.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 12+.
The film has Spanish audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
The film is 78 minutes long with a brief introduction at the start, a 5 minute comfort break after the film, and a Q&A lasting approximately 30 minutes.
Content notes: discussion of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism including anti-Blackness, xenophobia, classism, violence, police brutality, and death.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Workshop: Filmmaking with Wahala Film Fund
2020-10-08 18:00 - 19:30
Wahala Film Fund is a short film completion fund for Queer, Transgender, and Intersex People of Colour filmmakers based in UK, Europe, and the Global South. Wahala’s aim is to challenge the pervasiveness of the marginalisation of Queer People of Colour within films and film industries and also empower the many talented QTIPOC filmmakers who struggle to make work, or who stop continuing to make work because of the systemic pressures we face in actualising work which prioritises QTIPOC people in front of and behind the camera. Wahala co-founders and filmmakers Campbell X and Neelu Bhuman will lead this workshop for queer filmmakers of colour to find their voice and discuss their place in the industry.
This event is only open to QTIPOC (queer, trans, and intersex people of colour).

Tickets are free. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This workshop has an age recommendation of 18+.
BSL interpretation, live captioning, and live audio description are provided for the workshop. We will send instructions on how to access the live AD to all ticket holders before the event. Contact us by emailing info@sqiff.org if you would like any more information about live AD during the Festival.
The workshop is 90 minutes long with a comfort break in the middle.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Watch Party: Tongues Untied
2020-10-08 20:30 - 22:15
In his own words, Marlon Riggs aimed to shatter the “nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference” with his 1989 film Tongues Untied. A challenging and captivating work, many of Riggs’ key messages still resonate with the Black queer experience in the USA and Europe.
Screening with Beyond ‘There’s always a black issue Dear’ by Claire Lawrie, exploring and celebrating black LGBT identities to demarcate the huge influence that Black LGBT culture has had upon Fashion, Fine art, Dance, Music and Language, much of which has been appropriated by the cultural mainstream.
Curated by Harvey Dimond, who will introduce the event. Presented in partnership with Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) for Black History Month.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 15+.
The films have English audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction.
The films are 90 minutes long with a brief introduction at the start.
Content notes: discussion of racism including anti-Blackness, homophobia, and transphobia: depiction of nudity and violence.

Tongues Untied contains some abrasive sound effects and disorientating editing.

We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Watch Party: Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure
2020-10-09 19:00 - 20:30
With a poetic blend of curiosity, humour, sensuality, and concern, this film chronicles the pleasures and politics of H2O from an ecosexual perspective. Travel with Annie, a former sex worker, Beth, a professor, and their dog Butch, in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit, as they explore the role of water. Ecosexuality shifts the metaphor “Earth as Mother” to “Earth as Lover” to create a more reciprocal and empathetic relationship with the natural world. Along the way, Annie and Beth interact with a diverse range of folks including performance artists, biologists, water treatment plant workers, scholars and others, climaxing in a shocking event that reaffirms the power of water, life and the earth. Narrated by Sandy Stone. Watch party hosted by Samar Ziadat.
Water Makes Us Wet will also be available on SQIFF’s Vimeo on Demand channel between 5 and 18 October.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 18+.
The film has English audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction.

The film has lots of dialogue and voiceover, all English language, and mostly bright images.

The film is 79 minutes long with a brief introduction at the start.
Content notes: depiction of nudity and sex.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Dream Access Focus Group SOLD OUT
2020-10-10 14:00 - 16:00
**Please note this event is now sold out. You can join a waiting list by clicking Buy Tickets below and we will contact you if a space becomes available**
Disability provision is almost always a second thought even in places that are all about radical inclusivity – this is the case with queer spaces as well. This workshop is an opportunity to listen to advocates experiencing diverse disabilities, and to find solutions for radical access provisions in a collaborative way. Documentation of the event, in the form of a zine to share with SQIFF and other festivals, will provide a community-based, co created list of problems and suggested solutions, prioritising input from excluded communities rather than theoretical ‘best practices.’
Event led by Disabled activist Luke Murphy. Zine created by Dr of medieval queer+trans theology, storyteller, and zine-maker, Jonah Coman.
Please note this workshop is intended for Deaf and Disabled participants.

Tickets are free. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
BSL interpretation, live captioning, and live audio description are provided for the workshop. We will send instructions on how to access the live AD to all ticket holders before the event. Contact us by emailing info@sqiff.org if you would like any more information about live AD during the Festival.
The workshop is 2 hours long with a comfort break in the middle.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Watch Party: Fabiana
2020-10-10 17:00 - 19:00
For over three decades, Fabiana has lived a nomadic life as a trans woman trucker in Brazil. She has crossed the vast country hundreds of times over, never staying anywhere for too long. Confident and adventurous, she’s at home amongst the mostly-male truckers she encounters, and often hooks up with other women in her travels. But is she ready to finally settle down, when the open road has been her life? This documentary joins her on her last few journeys on the eve of retirement, sharing the connections and intimacies of her life.

Followed by a filmmaker Q&A. Part of Daydreams and Testimonials: Queer South America, curated by lesbian Argentinian translator, writer, and comedian A.B. Silvera. Fabiana will also be available on SQIFF’s Vimeo on Demand channel between 5 and 18 October.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 12+.
The film has Portuguese audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
The film is 89 minutes long with a brief introduction at the start, a 5 minute comfort break after the film, and a Q&A lasting approximately 30 minutes.
Content notes: discussion of homophobia, sex, surgery, and death.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Party: LGBTI+ Elders Social Dance Club
2020-10-11 14:00 - 15:30
Calling all LGBTI+ Elders and allies – Dust off your dancing shoes, charge your glasses and get ready for the LGBTI+ Elders Social Dance Club – Online!
We might not be able to meet in person but we can use the magic of technology to connect, chat, and boogie. Just like regular Dance Clubs you can join in however feels right for you.
We think it’s more important than ever right now that we celebrate our community and come together in any way we can.
So please join us online so we can talk, laugh and dance together. Presented in partnership with SQIFF.
This event is FREE to attend. To receive the Zoom link and password to attend, please email thecomingbackoutball@nationaltheatrescotland.com.
The LGBTI Elders Social Dance Club is a National Theatre of Scotland and All The Queens Men co-production, in partnership with Eden Court, Luminate and in association with Glasgow City Council.

ACCESS
This event is open to all ages.
This event will have live captioning, BSL interpretation, and live audio description. We will send instructions on how to access the live AD to all ticket holders before the event. Contact us by emailing info@sqiff.org if you would like any more information about live AD during the Festival.
The event will have hosts with everyone able to join in with your camera and microphone switched on. However, you can leave these switched off if you prefer. The National Theatre of Scotland will record parts of the event for research, development, and publicity purposes only. Everyone will have the opportunity to opt out if they do not want to be recorded by turning off their camera. You will be told when recording is about to happen and see a red ‘recording’ symbol in the top left hand corner. No dance club members will record or screenshot the session, and by joining the group we assume that you agree to this.

We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Watch Party: Online Filmmaking Project
2020-10-11 17:00 - 18:30
A screening of one minute short films made by participants of our online filmmaking workshops taking place in September. We will invite the filmmakers to take part in a Q&A after the screening of their films. Hosted by filmmaking workshop facilitator Yasmin Al-Hadithi. Hadithi is co-founder of DOCMA_ docs – a global platform for the playful exploration of different doc-filmmaking styles – and DocKlub, “Scotland’s Support Group for Documentary Filmmakers”. Yasmin also works as a creative producer – most recently developing an international ‘film exchange’ for young people in Scotland and the Arctic called, Breaking The Ice.

Tickets are free. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 15+.
Films’ languages tbc with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
Content notes tbc.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Watch Party: Blindsided
2020-10-11 19:00 - 21:00
A documentary narrative about Patricia Livingstone, a deafblind, lesbian artist facing a series of losses and gains. The film weaves intimate, real time scenes shot over the course of eight years with home videos and photographs, relaying the story of a woman whose spark did not fade even in the face of hardship and loss. Screening with local short film, Blind Spot, exploring and attempting to simulate the experience of visual impairment.
After the screening, filmmaker and poet, Ross Wilcock, and film journalist and accessibility consultant, Charlotte Little, will respond to the films and discuss the experiences of Deaf and Disabled LGBTQIA+ people. Blindsided and Blind Spot will also be available on SQIFF’s Vimeo on Demand channel between 5 and 18 October.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 15+.
The films have English audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
The event has live audio description. The films have lots of dialogue and voiceover, all English language.
The films are 80 minutes long with a brief introduction at the start, a 5 minute comfort break after the film, and a discussion lasting approximately 45 minutes.
Content notes: discussion of homophobia, ableism, domestic abuse, and brief mention of suicide; depiction of ableism, domestic abuse, and surgery.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Q&A: Game on: queer disruptions in sport
2020-10-12 18:00 - 18:45
Game on: Queer Disruptions in Sport is a documentary which shines a light on the experiences of those with diverse identities within grassroots sport. The film features the stories of gay runners Csaba and Benjamin from Hungary; Natalie, a Scottish lesbian boxer; Pol, an intersex rower from Bulgaria, and a German trans woman footballer called Jessi. Join us for a live Q&A with the film’s director Maria Takacs, protagonists from the film, and LEAP Sports.
Presented in partnership with LEAP Sports Scotland, promoting LGBTI participation and ending LGBTI-phobia in sport. The Q&A will also be live-streamed to Facebook.

Free event. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
The event has BSL interpretation and live captioning.
The event is 45 minutes long.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Watch Party: The Wound + South African Shorts
2020-10-13 19:00 - 21:30
Despite a rich queer history and long fight to guarantee the rights of queer people under the first democratic government of Nelson Mandela, queer and trans South Africans face many challenges, which intersect with class and cultural identities. This screening attests to those challenges but demonstrates that love and support comes from surprising and subversive places. The Wound explores the relationship between traditional Xhosa initiation rituals and queer identity, also alluded to in My Transgender Life (12m) by Yonela Simetu. The Men Who Speak Gayle (11m) celebrates a secret language used during the apartheid era to hide queer identities from the authorities.
Curated by Harvey Dimond and followed by a Q&A with Yonela Simetu, a Cape Town-based filmmaker and the director of My Transgender Life. Supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, and funded by Screen Scotland and Lottery funding from the BFI.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 15+.
The films have Xhosa and English audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
The films are 2 hours long with a brief introduction at the start and a 30 minute Q&A after the films.
Content notes: discussion of racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, swearing, and violence; depiction of nudity, sex, violence, blood, death, and graphic depictions of animal slaughter.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Workshop: Queer Speculative Fiction with Katalina Watt
2020-10-14 18:00 - 19:00
Katalina Watt is an Edinburgh-based author and publisher with a background in digital publishing, copywriting, and bookselling. A champion of representative voices and stories, she has been published in various anthologies and magazines, and was longlisted for Penguin Random House UK’s 2020 Write Now programme. She is currently working on her debut Horror-Fantasy short story collection inspired by folklore of the Philippine islands. As part of the festival’s focus on all things speculative and fantastic, this informal event will feature an introduction to Katalina’s work, discussions around representation in new writing, and a chance for writers in the audience to talk through some next steps on what to do with their own work.
With thanks to the Scottish BAME Writers Network.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This workshop has an age recommendation of 15+.
BSL interpretation and live captioning are provided for the workshop.
The workshop is 1 hour long.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Watch Party: Lesbian Shorts by Shu Lea Cheang
2020-10-14 21:00 - 22:00
Shu Lea Cheang’s work from the early-to-mid 1990s demonstrated an exciting fusion of identity politics and erotic exploration, making her one of the period’s most prominent queer media artists.
This collection presents two of her solo works and two collaborations, alongside a Q&A with Cheang hosted by scholar and critic B. Ruby Rich.
Part of our Shu Lea Cheang Retrospective, Cruising the Future. Cheang is a multi-media artist working in experimental video and net art since the early 1980s. Her work deals with the techno body, queer erotics and politics, race relations, and governmental and institutional power. Click here to access Cheang’s 2000 feature film I.K.U. on our Vimeo on Demand. Click here to access Fluidø (2017).

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders on the day.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 18+.
The films have Japanese and English audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
Content notes: discussion of cancer, death, and sex; depiction of nudity and sex.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

PROGRAMME
Sex Fish (6m)
Dir: Shu Lea Cheang, Country: USA, Year: 1993, Language/s: English
An erotic lesbian video involving swimming upstream, female power, and fish love. Made as a collaboration under the name E.T. (Ela Troyano) Baby (Jane Castle) Maniac (Cheang).
“In Sex Fish water provides the common denominator for nature imagery and explicit sex. Unlike 1970s feminist imagery, however, nature is sexualized rather than sex naturalized. Dripping from the faucet, spraying against a shower curtain, swirling down a toilet, water leads viewers from one sex scene to another, private to public and back again. Swimming through the video are various fish, seemingly unaware of the derogatory pun they enact, and all gulping enviously as cunnilingus surrounds them.”
—Chris Straayer, Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-orientations in Film and Video (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
Sex Bowl (8m)
Dir: Shu Lea Cheang, Country: USA, Year: 1994, Language/s: English
All forms of human sport become sites for sexual play and celebratory eroticism.
“The tape’s images are quick, suggestive, and sexy: fingers moving into bowling balls, shoe-smelling and toe-sucking, a dog wearing chain jewelry, fish being wrapped at the market, young naked couples having sex…. Edited like a music video, the image track is a constant flow of fetishes that lure us into the promiscuous pace of girls who keep lists of their sexual encounters.”
—Chris Straayer, Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-orientations in Film and Video (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)
Fingers and Kisses (5m)
Dir: Shu Lea Cheang, Country: Japan, Year: 1995, Language/s: Japanese, English
Cheang has taken her camera to the streets for a candid glimpse of lesbian public sexuality. If Asian women and lesbians share a certain amount of invisibility in the culture, Fingers and Kisses offers not only a bold representation of both, but a challenge to the question “What do lesbians do?” Tokyo’s own out-and-loud music by Chu punctuates the narrative as what begins in the streets continues under the sheets.
Coming Home (5m)
Dir: Shu Lea Cheang, Country: USA, Year: 1995, Language/s: Japanese, English
This humorous video begins with two women—one white, the other Asian—attempting to fit into a Japanese bathtub. The awkward fitting of bodies into a small space is just one of the allegorical scenarios dramatized in a pressing appeal for lesbian rights. In a game of hanafuda (flower cards), the terms of lesbian domesticity are cleverly played out according to such legalities as joint property, social security, and pensions.

Discussion: Film Programming for QTIPOC
2020-10-15 18:30 - 20:00
A conversation with QTIPOC film programmers from across the UK. We’ll be tackling questions such as: What does it mean to programme for us, by us? What unique and specific challenges are we facing? How do we curate safe and nourishing spaces for our communities? How do we take care of our selves while doing this grassroots work? Guest speakers include queer crip Black fat femme and Fringe! Queer film & arts fest and freelance film curator, Tara Brown, Director of CineQ and Festival Manager of SHOUT Festival, Rico Johnson-Sinclair, and Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, researcher, and curator, Natasha Thembiso Ruwona.
This event is only open to QTIPOC (queer, trans, and intersex people of colour).

Tickets are free. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
BSL interpretation, live captioning, and live audio description provided for the event. We will send instructions on how to access the live AD to all ticket holders before the event. Contact us by emailing info@sqiff.org if you would like any more information about live AD during the Festival.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Watch Party: The Cancer Journals Revisited
2020-10-16 18:00 - 20:10
The Cancer Journals Revisited is prompted by the question of what it means to re-visit and re-vision Black lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde’s classic 1980 memoir of her breast cancer experience today. At the invitation of filmmaker Lana Lin, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, twenty-seven writers, artists, activists, health care advocates, and current and former patients recite Lorde’s manifesto aloud on camera, collectively dramatising it and producing an oration for the screen. The film is both a critical commentary and a poetic reflection upon the precarious conditions of survival within the intimate and politicised public sphere of illness.
Followed by a Q&A with director Lana Lin hosted by Anahit Behrooz. Anahit is an arts journalist based in Edinburgh, currently working as events editor at The Skinny and commissioning editor at Bella Caledonia, with bylines in The List, Girls on Tops, and Club des Femmes among others. Presented in partnership with Scottish Documentary Institute.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 15+.
The films have English, Spanish, and German audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
The film is 98 minutes long with a brief introduction at the start, a 5 minute comfort break after the film, and a 30 minute Q&A.
Content notes: discussion of racism including anti-Blackness, violence, cancer, and death.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.

Party feat FRAN.K & guests
2020-10-16 20:30
This year SQIFF X Vogue Scotland’s party features a performance by Vogue Scotland member FRAN.K alongside;
PURINA ALPHA
DAVID RONAN
SEQUOIA BARNES
MELE BROOMES
This live 3 hour virtual club is a collision of bodies on the dance floor in a rotating duet, mimicking our fleeting interactions in the club. Featuring four guest dancers, FRAN.K takes us on a journey through a three and a half hour soundtrack from DJ RyanAir broadcast on Zoom.
Participant videos will be set to off and mics muted on entry, so you can watch from the zoom or opt to turn on your camera to join the dance-floor. You can also join us in the chatroom, and once you’ve entered feel free to come and go through the night! Chatroom will be facilitated by our virtual host NUSSATARI.
Live Stream filmed by Daniel Hughes.
Lighting Design – Jazz Hutsby
Sound Mixing – Simon Howard / DJ RyanAir
Outfit Design Cover Image/ Pop /Techno – Asia Apolonia Przytarska
Content warning: The performance includes flashing lights and explicit language
House Rules: We are a club space that does not condone any discrimination of any kind. Anyone displaying such behaviour will be ejected. If you feel uncomfortable at any time please message in the chat to reach our security staff.
Tickets are free. To book, click the button below and you will receive a Zoom link for the event. When you enter the Zoom waiting room, please open the chat so we can say hello before you join the event.

ACCESS
The event will be captioned.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Workshop: Documentary Filmmaking with Lana Lin SOLD OUT
2020-10-17 16:00 - 18:15
**Please note this event is now sold out.**
Join us for a workshop in collaboration with Scottish Documentary Institute with Lana Lin, a filmmaker, artist, and writer whose creative practice concerns embodied vulnerabilities. Lana’s most recent film The Cancer Journals Revisited is a brave feature prompting the question of what it means to re-visit and re-vision Black lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde’s classic 1980 memoir of her breast cancer experience today.
The workshop will be broken down into two one-hour sessions. In the first hour Lana will give an overview of her practice, particularly focussing on ethics of documentary filmmaking. For the second half of the session, Lana will workshop a couple of selected projects from submissions. Attendees are welcome to join with or without a film project in the making.

Tickets are free. To book, click the button below. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This workshop has an age recommendation of 18+.
BSL interpretation and live captioning are provided for the workshop.
The workshop is 2 hours long with a 15 minute break in the middle.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.

Watch Party: Transdimensional Voices
2020-10-17 19:00 - 20:30
This collection of shorts uplifts trans* voices and showcases a wide range of trans* identifying talent based within Glasgow. Jamie Crewe’s “The Ideal Bar” — “Le Narcisse” — “Alec’s” touches on experiences of transphobia and LGBTQIA+ solidarity and conflict. Sorcha Clelland presents Where the Red Fern Grows, interrogating performance, queer club space aesthetics, and the consistent demolition of community spaces which seek to aid queer voices. Powder Snowdrop Catatonic is a performance featuring various camp characters by Sgàire Wood. The films cover a multitude of themes, depending on the viewer’s perception of the work.
Curated and hosted by Glasgow-based artist TAAHLIAH. There will be a Q&A with the filmmakers after the screening.

Image credit: Sorcha Clelland’s Where the Red Fern Grows.

Tickets are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
This screening has an age recommendation of N/C 15+.
The films have English audio with English language captions. BSL interpretation and live captioning provided for introduction and Q&A.
The films are 32 minutes long with a brief introduction at the start and a 45 minute Q&A.
Content notes: depiction of violence, gruesome imagery, and an animal in distress.

The films in Transdimensional Voices include some loud music and abrasive sound effects, disorientating editing, and flashing lights.

We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
Tickets
Tickets for most live events are on a sliding scale of FREE, £2, £4, £6, or £8. Our sliding scale allows you to choose what to pay based on what you feel you can afford. No evidence or proof of circumstances is required. If you can afford to pay more, we really appreciate it as we rely on this income to pay queer people fairly for their work and keep the festival going.
PROGRAMME
“The Ideal Bar” – “Le Narcisse” – “Alec’s” (2m)
Dir: Jamie Crewe, Country: UK, Year: 2020, Language/s: No spoken language
“The Ideal Bar” – “Le Narcisse” – “Alec’s” is a dramatised exchange between two characters in a Glasgow nightclub, inspired by a sequence in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness in which Stephen Gordon encounters a repellent reflection of herself in a Parisian gay bar. Their exchange is punctuated, as in Radclyffe Hall’s text, by the image of a panting, dying fox. Though it demands compassion, this fox is not real, and its blood looks perhaps more like lipstick. The video is scored by a hyperventilating concertina.
These characters are portrayed by performance maker and ogre Sorcha Clelland, and performance artist and music producer TAAHLIAH. In this version, TAAHLIAH is standing, and Sorcha is seated.
Powder Snowdrop Catatonic (17m)
Dir: Sgàire Wood, Country: Scotland, Year: 2020, Language/s: English and French languages
Produced in one room over the course of a week in the heart of lockdown, Sgàire Wood’s Powder Snowdrop Catatonic is an irreverent pantomime performance of mental deterioration under mandatory quarantine. Summoning a cast of capricious characters, Wood runs a Kübler-Ross style gamut of emotions precipitated by self-isolation, from misanthropic smugness to mind-bending ennui and cabin fever. Seen solely through the narrow lens of a smartphone camera, she dances before the flimsy trompe l’oeil facade of a Victorian parlour, existing in the space between coziness and claustrophobia, flippancy and sincerity. The film’s celebratory intimacy pays tribute to queer, radicalised or feminised practices which, being underrepresented in traditional art spaces, are relegated to the realm of domesticity and how under the circumstances in which the film was produced, have found a new appreciation and importance.
Where the Red Fern Grows (11m)
Dir: Sorcha Clelland, Country: UK, Year: 2020, Language/s: No spoken language
Sorcha Clelland’s Where the Red Fern Grows, titled after Wilson Rawls’ 1961 children’s book about hunting dogs, exists as a love letter to a rave and venue in Ibrox, Glasgow. Filmed at The African Arts Centre in May 2020 during the venue’s demolition and Scotland’s lockdown from COVID-19. The novel begins with an aspiration to heal and a birth of kinship. Character growth is continued through belief in a magic. Performing as SHREK 666, the embodiment of a demonic ogre shifting through monstrous transformation chained to catholicism, he revisits a site and performance which was formerly a scene of Queer Intimacy.
“The Ideal Bar” – “Le Narcisse” – “Alec’s” (2m)
Dir: Jamie Crewe, Country: UK, Year: 2020, Language/s: No spoken language
“The Ideal Bar” – “Le Narcisse” – “Alec’s” is a dramatised exchange between two characters in a Glasgow nightclub, inspired by a sequence in Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness in which Stephen Gordon encounters a repellent reflection of herself in a Parisian gay bar. Their exchange is punctuated, as in Radclyffe Hall’s text, by the image of a panting, dying fox. Though it demands compassion, this fox is not real, and its blood looks perhaps more like lipstick. The video is scored by a hyperventilating concertina.
These characters are portrayed by performance maker and ogre Sorcha Clelland, and performance artist and music producer TAAHLIAH. In this version, Sorcha is standing, and TAAHLIAH is seated.

Call & Response: Reading and Writing for the Future
2020-10-18 14:00 - 16:00
A workshop and reading group led by Martha Williams. The discussion and activities will be based around one or more of the texts selected for the Many Black Moons Ago, To Go programme. Texts will be sent to participants prior to the workshop.
The workshop is for Black people only.
Martha Adonai Williams is a writer, facilitator, and community organiser. She is a coordinator for the Black Feminist Bookshop and runs the Black womxn/non-binary writing space, Call+Response.

Free event. To book, click the button below. You can book a ticket up to one hour before the start time. We will send out a Zoom link for the event to ticket holders a day or two beforehand.

ACCESS
The event has an age recommendation of 18+.
BSL interpretation, live captioning, and live audio description provided for the event. We will send instructions on how to access the live AD to all ticket holders before the event. Contact us by emailing info@sqiff.org if you would like any more information about live AD during the Festival.
The workshop is 2 hours long with a comfort break in the middle.
We have a limited access fund to assist people with no or limited internet access to attend the Festival. If you would like to take this up, please contact info@sqiff.org.
If you have any questions about accessibility at SQIFF 2020, please contact info@sqiff.org.
