Queer Cinema for Palestine
Queer Cinema for Palestine (QCP) will open its virtual and physical doors this November for a collectively-curated 10-day film festival celebrating global queer realities and standing in solidarity with Palestinians.
QCP will run from 11-20 November and host more than a dozen events across five continents, both online and in person. QCP is a first-time global queer solidarity initiative that offers a vibrant space using art and culture to oppose the ongoing violence of Israeli apartheid.
QCP will feature films and documentaries including Palestinian and South West Asian and North African regional films and artists, masterclasses with filmmakers, panel discussions, drag performances, queer indigenous solidarity, and more.
QCP coincides with TLVFest, the Israeli government-sponsored LGBT film festival. Palestinian queers have called for a boycott of TLVFest over its role in pinkwashing Israel’s regime of military occupation and apartheid oppressing all Palestinians.
QCP will feature some of the more than 50 filmmakers who have pulled their films from TLVFest in response to the call from Palestinian queers and the nearly 200 who have pledged not to screen at TLVFest. A special program of Brazilian short films will honor the eight Brazilian filmmakers who withdrew from TLVFest in 2020.
QCP recognizes that fighting apartheid via principled acts of refusal and withdrawal is just part of the equation. QCP offers a space for artists to do what they do best: creating art for audiences and using art for social change.
Upcoming Events
NOVEMBER 11, 7PM CET / 1PM EST
Prishtina
An event of slam poetry, drag performance and selection of international shorts will engage Albanian queers from Kosovo in a discussion about the understanding of intersectionality, and what it means to be oppressed on the basis of your identity.
Slam poetry by Agon Rexhepi and a drag performance by Vera Vendetta.
NOVEMBER 11-12, 6PM CET / 12PM EST
Paris, Beruit
In the midst of struggles, protests, and revolutions, the voices of the oppressed, sidelined, silenced, and forgotten become more salient. In The Articulation of Protest (2002) Hito Steyerl reflects on the functions and forms of ‘articulation’ as being both about the organization of protest movement and the expression of its organization. She meditates on the ways an act of editing can erase the multiplicity of voices and contradictions, inherent to struggles. How can one turn the act of restoring images of past struggles into a critical and sensitive testimony of this erasure? How, through the use of new recording tools, can we echo the current struggles and share across contexts the connection of our outcry and hope?
NOVEMBER 11 4PM EST
London, Ontario
Videos in English or Arabic with English subtitles. Land acknowledgement in Mohawk with English subtitles. Closed captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences in English. In this powerful screening and panel, filmmakers Indigenous to Turtle Island and filmmakers from Palestine share how they negotiate complex and intersecting relationships to land, home, queerness, labour, art-making, and representation. This program features a land acknowledgement presented by Layla Black and a panel with filmmakers Qais Assali, Justin Ducharme, Whess Harman, and Rana Nazzal, moderated by Wanda Nanibush.
NOVEMBER 14 3PM CET / 9AM EST
Tunis
In Arabic with English subtitles Screening of short movies, sharing stories of queer people from different countries of the global south (Palestine, Tunisia, Jordan, India, Lebanon), with a focus on the shared, similar struggles queer people go through under the oppression of society and laws. The screenings will be followed by a debate with the public about these thematic, the close realities and the intersection of Queer and Palestinian struggle
NOVEMBER 13 6PM GMT / 1PM EST
London
Screening of films withdrawn from the Israeli government-sponsored TLVFest in response to the call from Palestinian queers.
NOVEMBER 14 5PM EET / 10AM EST
Sofia
Films provided with English and Bulgarian subtitles DIY cinema by queers and their friends in solidarity with Palestinians!
NOVEMBER 15 10AM EST
Montreal
Films are in Arabic with English subtitles. Discussion will be in English and Arabic, with live translation when necessary. From intimate portrayal to experimental cinema, this program of queer shorts from Palestine and Lebanon examines the intersection of gender and sexual identity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. Followed by a discussion with Raffat Hattab, Mohamed Souied, and Roy Dib.
NOVEMBER 17, 7PM KST / 6AM EST
Seoul
Screening of Mother-in-law by South Korean filmmaker Shin Seung Eun, who withdrew from TLVFest in 2020.
In Korean with English subtitles.
NOVEMBER 18 8PM CET / 2PM EST
Berlin
Queer Jewish artists and scholars Judith Butler, Lior Shamriz, BH Yael and Marc Siegel discuss their films/work in relation to solidarity with Palestine, and speak back against the increasing weaponization of anti-Semitism by pro-Israel forces, which is used as a method to silence artists and activists.
NOVEMBER 19 7PM CET / 1PM EST
Bilbao
In English and Arabic with English and Spanish subtitles Featuring a documentary of stories of resistance and resilience from Palestine and followed by an online discussion between lesbian activists from around the world.
NOVEMBER 19 7PM CET / 1PM EST
Turin
All films will be shown with Italian subtitles Screening of five short films and a Palestinian aperitif.
NOVEMBER 19 7PM BRT / 5PM EST
Brasilia
Exhibition of Queer Films followed by a discussion (in Portuguese) on the films and their support for Palestinian Rights, with introductions by filmmakers Ariel Nobre, Victor Costa Lopes, and Asaph Luccas. Moderated by Maynara Nafe, a Brazilian-Palestinian academic of Law. Currently, youth secretary of the Palestinian Arab Federation of Brazil and member of the Palestinian-Brazilian Youth Sanaúd.
NOVEMBER 20 4:30PM GMT / 11:30AM EST
Belfast
Queer Cinema for Palestine (QCP) is a collectively-curated 10-day global film festival celebrating queer realities and standing in solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, justice, and dignity. Outburst is honoured to work with festivals, filmmakers and activists all over the world to present this special event, in person at the Black Box in Belfast and live streamed globally. We warmly welcome very special guests Ghadir al Shafie and Sarah Schulman, who will be in conversation after a screening of Roy Dib’s award winning queer short, Mondial 2010.
Festival Schedule
March 25
6:00 pmQueer Emergencies
40 min
7:00 pmLong Time Comin'
53 min
8:00 pmIn Conversation with Val Bah
45 min
March 27
2:30 pmCanada Media Fund 101 - Live with ASL
60 min
4:00 pmStill, Here ***
53 min
5:00 pmIn Conversation with B.G-Osbourne
45 min
7:00 amHostile Territory
70 min
9:00 pmPorn is So Boring **
75 min
March 28
4:00 pmBannock, Bingo & BFFs’ Kinship Event*
120 min
7:00 pmThis is Where We Find Ourselves
82 min
9:00 pmWhat We Do After
53 min
* For Indigiqueer/Trans/2S
** Premieres March 27 on Pink Label TV. After Premiere it screens on tqff.ca/watch for 30 days.
*** Premieres March 27 on CFMDC. After Premiere it screens on tqff.ca/watch for 30 days.