TQFF 2022
March 31 – April 3, 2022
Close your eyes and dream of the future. What do you see? Is it a world full of technological advances? Indigenous sovereignty? Space and time travel? Afro-futurism? Cycles of plagues and climate change?
It is a part of human nature to wonder what’s next? What is coming and how is our world going to continue to shift with time. We continue to ponder and analyze the possibilities and as our imaginations flow it brings forward dreams and visions. We strive to highlight the voices of queer, trans, 2 Spirit identities and to have this space for expression and community. Queer Futurisms explores the queer perspectives of the future in various inspirations and ways of exploration.
We will be presenting three features that explore Queer Futurisms in their own way and will be followed by a Q&A with the director.
We strive towards a future where there is change, growth, revolution, connections and community. We have several programs lined up that envision a future through various lens.
The future’s not set. We can still grow, evolve, create, explore and love. We have the ability to create change and a future that we can all find space filled with warmth and care within each other.
Come dream with us and explore what the possibilities of the future are through our selection of films. We hope you enjoy this year’s festival!
Stay tuned for updates!
Upcoming Events
MARCH 31, 7PM
Intergalactic Cabaret
If humanity perished and another species found a record of this film program, they would discover an archive of childhood dreams, resistance inscribed on skin, relics of technology in flux. Collectively, they lend the impression of humanity's talent for resistance and variation. The films in this programme call attention to the beauty and new traditions we can create, simply by virtue of existing in space. Each autonomous gesture and breath allows us to wander away from established paths, toward the rhythms and sounds of liberation.
MARCH 31, 9PM
Tending to Ta
Tending to Ta is a mind-bending work of speculative fiction that follows an exchange of letters between two protagonists who imagine one another across parallel dimensions. Each communicating to an other who exists as a possibility beyond their self-perceived boundaries of reality, the two beings meet in a shared world of imagination. In the figure of the eponymous protagonist, April Lin 林森 meshes the concepts of ‘ta’, the monosyllabic sound that in Mandarin Chinese encompasses all third person pronouns, with the proper noun Ta, creating an infinite cosmic entity who exists across universes and is present in all beings and matter..
APRIL 1, 6PM
Movement Over Borders
The movement of species across the Earth has always been, and will always be, free. If migration is a fact of human existence, how do we even begin to make sense of the implications of borders on our individual and collective futures? Borders are not just lines dividing lands and seas; they are every place where countries create ‘us’ and ‘them,’ ‘citizen’ and ‘alien,’ ‘alike’ and ‘other.’ By chronicling movement over, within, and under borders, the films in this program express diverse perspectives on migration. From anxieties of dislocation and visions of distant homes, to silly childhood memories and the sweetness of a new home — these filmmakers show us that borders may define our experiences, but they certainly do not encompass the depths queer pasts, presents, and futures.
APRIL 1, 7:30PM
Postcards From The Past
Conventional narratives suggest that time is a linear concept. Accordingly, history is portrayed as a series of events staged on a single track of progress. The films in this programme, alternatively, play with time, stretch it, collapse it, revealing multiple layers in our chronological fabric. Whether the stories take shape in a multiverse, within a fractal pattern, or in a continuous loop, they ask us to explore the many shapes and possibilities of time, and reflect on the relationship between past, present, and future.
APRIL 1, 9PM
Sailor Moon Rated R
Sailor Moon is a post-2020 fandub of the iconic 90s anime Sailor Moon, rewritten as a dark comedy that focuses on issues related to queer folx, women, and people of colour. In this parody feature, Darien struggles to confront his repressed sexuality when a fierce childhood cuddle buddy named Fiore returns to unmask Darien’s tuxedo. Possessed by the sex-positive Kisenian Blossom, Fiore faces off against the Sailor Scouts in a petty battle over Darien’s “D”.
APRIL 2, 7PM
In the Shadow of the Virus
It’s 2022. We have been living through the COVID pandemic, and all its related crises, for over two years. While other nations have pursued successful COVID-zero public health strategies, those of us who reside on the colonized lands of Canada and the US have faced public health abandonment and the state’s refusal to enact preventative measures known to work, similar to what we have experienced over decades with the HIV pandemic. While many crave a return to pre-COVID times, the pandemic rages on with no regard for our fantasies and desires for it to be over. Should we consider that we are living the new normal already? If this is the new normal, then how is the ongoing pandemic changing how we see the future?
APRIL 2, 8:30PM
Virtually Queer
In this techno-fascist turn of late-capitalism - strewn with surveillance technology, oppressive algorithms, and indentured sex robots - there is an urgent need to speculate about how we can reclaim and build technologies to survive and thrive. The films in this program invite us to reflect on how technology mediates queer identity and intimacy. While many of them depict technologies that already exist, in one form or another, we simultaneously observe the exhilarating transformation of fiction into innovation. Today’s technologies may control, alienate, and disconnect, but these films imagine near-futures where technologies can lead to freedom. The films in this program ask us to reflect on the kinds of digital futures we want to choose and create.
APRIL 2, 10PM
Porn Is So Boring
Sexy. Sensual. Explicit. These five shorts explore new approaches to the erotic and create inclusive environments for people not typically represented in the porn industry. Featuring themes such as body inclusivity, asexuality, and safer sex practices, these films bring us into a world of intimacy through passion, slow sensual pacing, exploration, and beautiful bodies coming together.
APRIL 3, 2:30PM
My Hands Will Make The Future
My Hands Will Make The Future features nine hand-made films - animated and live-action - that capture dazzling visions of worlds to come. These shorts explore past traumas, breaking lineages of generational trauma to imagine futures of thriving and abundance. Acknowledging our histories, this program showcases novel approaches to creating film as well as shaping futures.
APRIL 3, 4PM
Once Upon Our Blue Green Home
In many cultures, queer, trans and gender expansive people have held the roles of steward, healer, and sage. Such roles have allowed us to develop unique and significant relationships with our homelands and homewaters. As people living through today’s dire conditions, when the matrix of creation seems to balance barely on a precipice, how do we draw on place-based knowledge to save our one and only home? What connection does queerness still have to the Earth, and why does that connection matter?
APRIL 3, 6PM
North by Current
North by Current. After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown, determined to make a film about the family's wrongful persecution.