The short film Pistoleras will be followed by the feature presentation of Playland.

Pistoleras
Natalia del Mar Kašik • 2 min • Austria • 2023
Natalia del Mar Kašik’s debut short film is a playful, 16mm feminist reimagining of a spaghetti western, with a butch-y twist. It’s a gun-less standoff between self and self-image set against tactile landscapes—fleshy hips, golden wheat fields, and a vast blue sky brim with sensuality and pleasure.

Playland
Georden West • 92 min • USA • 2023
Gay bars have long served as spaces of refuge and community for queer and trans people, particularly for those in generations when being “out” was far less accepted. Playland (2023), Georden West’s stellar debut feature, pays tribute to Boston’s oldest and most infamous gay bar, The Playland Café. Established in 1937, the bar served a diverse clientele of racial, class, and gender identities and sexual orientations across 6 decades. By the 1960s, the neighborhood around Playland had become synonymous with crime, drugs, and sex work, and in 1998, the bar’s license was taken away and the site sold to developers.

Set on the eve of the Playland Café’s demolition, the film envisions the ghosts of former workers and patrons returning for one final night. Defying convention in favour of generic multiplicity and hybridity, West employs a form of “queer bricolage,” blending fiction, music video aesthetics, archival material, and theatre. The film juxtaposes the grime and grease of a run down bar with pixelated archival footage, polished art direction, and contemporary visuals.

Playland gestures toward a re-interpretation of place and invites a reconsideration of how we engage with shared queer history— its transient spaces, tangible artifacts, and its ephemeral experiences.