Mandate
Established in 2016, the Toronto Queer Media & Arts Centre (TQFF) is a collectively-run, artist-run, nonprofit organization located in Toronto, Ontario. TQFF was formed to provide community art exhibition space for experimental, contemporary, and/or social justice themed film and video art by queer filmmakers. TQFF support’s Toronto’s LGBTQ2S+ communities by providing a unique gathering space for marginalized and precarious queer and trans people, including Indigenous people, people of color, people with disabilities, and transgender people.
We have five primary mandates:
- to exhibit queer and trans independent and experimental film and video art;
- to support the production of independent queer and trans film and video art through community based arts education;
- to foster queer and trans community development and engagement by removing barriers to access to arts programming;
- to decolonize artistic and curatorial practices, as well as advocate for centering of principles of decolonization in queer art and activism more broadly; and
- to center our programming around work made by and for queer and trans Indigenous people, people of color, and people living with disabilities and, especially, to promote and support the work of local filmmakers and media artists
TQFF distinguishes itself from other Toronto festivals and arts organizations that serve the LGBTQ2S+ community by focusing on experimentally formal and social-justice focused film and video and by encouraging the submission— and prioritizing the programming—of work by and about queer and trans people of colour, Indigenous people, people with disabilities and the work of local, low-income, DIY, and/or emerging filmmakers.
TQFF’s mission is to provide:
- community-based media arts education programming (workshops, panels, Q&As);
- mutual aid (community meals, grocery, & PPE distribution);
- industry/symposium programming for artists, scholars, critics, and audiences to network and build connections;
support for and exhibition of artistic works by BIPOC, trans, and disabled filmmakers whose work is marginalized by more mainstream festivals; - a forum for discussion and debate on issues relating to film and video production as well as timely social justice issues concerning local queer and trans communities;
- exhibition of exceptional work made by international queer and trans artists, especially artists from the Global South;
- a celebration of media art made by and for local, Ontarian, and Canadian gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, 2 Spirit, queer, questioning and intersex communities.
Land Acknowledgement
TQFF would like to acknowledge the indigenous territories that we gather on: this stolen land is the territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River.
The territory was the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.
We acknowledge ourselves as trespassers, and do so to show solidarity with Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. We recognize that decolonization must be an active and ongoing process of reconciliation–TQFF is dedicated to creating a space in our programming to promote the creative and political work of indigenous queer and two-spirited voices.