Watch online at TQFF.ca. ASL available.

This panel will explore the impacts of queer life in Egypt on queer activism in Canada, between the 2011 Egyptian revolution and the raising of the rainbow flag by Sarah Hegazy at a Cairo concert in 2017. Panelists will discuss the stories of individuals seeking asylum in Canada, with a focus on police targeting via social media, highlighting the late Sarah Hegazy’s profound impact. The panel will also examine the involvement of the Arab and Muslim community in the recent protests and counter-protests surrounding gender and sexual education in schools, emphasizing the ongoing debate and the dedicated efforts of activists advocating for LGBTQ rights within their own cultural context.

Watch online at TQFF.ca. ASL available.

Have you ever asked yourself “how do I take on this work without putting myself in harm’s way?” Then an Access Rider may be for you. An Access Rider is a document that outlines your accessibility needs, and everything you need to not just show up to work, but show up without risking your safety or wellbeing as a sick, Mad, Deaf, and/or Disabled person. The Access Rider is a rising trend among Disabled workers, and grows stronger as a practice the more commonplace it becomes. Join a workshop primer with the staff of Tangled Art + Disability to learn what an Access Rider is, how to make one, when to use one, and more.

Watch online at TQFF.ca. ASL available.

In this roundtable, creatives and community workers share gestures and practices of personal and communal care in the face of multiple pandemics. Facilitated by Beau Gomez, this event encapsulates tenderness sustained within a community of artists living with, creating works about, and fostering discourse around HIV/AIDS in relation to cross-navigating COVID and other varying waves of epidemic outbreaks. Through storytelling and presentation of works, it centers perspectives on what it means to sustain oneself in negotiating with HIV realities today, while reconciling with renewed forms of prescriptiveness and hypervigilance. This gathering welcomes dialogue on what it means for us, in solitude and community, to sustain a circle of relations anchored in resilience and radical hospitality.

Watch online at TQFF.ca. ASL available.

Despite the increase of Deaf representation in films in recent years, there still remains very little Deaf queer representation that is authentic, long-lasting, and impactful. This workshop will explore how we can move toward authentic Deaf representation in film that includes not only fully accessible filmmaking process for Deaf cast and staff but also encompassing Deaf cultural values, history, and sign languages, especially for the Deaf queer communities. We will cover an introduction to the Deaf queer community’s history and culture. We will then discuss how to make queer film spaces that are also safe spaces for Deaf actors, filmmakers, and crew.

In person at Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto. ASL available.

Due to the interactive nature of this event it will not be live streamed.

In this collaborative dialogue between Jody Chan and Rob Colgate, we reflect on crip kinship, queer intimacies, and queer/crip/Asian poetics. How often are we told to “just talk about it” as a bridge to care? But how challenging is it to talk about “it,” when “it” isn’t something clean and pretty— chronic illness, psychotic episodes, trauma responses, microaggressions that you can’t parse out as racist, ableist, or homophobic?

What if we understood talking uncensored as a space of crip and poetic innovation? What if we commit to the mundanities of our embodied lives to recognize their potential for the extraordinary? This project is one of accountability, collaboration, making care tangible, and pushing us to lean on each other through our craft instead of living in fear of burdensomeness.

In person at Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto. ASL available.

Toronto Living With AIDS: Finding a Future in the Past is a roundtable/book launch for an edited volume on the community cable television series Toronto Living With AIDS (TLWA). TLWA was distributed on cable in Toronto from 1990-1991 and consisted of 12 half-hour tapes produced by a diverse array of artists working in collaboration with community organizations. These tapes were visionary collaborations made under the duress of a deadly pandemic made worse by institutionalized homophobia, racism, sexism, and colonization. Examining how these tapes were made and the impact they had demonstrates possible roadmaps for future community-based media collaborations determined to save our own lives. This event features surviving contributors to the series and researcher/book editor Ryan Conrad.

Watch online at TQFF.ca. ASL available.

Trauma-Informed Storytelling is an interactive workshop that will outline trauma-informed filmmaking practices with a focus on how resistance, reconciliation and justice can actively contribute to storytelling. Topics will include: basic outline on the various types of trauma and how they manifest, how to build on-set environments that focus on harm-reduction, working with crew, actor/director relationships and somatic rehearsal techniques, conflict resolution, interview best practices, responsible and ethically-sound writing practices and more. The workshop will be broken up into three parts, each intermission will feature spoken word performances by Tamil/Sinhalese diasporic poet Gitanjali Lena.

Watch online at TQFF.ca. ASL available.

Over the last 30 years, LGBTQ+ activists have argued the United States should be spending its resources to “Fight AIDS, Not Arabs.” In 1991, the HIV activist group ACT UP protested that the United States should be investing money to save people dying from HIV, not on a war in the Persian Gulf. During the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and again during the war on Gaza in 2023, the very same activists organized to force the U.S. to spend money on infectious disease, instead of on policing Black people in America and dropping bombs on Arabs in Palestine. Speaking from lessons learned writing his book The Viral Underclass, Steven W. Thrasher will discuss how AIDS activism has taught him that a world without HIV, COVID, or m-pox is only possible in a world without war and policing.