Locker Room Escapades, Metaphysics, Judo – a Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) Preview

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Get ready to feel sexy and seen! For its 11th year, the Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) promises to capture the breadth of LGBTQIA+ cinema with over 100 independent shorts, six feature films, and 27 curated events.

The festival’s incredibly diverse programme features everything from surreal stories of psychic lesbians to intimate, emotional pieces curated by a feeling that doesn’t go away. The festival should be as educational as it is expansive with industry talks, panels, and social events geared towards queer filmmakers.

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SCOTTISH SHORTS

The opening short films, and perhaps the main event at the festival, are the Scottish Shorts. Delivered in two healthy portions on Monday and Thursday, these are the competition films of the festival. These queer stories are told from every angle: documentaries, experimental films, and wonderful fantasies.

Films like Pang, Wake and Bake, and Reconnection all take us through poignant moments of reckoning between people who are experiencing an emotional distance. Did I Feel It? and Each to Their Own World look at disability in the queer community. And They Bend Stars gets gloriously weirder by showing us a genderless alien trying to escape an underground facility.

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SATURATE is a selection of films from SQIFF’s queer filmmaking course that took place over the summer.

The rest of the festival’s shorts programmes are curated by style and substance. Collaged gives analogue filmmakers a chance to shine as it showcases a series of found-footage and Super 8 formats edited by hand in a gritty, tactile celebration of the pre-digital.

And filmmakers from Africa and Brazil are on display in programmes Ways Through, We Are Eternal, and Enchanted Ecologies: they highlight international conversations like the African diaspora, queerness in Brazil, and the importance of the Amazon, respectively.

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SAPPHICS & PSYCHICS

Sapphics & Psychics explores the depths of the lesbian imagination and the path of metaphysical strings that tie us all together. In My Senses Are All I Have to Offer, a couple links telepathically using a strange pill.

Dream Factory examines cinemas as cruising sites and finds a correlation between desire and fantasy. Daughters of Destiny follows three girls who experience strange happenings on the closing night of their favourite bar, when one of them is kidnapped by a purple star and trapped inside a parallel dimension.

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SHORT DOCS

Mini-docs tells factual stories about community, prejudice, and drag kings, all under 12 minutes: Some of Us Really Can’t tells the story of a coming out that never happened; The Beat in My Chest follows a Ukrainian refugee in Barcelona who learns to love life again with techno; listen focuses on the importance of Glasgow’s DIY community spaces like Listen Gallery.

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ANIMATION NOW

Animation Now brings back another year of artfully animated shorts that promise to tug on your heartstrings and leave you weeping: Eyeliner juxtaposes the journeys of a trans and cis girl after they decide to steal makeup in search of their womanhood; The Red Wave explores the horrors of menstrual depression.

Flamingo in the Garden follows a Chinese woman confined to a hospital bed. As she experiences morphine-induced hallucinations, dreams blossom into a garden where memory and feeling blur together.

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This Feeling Won’t Leave explores the way queer people are desired. In Lázaro’s Temptation, a man’s life changes when his gym’s facial recognition software malfunctions, and algorithms and escapades in the locker room begin to make him question who he is becoming.

Rope takes viewers through a night of erotic bondage and weaves the story with the tale of an ‘ama’ or ‘sea woman’ of Japan. No Contest examines trans rights in sporting events as a trans woman’s identity is outed in the middle of a judo tournament.

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PRESENT + PITCH

SQIFF also takes it upon itself to create an uplifting space for queer filmmakers with several educational panels and industry events. The Film Talent Initiatives Presentation by the Queer Filmmakers Group will discuss funding and training opportunities across Scotland, with the opportunity to network and ask questions afterwards.

The Film Pitch event is a Dragons’ Den-type panel where competitors will have the opportunity to pitch their film ideas in front of judges: two winners will receive £500 towards their film and a place in next year’s festival. Sign up online for a chance to pitch.

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CLOSING TIME

The Closing Gala will feature the documentary Hunky Jesus, which captures the story of the iconic San Francisco drag race held every Easter Sunday by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Glasgow’s own chapter of the Sisters, known as The House of Nunsense, will be present for a discussion afterwards.

The festival will cap off with Closing Night Party: Paparazzi at The Art School – everyone is invited to wear their most extra outfits and pose for the flashiest photos. If one thing can be said about SQIFF this year, it looks like it will be as fun as it is fabulous.

SQIFF is at Glasgow Film Theatre, 19th till 24th October

Photo credit: Siobhan Chalmers and Tiu Makkonen – Courtesy of SQIFF