Since 2016, the Toronto Queer Film Festival has showcased the film and video art of queer and trans creators. We celebrate vigour, resistance, and defiance over nationalism and assimilation. We elevate Indigiqueer/Trans/2 Spirit filmmakers and filmmakers of colour where others erase or tokenize.
Fifty years have passed since the Stonewall riots. As we stand at the precipice of a new era, a crucial task ahead of us is to imagine the future of 2STLGBQ+ liberation. One of countless things we are robbed of as marginalized peoples is our future. Not only may our lives be cut short by violence, our very imaginations are stifled by oppresion. The power of representation is not only in narrating the present but also allowing for possibilities in future tense. Just as our oppressors try to erase us from history, so do they endeavour to deny us space in the times to come. Worse still, systems of oppression exert power over the marginalized by dictating our future to us; a mistep made even by our allies.
For TQFF 2020, we are soliciting film, video and animation on the theme of Queer Futurisms. While this absolutely includes sci fi, speculative fiction and horror, we welcome all genres and on-screen media imagining, grappling with, contesting and rewriting the future. Look ahead and tell us what you see.
As ever, the guiding principal of TQFF is decolonization. Whatever you show us, be it utopia, dystopia or something in between, decolonize the future: Indigenous sovereignty, Black liberation, prison abolition, a borderless world and so much more. This also means decolonizing the moving image itself. The “right” way to create art is always up for negotiation. What formal rules of filmaking need to be broken for the art form to grow?
What will it mean to be part of the 2STLGBQ+ sphere is the future? What will our communities look like? How will we express intimacy aand/or have sex? How do we age? What forms of kinship will be possible? Can we ever be free of violence and oppression? What will resistance look like in the future? There are so many ways that we as individuals and communities might shape the world and TQFF wants you to show us.
This is an artist-run festival. At TQFF, we commit to ethical treatment of artists in two concrete ways: we do not charge submission fees, and pay all artists who have their films selected screening fees according to IMAA & CARFAC standard rates.
TQFF is generously funded by the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Submit your film today!