Queer Cinema for Palestine Announces 10-day Film Festival Program

Queer Cinema for Palestine (QCP) is set to start next week, November 11-20, with a 10-day program across 13 cities around the world under the slogan “Celebrating global queer realities. Standing in solidarity with Palestinians.”

Queer Cinema for Palestine is organized by Aswat – Palestinian Feminist Center for Sexual and Gender Freedoms, the Toronto Queer Film Festival and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, together with dozens of partners around the world.

QCP’s opening night will take place across several continents on November 11.

Embassy Cultural House in London, Ontario will host screenings and an online panel discussion of intersecting relationships to land, home, queerness, labour, art-making, and representation. It features filmmakers Indigenous to Turtle Island and from Palestine including Qais Assali, Justin Ducharme, Whess Harman, and Rana Nazzal, and it is moderated by Wanda Nanibush.

Dylberizm in Prishtina, Kosovo will host an online and in person evening of slam poetry, drag performances and a selection of international shorts at Kino Armata for a discussion of intersectionality and what it means to be oppressed on the basis of your identity.

France and Lebanon will team up for a 2-day event, with in person screenings of Palestinian and Lebanese filmmakers at the Sursock Museum in Beirut and the Luminor Hôtel de Ville in Paris on November 11. On November 12, filmmakers and artists Basma Alsharif, Shuruq Harb, Islam al-Khatib and Bassem Saad will offer an online masterclass exploring how new recording tools can echo current struggles and share across contexts the connection of our outcry and hope.

On closing night, November 20, as part of the Outburst Queer Arts Festival, Ghadir al Shafie, co-founder of Aswat, and distinguished Professor of the Humanities, novelist, screenwriter and activist Sarah Schulman will discuss “Queers and the State: Art and Cultures as tools for Gender, Social and Political Justice” during an online and in person panel at The Black Box in Belfast.

The festival program features nine films that were withdrawn from TLVFest, the Israeli government-sponsored film festival, which takes place during the same dates. Among the films withdrawn in response to the call from Palestinian queers to reject Israel’s pinkwashing of its regime of military occupation and apartheid are Inferno (2019, New Zealand) by Andrew Blackman, Mother-In-Law (2019, South Korea) by Shin Seung Eun, Rebellious Essence (2017, Slovenia) by Ana Čigon, and a series of Brazilian films including Carne (2019) by Camila Kater, Invisible Men (2019) by Luis Carlos de Alencar, I Have to Say I Love You (2018) by Ariel Nobre, Afronte (2017) by Bruno Victor and Marcus Azevedo, Revoada (2019) by Victor Costa Lopes and Bonde (2019) by Asaph Luccas.

The Brazilian films withdrawn from TLVFest last year will be screened online and in person at Espaço Cultural Renato Russo in Brasilia, with introductions explaining their act of effective solidarity by filmmakers Ariel Nobre, Victor Costa Lopes, and Asaph Luccas.

Special “pop-up” screenings of films withdrawn from TLVFest will be scheduled during the festival.

Queer Jewish scholars and artists Judith Butler, Lior Shamriz, BH Yael and Marc Siegel will join an online panel in Berlin presented by Independent Jewish Voices to discuss their films/work in relation to solidarity with Palestinians, and speak back against the increasing weaponization of antisemitism by pro-Israel forces as a method to silence artists and activists.

The Initiative Mawjoudin for Equality will host an in person program at Cinema Rio in Tunis featuring filmmakers from Palestine, Tunisia, Jordan, India, Lebanon including Tarek Sardi, Cherien Dabis, Saleem Haddad and Faraz Arif Ansari. The program focuses on the shared, similar struggles queer people face and the intersection of Queer and Palestinian struggles.

Cinema Politica, Feminist Media Studio, Regards Palestiniens, and Palestinian Youth Mouvement will host an online and in person program at La Sala Rossa in Montreal, Canada, featuring shorts from Palestine and Lebanon examining the intersection of gender and sexual identity with the Palestinian liberation struggle. A discussion with filmmakers Raffat Hattab (Houria), Mohamed Souied (Cinema Al Fouad), and Roy Dib (Mondial 2010) will follow.

The Seoul Human Rights Film Festival will host an online screening of Mother-in-law by Shin Seung Eun.

Maurice GLBTQ, Progetto Palestina and BDS Torino will host an in person screening in Turin, Italy, of shorts from around the world exploring themes of gender and sexuality.

The online and in person “Decolonization and Dyke Alliances” program organized by Sare Lesbianista in Bilbao will feature a documentary of stories of resistance and resilience from Palestine followed by a discussion among lesbian activists from Nicaragua, Basque Country, Western Sahara and Mexico.

The Violetki Collective is organizing an online and in person program of short films at Fabrika Avtonomia in Sofia, Bulgaria exploring themes spanning queer solidarity, migrants, speciesism and more.

QCP is a first-time global queer initiative in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle that offers a vibrant space shedding light on the role of art and culture in resisting the ongoing violence of Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.

Over the past four years, more than 50 filmmakers have pulled their films from TLVFest in response to the boycott call from Palestinian queers. Since last year, nearly 200 filmmakers, film artists and scholars have pledged not to participate in TLVFest in a sign of growing rejection of Israeli pinkwashing and recognition of the intimate connections between liberation struggles of all oppressed peoples and communities.