Out on Screen celebrates BlaQ Artistry this February
This Black History Month, Out On Screen celebrates the work of BlaQ builders, makers, and creators for their underrepresented legacies and ongoing impact on the LGBTQT2IA+ community.
Black Queer artists too often face erasure from both Queer histories and the Canadian art canon. We honor the conductors and community builders who are examples of the power of artistic expression, building bridges, and sharing their inspirational gifts. They are a critical part of the work that connects us and demands us through representation to stand for inclusivity and accountability.
Their work is joy and laughter; it is pain and despair. It is empowering and inspiring, documenting the beauty in the nuance of the Black experience. Despite harmful exclusion from the mainstream, Black Queer contemporary artists create, educate, and narrate, challenging the status quo, gifting us with the influential foundations of Queer culture.
Join us this February to watch Keyboard Fantasies, Brother to Brother and Difficult Love—all available online until the end of the month. These incredible films were selected by Anoushka Ratnarajah, Artistic Director and Nya Lewis, VQFF Programmer.
Keyboard Fantasies: A collaborative screening with VIFF
Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story sees the protagonist commit his life and music to screen for the first time - an intimate coming of age story spinning pain and the suffering of prejudice into rhythm, hope and joy.
Half aural-visual history, half DIY tour-video, the film provides a vehicle for our newly appointed queer elder to connect with youth across the globe. A timely lullaby to soothe those souls struggling to make sense of the world. Available soon on VIFF Connect.
Posy Dixon | USA | 2019 | 1h 3min | English
Brother to Brother
The award-winning movie Brother to Brother explores homosexuality among African-Americans today, and looks back at the Harlem Renaissance, where a number of the intellectual movement's brightest stars were known to be gay. This was Rodney Evans’ first feature film and won the Special Jury Prize in Drama at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. Rodney’s third feature, the documentary Vision Portraits, screened at VQFF 2019.
Rodney Evans | USA | 2004 | 1h 34min | English
TICKETS HERE ->
Difficult Love
Difficult Love is an intimate, thought-provoking portrait of internationally celebrated South African lesbian photographer, Zanele Muholi, and her highly personal take on the challenges facing black lesbians in South Africa today. The film features interviews with Muholi as well as with her friends, colleagues and peers, and provides a compelling overview of the artist, her life and her work. This poignant documentary takes us behind the façade of art making and shares with us the highly political environment Muholi must navigate in order to bring her lush photographs to light.
Zanele Muholi & Peter Goldsmid | South Africa | 2010 | 47min | English, Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans with English subtitles