By Autumn Rendall
After 25 years, QFest—Houston’s international LGBTQIA+ film festival—is hitting screens for the last time. The festival kicked off with its competition short film screenings on September 24 at Aurora Picture Show and will continue with two more in-person screenings of the feature film Swan Song (September 26 and October 2, both at 5:00 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). All feature and short films will also be available to screen virtually through the Cinenso platform from September 30–October 4, 2021. This year, QFest anticipates its lineup to comprise 50 to 55 films—the largest slate of films in the festival’s quarter-century history.
QFest began in 1996 as a collaboration between women across various arts organizations to launch the first-ever Houston gay and lesbian film festival. Since then, the festival has worked tirelessly with numerous arts, culture, film, and media organizations to deliver exceptional film programming to Houston’s LGBTQ community (and, over the past two years, to international audiences with its virtual screenings). The festival leaves behind a legacy that has changed the lives of many filmmakers, audiences, and the Houston community itself.
Arts organizations are delicate creations that need support, especially during more challenging times, Kristian Salinas, executive and artistic director of QFest, tells Spectrum South. Since QFest is a small organization, every year the team faces a challenge to keep the festival up and running. “Just because we’re the fourth-largest city in the country does not mean we are entitled to these things [such as a queer film festival],” Salinas says. “These things require the support of the community at large, and so without that support, these organizations eventually wither and die.” QFest is not the only organization that has gone under as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Salinas notes, and he urges Houstonians to support the causes they care about in any way possible.
The feature and short films included in this year’s final selection were chosen from over 2,000 submissions across many countries, meticulously sifted through by the QFest team. Salinas stresses the importance for audiences to take advantage of the opportunity to see the films included in the festival’s lineup, as they’re not available on high-profile streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. Below, Salinas gives our readers a glimpse into the many films in store for LGBTQ and allied audiences alike at this year’s final fest.
Seeing is Believing: Women Direct directed by Cady McClain
This documentary focuses on the challenges and rewards of being a female director through powerful, blunt, and open interviews with women directors from all walks of the business. Salinas first discovered the film through the Facebook posts of two different female filmmakers, and through this network, was able to get in touch with the film’s director, well-known actress Cady McClain of the long-running soap operas All My Children, As the World Turns, and more. The film also features conversations with Kimberly Peirce and Lizzie Borden, open lesbians, about their directing experiences. “It became more than a documentary for me,” Salinas says. “It’s this really deep and inspiring conversation that she [McClain] had with so many different women.”
The QFest team will also conduct a panel with McClain, as well as four other women directors, that will be available through the festival’s virtual screenings on Cinenso.
The Wedding Video directed by Clint Cowen and Norman Korpi
This mockumentary, which stars several alumni from the iconic MTV reality television show The Real World, is celebrating its 20th anniversary. For Salinas, the film signifies the beginning of a change in American LGBTQ filmmaking. “This is not one of those films that’s generally cited as having a big impact, but when you think of the story itself, it’s dealing with a gay wedding at a time when that was still a novelty,” he explains.
A pre-recorded panel discussion between QFest and a number of talents from The Real World will also be available to stream on Cinenso.
Cheap Thrills directed by Candra Aditya
This short is QFest’s first-ever film from Indonesia and was selected by Stephanie Saint Sanchez, shorts programmer for the festival. Salinas emphasizes how picking shorts from the thousands submitted was a difficult task, and the team dug deep to find this year’s selections. Cheap Thrills centers on a hookup through a dating app—two strangers who have an intimate, personal, and playful conversation about their prospective lives. “It’s really about the connection and how short those connections can be, but how long the impact of that connection lasts, for better or for worse,” Salinas says.
For tickets to the in-person screenings of “Swan Song” click here. To check out all of the festival’s virtual screenings available from September 30–October 4, 2021, click here. For additional information about QFest and this year’s lineup, check out Q-Fest.com.
