The pageant turns fifteen this 12 months with a run from Thursday, August 10, via Sunday, August 13. It was born in 2006 when Garcia, then programming supervisor, discovered himself with a rising stockpile of noteworthy queer movies from world wide and no devoted platform for them. He took the initiative to do one thing about it.
“It truly began about three years earlier than our full-fledged pageant as a month-to-month movie sequence,” he remembers. “On the time, I used to be discovering a lot new queer content material that I promised to play a minimum of one queer movie a month till I ran out.” Not surprisingly, that by no means occurred, main him to create the pageant model in 2009.
Below Garcia’s stewardship, CinemaQ has change into elementary to Denver Movie and one of many excessive factors on its busy calendar of mini-fests and centered movie sequence. The pageant lives the place the LGBTQ+ rainbow and the cinematic palette meet, and it totally embraces the vibrancy and variety radiating from that intersection. At each annual celebration, film-goers can see extremely anticipated work from thrilling new voices, considerate documentaries that discover identification from all kinds of views, and basic movies that convey the artwork and wrestle of earlier generations.
Garcia has curated one other robust lineup this 12 months, characterised by notably juicy horror choices (and one of many greatest friends the fest has ever nabbed: Udo Kier) in addition to some equally nice intimate documentaries. This version of the pageant additionally welcomes many administrators in particular person, together with Sav Rodgers, Sharon “Rocky” Roggio and the Saint Drogo artistic staff. Non-film actions embody two themed panels with filmmakers and a “Hangover Ice Cream Social and Market” with treats from Little Man Ice Cream and items from native queer distributors.
As a lot as it’s a joyous celebration of neighborhood, CinemaQ additionally shines a lightweight on up to date LGBTQ+ battles and points. Most of the neighborhood’s struggles obtained an additional flip of the screw in the course of the Trump years, and the occasion’s subjects then and now steadily align with present headlines, which give additional context to the movies. And that backdrop, thought of over the pageant’s fifteen-year historical past, can generally be dispiriting for its creator.
“Sadly, issues truly really feel worse for our neighborhood, like we stepped right into a time machine again to some portion of the Bush period,” Garcia says. “Regardless, visibility of our neighborhood via these movies is essential, and that hasn’t modified since we began. That visibility is required now greater than ever.”
He additionally sees hope within the present crop of queer filmmakers who share his personal ardour and dedication. “That is the one place the place development has occurred,” he notes. “There are extra lively queer voices telling their tales and placing out an array of fantastic stuff. We’re very fortunate in that regard.”
It is definitely laborious to think about a extra wonderful latest plot than that of CinemaQ’s opening-night movie, Bottoms, which will get the pageant rolling at 7 p.m. on Thursday, August 10, with the misadventures of two highschool misfits (Rachel Sennot and Ayo Edebiri) who’re in search of to lose their virginity to cheerleaders by beginning an all-girl combat membership. It is a raunchy journey into topics typically left to “boy films” — teen horniness, sexual hijinks and violence — from director Emma Seligman. Seligman co-wrote the film with Sennot, who was the star of Seligman’s debut characteristic, Shiva Child, and one of the likable presences in final 12 months’s pleasant neo-slasher Our bodies Our bodies Our bodies.
The opposite would-be pugilist is Edebiri, a multi-talented performer who’s on one thing of a tear this 12 months, popping up everywhere in the comedic, tv and movie landscapes. Bottoms is only one of her twelve credit to this point in 2023, together with The Bear, Spider-Man: Throughout the Spider-Verse, Black Mirror and Mel Brooks’s Historical past of the World Half II. She’s additionally a comedy scribe, having penned an episode for What We Do within the Shadows’ fourth season final 12 months.
On Friday, August 11, there is a contrasting match-up between a bittersweet nonfiction movie and a low-key simmering thriller. Final Dance, by Coline Abert, which showcases legendary New Orleans drag queen Woman Vinsantos, asks: What occurs when a queen decides to hold up her heels? The French-produced documentary, which screens at 6:30 p.m., poses piercing questions in regards to the boundaries between the highlight and the backstage, as Vinsantos decides to say farewell to her fashionable persona with a ultimate efficiency in Paris.
Saint Drogo, however, evokes comparisons to suspense classics from the ’60s and ’70s. The movie, which screens at 9:30 p.m., follows homosexual couple Adrian and Caleb (Michael J. Ahern and Brandon Perras, who additionally co-wrote and directed the movie), who’re making an attempt to restore their relationship with a keep in Provincetown, Massachusetts, however discover an ever-deepening (and darkening) thriller surrounding Caleb’s ex, Isaac.
Saint Drogo is considered one of a number of robust horror-tinged (okay, possibly all-out splashed) titles screening at this 12 months’s fest, alongside the Saturday, August 12, screenings of Jennifer Reeder’s teen-horror Perpetrator (1:30 p.m.) and a retrospective of Paul Morrissey’s Andy Warhol-produced reimaginings of Dracula and Frankenstein from the Nineteen Seventies (6 p.m.). LGBTQ+ representations inside that style are additionally the theme of a panel titled “The Deep Roots and Darkish Branches of Queer Horror,” which takes place at 11 a.m. on Saturday, with the Saint Drogo directorial staff discussing the movie in addition to the style’s previous and future.
The double characteristic of Morrissey’s unconventional classics Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974) can be hosted by Theresa Mercado as a crossover between CinemaQ and her horror sequence, Scream Display screen. In between the screenings, Mercado can be joined for a dialog by the star of each movies: prolific queer/cult icon Udo Kier. The actor is thought for his lengthy checklist of credit and collaborations with such filmmakers as Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Lars von Trier. “He’s a real legend of the silver display,” says Mercado, who was first captivated by his piercing blue eyes in 1977’s landmark Suspiria.
Becoming a member of the strong horror choice is an equally robust set of documentaries, together with Final Dance. There’s additionally Break the Sport (3 p.m. on Saturday), which follows Narcissa Wright when her identities as a world-record “speedrunner” — a participant who completes video video games as shortly as doable — and a trans lady collide, derailing her profession however setting the stage for a triumphant comeback. On Sunday, August 13, Chasing Chasing Amy (2:30 p.m.) explores the intimate relationship between director/topic Sav Rodgers and Kevin Smith’s well-known comedy Chasing Amy, which has been each criticized and championed for its representations. Additionally on Sunday is 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Tradition (12 p.m.), which stuns audiences by exposing a biblical translation error on the coronary heart of the decades-long efforts by Christian conservatives to restrict homosexual rights.
That movie additionally ties right into a panel titled “Your Personal Private Jesus – Discovering Religion within the LGBTQIA+ Neighborhood,” which incorporates 1946 director Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, native drag performer Kai Lee Michaels and religion leaders from inclusive Denver-area church buildings. The panel will focus on the complexities and challenges of holding on to your religion as a member of the queer neighborhood. The 2 panels appear particularly well-chosen enhances to the strengths of this 12 months’s programming.
“Queer horror is simply an evolving style, and I assumed it was time to replicate and discuss what is going on on,” says Garcia. “In regard to the faith panel, I am not non secular, however I feel it was time to have a dialog about that topic, particularly in gentle of the main target within the movie 1946.”
There are many different cinematic jewels screening all through the weekend, together with the closing-night movie, Problemista (Sunday at 5 p.m.), which tells the story of an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador who seeks to stay within the U.S. by persuading an erratic art-world determine (Tilda Swinton at her most aggressively kooky) to co-sign his visa. It is each humorous and improbable, a topical comedy with a beneficiant sprint of magical realism, and the right ending to a different numerous 12 months, Garcia attests.
“I really feel like culling via the most effective queer movies on the market that we ended up with the magical stability of simply the correct mix of films for everybody,” he says.
CinemaQ Movie Competition, Thursday, August 10, via Sunday, August 13, Sie FilmCenter, 2510 East Colfax Avenue. Get the total schedule, tickets and passes at denverfilm.org.
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