Reel Desires: Chennai International Queer Film Festival 2015 is here

Click here to download the CIQFF 2015 – Brochure

We are pleased to invite you to Reel Desires: Chennai International Queer Film Festival 2015. The film festival is being held from July 24 to 26, 2015, at the auditorium of Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in Nungambakkam, Chennai.

Times are
July 24th (Friday) 6.00-9.00 pm
July 25th (Saturday) 3.00-9.00 pm
July 26th (Sunday) 3.00-9.00 pm

The event is open to all, and non-ticketed.

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Reel Desires is a three-day series of feature films, shorts, and documentaries showcasing sexuality and gender diversity issues. The focus of the film festival is on making mainstream audiences aware of lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) issues, creating an accepting and safe environment within our families and communities, and highlighting the intersections among sexuality, gender, and other identities and forms of marginalization, such as disability, religion, class and caste.

Reel Desires is being organized by Goethe-Institute in association with Orinam, a local collective that has been working since 2003 to end gender- and sexuality- based discrimination and provide social and support spaces for the LGBTI communities in Chennai. Partnering with Orinam and Goethe-Institut are community groups and NGOs, including Nirangal, RIOV, Nir, SAATHII, and East-West Center for Counselling. We also acknowledge with gratitude, the support and contributions of individuals unaffiliated with any of these entities.

Over 95 submissions were received this year, and the final line-up includes 23 films from eight countries, with India and Germany topping the list. The feature film highlight is the India premiere of Pride, a 2014 British LGBT-related historical film written by Stephen Beresford and directed by Matthew Warchus. It was screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Queer Palm award. The film is based on a true story of a group of young lesbian and gay activists who raised money to help families affected by the British miners’ strike in 1984. They called themselves “Lesbians and Gays Support Miners (LGSM)” The film highlights the intersectionality between the queer movement and other marginalized groups, and will be screened Sunday 6.45 pm.

Other feature-film highlights include Nachthelle and Papilio Buddha.  Reel Desires also has the honour of hosting the film-festival premieres of shorts by transgender women Bharathi Kannamma and Sujatha Pandian from Tamil Nadu, and music videos featuring Amrita Sarkar (West Bengal) and L. Kanta (Manipur). The music videos are part of Songs of the Caravan, an audio album by transgender artists across India.

Documentary notables include:

• Bozja Napaka (God’s Mistake), a moving account of a transwoman’s life growing up as a child assigned male at birth in Yugoslavia and surviving psychiatrists, school, military service and religion
• Gay Healers,  an expose of reparative therapy being practised by health-care providers in present-day Germany
• Mondial 2010, a video-journal of a Lebanese gay couple on a road trip to Ramallah
• Our Marriages, that describes the lives of four lesbians in contract marriages with gay men in China
• Purple Skies, an account of the struggles and triumphs of lesbian, bi women and trans men in India

Queering Dance, a performance by Taejha Singh, will kick off the festival on Friday, 24 July, 6.00 pm.  Bundled with the film festival will be a panel discussion on free speech and creative expression, with reference to portrayal of LGBTQI people in the media, on Saturday 25 July, 5.30-6.30 pm. A critically acclaimed performance Colour of Trans 2.0 by Panmai Theatre artistes Living Smile Vidya, Angel Glady and Gee Ameena Suleiman will be staged on Sunday, 26 July, 5.45-6.45 pm at the venue.

Reel Desires: Chennai International Queer Fim Festival 2015 (curated under this name since 2013) is the latest in a series of queer-themed film-festivals in Chennai that have been held over the past decade. In November 2004, volunteers of Orinam (then called MP) helped SAATHII and Alliance Francaise of Madras curate the city’s first gender-sexuality film festival. That event triggered tremendous interest among the city’s emerging queer communities in film, and set the stage for subsequent queer film festivals in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2013 and 2014; as well as inclusion of films with queer content in mainstream film festivals. For more information on organizers of film festivals and of individual LGBT-themed film screenings through the years, see http://ciqff.net/briefhistory

For more information, email [email protected], call +91 95661-31704 or +91 98415 57983, or follow @ciqff on Twitter.

Click here to download the CIQFF 2015 – Brochure

Trailers, images and write-ups on many of the films are available online at http://ciqff.net. Descriptions of partner collectives and groups are at http://ciqff.net/us and responses to frequently asked questions athttp://ciqff.net/faq

To learn more about LGBTQI issues, information for our friends and families, healthcare, media, faith/religion, law and law-enforcement, visit https://orinam.net

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* To enhance accessibility, the venue has ramps and aisle space for wheelchairs. It also has a gender-neutral restroom.