B. Ruby Rich coined the term New Queer Cinema in an article that pointed to the rapidly expanding critical mass of films made by and for queer-identified people in the early 1990s. In the generation since, that expansion has extended deep into the cultural mainstream, with big-budget rom-coms showing in the multiplex and RuPaul’s Drag Race becoming an award-winning reality television sensation. While such radical shifts in popular culture have made access to queer narratives ever more present and accessible, queer cultural production has, and continues to, operate in the margins. Amid this changing landscape, how do queer artists today trace their lineage across generations and geographies, through legacies that are both in the mainstream and underground? Through moving images, this series considers these different legacies of queer history.
How does a gesture, image, or word from history get passed down across time and space? What does it make possible in the here and now? Guest curator and writer Jon Davies, examines how queer signals sent decades ago via moving image works cry out to be heard.
Credited with coining the term Indigiqueer, for contemporary Indigenous LGBTQI2 people, Theo Jean Cuthand (Plains Cree, Scottish/Irish) sits down with Shaawan Francis Keahna to discuss vampire video games, Indigenous trans visibility in filmmaking, as well as what futures are possible when we draw from multiple lived experiences.
