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WelcomeThey say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol
I have been involved with Queer City Cinema since 1996. Well, ok, I started the festival, and it has more or less been as much a job as a personal project for me for the last ten years and then some. So it is time to reflect on this, a significant anniversary of sorts. Over the decade that QCC has been out and about in the Queen City and beyond, I and WE have witnessed significant changes in not only the kinds of films and videos being made and shown at queer film festivals, but also the kinds of ways in which lesbian and gay is now queer, transsexual/ transgendered is the new 'lesbian and gay', video is now digital, film and video is now media arts, politics is now gay marriage, short films are now feature length, and TV and the Film Industry are now embracing Queer Content like never before - taking us further from the margins and closer to the mainstream.
Yet, part of me laments change. Is it nostalgia, or is it a substantiated critical stance that makes me happy and sad at the same time? But I think we all have to keep in mind that as personally as we may take all of what changes with the creative, cultural and political pursuits that we continue to be so close to and passionate about, that this is the normal and ultimately natural course of things - after all, we are all contributors whether passive or proactive, or both. Of course, we hope, put our faith in, and ultimately wish to embrace change as something that is provisional, convenient, evolutionary, revolutionary, meaningful, revealing, and that gives us an even better way of seeing the world around us.
Queer City Cinema, ten years later, takes on the challenge of expressing and reflecting how queer film and video has changed with a festival that includes more features than ever before, a media arts installation exhibition, discussions about context, content, and the careers of queer film and video makers and media artists, the highs and lows of big and small queer city living, a queer youth screening, a trans screening, music videos, road trips, head trips, pups, pig hearts, and pop culture, and a host of other events and screenings that truly make it clear that things have certainly not stayed the same over the years for queers from Israel to Brazil to Thailand to Regina.
What you can say, however, is that what hasn't changed is the desire for queer film and video makers to continue making for all sorts of reasons, and, consequently, the desire for audiences to attend festivals, like Queer City Cinema, for a whole other set of reasons. Some things, thankfully, never change.
So, welcome to Queer City Cinema 6. We hope that you take part in what you could say has been ten years in the making.
GARY VARRO
Artistic Director
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