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WELCOME TO QUEER CITY CINEMA XTREMENDOUS

What's so Xtremendous? Well, there is a lot going on out there and as a result there is a lot going on in here.

Queer City Cinema marks a new decade with a new name - The Queer Arts Festival of Regina - to reflect the fact that our interests lie beyond the cinematic and have slowly over the years embraced performance, visual art and more as part of what the festival offers its audiences and what the festival is all about. The umbrella name - Queer City Cinema (hey, cant' get rid of that) - will remain, as does the desire to seek out and present queer work that is expansive, ever redefining the notion of identity, and introduces and challenges new ideas found in art. Artists making queer noises, queer images, and a queer presence is what its all about.

Consequently, Xtremendous is also a way to signify the approach we are taking with this year's festival offerings...colorful, demanding, playful, unforgettable, unsettling, thoughtful, whimsical, non-narrative, experimental, smart, unyielding, inventive, sweet, sorrowful, joyful, kind, rude, raw, dissonant, happy, sour, sassy, personal, tremendous, extreme and, of course, queer. These are the distinctive, noticeable and perhaps incongruous ingredients that make up things that will be seen, heard and, most importantly, felt during our and your time in June, 2010. Queer City Cinema has always made room and a space for representations abject, contradictory, instead of the expected, against the flow, and all the while with an informed sense of understanding, humour, humanity, and affection.

Here in Regina? Yes, it has been the inspiration from the beginning in oh so many ways. And we have fun doing it.

Speaking of fun...we are very excited to start the festival with a one-person exhibition of photographic work, then it's on to the inaugural Sound Art Series, Audibly Out!, then the return of the Performing Art Series, Performing Out, and of course, last but not least, the Film and Video Screenings as the exclamation mark. Film and video remains the centrepiece of QCC's focus, with over 65 films and videos from 12 countries to stimulate the eye, the ear and the ways in which we view the queer moving image.

These four separate but related arenas are ways in which to enjoy and immerse the imagination and, in QCC fashion, disrupt perception, challenge notions of identity and representation, and provide and suggest a new way of looking at and feeling about the world in which we all have to navigate.

A lot to take in, but, hey, it isn't called Queer City Cinema Xtremendous for nothing.

Visiting artists from near and far abound this year - another way to ramp things up - so please take the opportunity to greet and meet and more with our special guests at Queer City Cinema Xtremendous.

Everything is covered in plastic. It is time to break the surface. Get your thing on! Whatever it is, get it! You only have now!

Xtremendous...Take it to the limit. Take it to the limit. Take it to the limit. One more time...

Gary Varro
Artistic Director
Queer City Cinema
May 2010