Welcome to Perforations

11th Queer City Cinema
International Film Festival

• A perforation is a small hole in a thin material or web. There is usually more than one perforation in an organized fashion, where all of the holes are called a perforation. The process of creating perforations is called perforating, involves puncturing the workpiece with a tool.
• Film perforations, also known as perfs, are the holes placed in the film stock during manufacturing and used for transporting (by sprockets and claws) and steadying (by pin registration) the film. Films may have different types of perforations depending on film gauge, film format, and intended usage.
• a hole made or passing through a thing.
• a hole in part of the body caused by an accident or disease.
• the condition or state of being perforated.

Familiar as an effective and popular form of entertainment, communication and enlightenment, film and video, and the placement and showing of it in film festivals worldwide, has allowed for a chance to see and experience a multitude of ideas, representations, causes and narratives that inform, challenge, satisfy and inspire.

In this context, Queer film and video has a long history of revealing that which has been hidden, literally and otherwise, and consequently has served to be a tool for expression and change. This queer disposition in film and video has seen a plethora of experimental, non-narrative, predominantly short and risk-taking celluloid that has broken through the conventional barrier of what is expected or preferred. This particular kind of moving image - an identifiable characteristic of queer film and video - can be seen to compliment or align itself with the experiences of being lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer – identities fluid, contradictory, unexplainable, unidentifiable, unusual and well, pretty fabulous and fierce as well!

These time-based experiences of sitting and watching perforate, pierce, rip open, tear through and allow a queer light into the room and subsequently the viewer’s world. The cosmos of queer film and video continues to expand, shine, illuminate and dazzle and it is here at Perforations: 11th Queer City Cinema International Film Festival, that some of the brightest from the queer film and video heavens, are yours to delight in.

The films and videos at this year’s festival continue this legacy of breaking down barriers - representing daring and unchartered visual territory, humorous and subversive characters, otherworldly and fantastical places and images, pleasurable provocations, sexual scenarios, and different and challenging perspectives on identity in a world all to ready to judge and oppress.

Perforations: 11th Queer City Cinema International Film Festival cuts through the run of the mill cookie cutter mainstream lesbian and gay film festival programming membrane, making sure that there is a space and a place in for alternative, underground and queertively crafted expressions. Queer City Cinema is a celebration of and a showcase for art, artists, like-minded radicals, and of course international film and video that continues to perforate places hard and soft; light and dark. See you on the other side.

Gary Varro
Artistic Director
Queer City Cinema