When Julia Query, the co-director of the first University Queer Film Festival, came to campus in 1992, anti-gay state ballot measures were trying to define homosexuality as perverse, abnormal, immoral and unnatural.
This was the atmosphere that led Query to the office of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Alliance, and her first encounter with queer films at the University.
The LGBTA “was showing a lesbian movie I had already seen, and it became apparent that we needed a film festival,” she said.
Query said people were extremely excited by the idea of a queer film festival. The first year of the festival, she said they showed a lesbian film.
“We were so starved for lesbian films,” Query said. “It was great to see our imagery on screen.”
The film festival has become a tradition on campus that continues nine years later. The University’s Queer Film Festival, presented by the Student Activities Resource Office, begins today and runs through Sunday. The festival will bring together a collection of homosexual, bisexual and transgendered amateur films, including short and full-length films, as well as documentaries.
“We created an oasis — where straights and gays could show their support — and opposition to the rabid homophobia politics of the time,” Query said. “It was a place for something urban to happen outside of Portland.”
Query said the film festival, which is the second-largest gay event in the state, created a foundation for people to discuss their feelings and debate the imagery presented in the films.
“It became bigger than pride in a way,” Query said.
Starting the festival helped Query to eventually become a filmmaker herself. Her newest film, “Live Nude Girls UNITE!” is a documentary about an organized stripper club in San Francisco. The film was recently bought by Cinemark Theatrer, and it will play at the Cinema 21 theater in Portland beginning Feb. 26.
For this year’s festival, two-time event director Morgen Smith said she has a handful of non-mainstream films planned to attract a crowd. The event will culminate Sunday at the Hult Center with an evening with featured speaker John Waters, a writer and director renowned for his twisted sense of humor.
Debby Martin, a project coordinator in the Cultural Forum, has helped to host the festival every year. She said the self-supporting event offers the queer community an opportunity to come together to watch the films.
Smith brought a jury committee together fall term to pick the winning national and international flicks that will be shown during the festival.
Hanna Perrson, a freshman and volunteer on the jury, said out of the eight short films, “kalin’s prayer,” directed by DeSales, was her favorite.
The film is set in Tulsa, Okla., where a crack-addicted lesbian model battles for the love of an attorney while facing the memories of sexual abuse.
“I hadn’t seen anything like it,” Perrson said. “It was so abstract.”
Perrson said she wanted to be on this year’s selection committee because she felt she could relate to the content of many of the films.
“It is issues that I have seen happen to me and my friends,” Perrson said. “It is something that expresses people’s lives on different levels.”
Perrson also said that the rareness of queer festivals should be an incentive for students, faculty and members of the community to attend.
“There are not very many queer festivals,” she said. “[The films are for] a collection of people who don’t get exposed and who don’t cater to commercial media.”
Smith recommended festival participants check out “Queens for a Night,” a short film directed by Christopher Gomersall that will be shown Friday. The film focuses on Southern drag queens in their 60s.
“Below the Belt,” a short film directed by Kaizzad Navrose, addresses harassment and death caused by homophobia in the United States. The plot concentrates on a member of a college wrestling team who is injured because of the presence of homosexual issues in the locker room.
“It begins in the hospital with the kid who as been hurt because of homophobia,” Smith said. “But instead of being the kid who was the product of homophobia, he’s the one who started it who got hurt.”
Smith said the five-minute film, “Baking with Butch,” directed by Melissa Levin and Nina Levitt, is sure to be a hit because it pokes fun at Martha Stewart.
“This year, it is so many documentaries,” Smith said. “Go to see what is out there — the short films, the competition winners — to see what people are doing that can be done pretty well on a low budget and aren’t mainstream but could be eventually.”
Queer festival lets community see rare films
Daily Emerald
February 14, 2001
Courtesy photo
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