For 17 years, Cinema St. Louis has hosted QFest, a film festival highlighting queer storytelling and filmmaking. This year, the theme is, simply, “love” — including the romantic, the familial and fictive kinship.
QFest organizers were also intentional about showing slices of life that don't center trauma.
Emmett Williams joined Cinema St. Louis earlier this year as the director of festival curation and education. He told St. Louis on the Air that he drew from his own experiences as a filmmaker and curator for other festivals when selecting this year’s lineup.
“I think that movies are just so magical, whether [you’re] spending time with friends and family, or whether you want to watch that four-hour French documentary,” Williams said. “Most importantly, it also can be transformative, seeing yourself on screen. I think that's why QFest is so important — for people to see themselves on screen and know that they're not alone.”
Photographer and artist Jess T. Dugan’s documentary short “Letter to My Daughter” is part of the “Love & Hope & Dreams” program at QFest. While they mostly work with still images, Dugan decided to make a film to express sentiments that would otherwise be missed in a gallery.
“I turn to filmmaking when I have a story that I can't tell with only photography. It comes from this place where I feel this deep need to tell my own story, and [“Letter to My Daughter”] traces my journey to becoming a parent. Our process accessing fertility treatment, our experience with miscarriage and loss, our experience working with donors,” Dugan said. “And then it sort of switches to chronicling my experience becoming a parent, both as a non-binary person figuring out what kind of language to use and looking at what it means to love a child so immensely. For me, I wanted to tell this story, because I don't see it told often.”
The film screenings include “Pariah,” the 2011 film by acclaimed writer and director Dees Rees that follows a Black teenager navigating their sexuality and expression — as well as “Transmexico,” a documentary that spotlights the realities of transgender women in Latin America and the joy they experience despite the real threat of transphobic violence.
Along with love, Williams said that the common denominator in the films at this year’s QFest is community.
“Not only are we showing films, but on this coming Saturday, we're having an LGBTQ youth art sale. In our lobby, we have an LGBTQ filmmaking networking event,” he said. “The focus is to build community. That's really important to us.”
For more on storytelling by and for queer filmmakers, what filmmakers Jess T. Dugan and Bobby Best want audiences to learn from their projects and what “Gay it Forward” is all about, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcast, Spotify or by clicking the play button below.
Related Event
What: Cinema St. Louis’ QFest
When: April 26-28 and May 3-5
Where: Hi-Pointe Theatre (1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, MO 63117)
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Ulaa Kuziez, Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Roshae Hemmings is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.
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