We’ll have further coverage on this annual queer media arts festival in our May 30 issue, but here’s an additional heads up. QCC 10 goes May 30-June 1 at Neutral Ground Gallery (203-1856 Scarth St.) If you visit the festival website you’ll see that the festival theme is inspired by the catchphrase “Whatchulookinat!?”. That relates, in part, to the fact many of the short and feature-length films and videos that are included in this year’s festival are documentaries that explore various facets of queer culture. It’s about the physical act of seeing, and how what we see, for both good and bad, helps shape our attitudes and identity as human beings.
There’s evening programs on May 30-31, and afternoon and evening programs on June 1. The schedule is posted on the QCC website linked to above.
One of the higher profile films in the festival is Interior. Leather Bar. It’s co-produced by actor James Franco and Travis Mathews, and is partially inspired by the 1980 William Friedkin film Cruising in which Al Pacino starred as an undercover cop investigating a murder in New York’s gay leather bar scene. The film, inevitably, was controversial, and Friedkin was rumoured to have been forced by the MPAA to cut 40 minutes of sexually explicit content to enable the film to be screened in theatres.
To give you a bit of background on Franco and Mathews’ project here’s the trailer to the Friedkin film: