CinemaQ 2024
Denver's preeminent queer film festival has come and gone.
From August 8 to 11, the Sie FilmCenter, home of Denver Film, hosted CinemaQ 2024. I traveled to Denver for the weekend and this is what I saw.
CinemaQ Begins!
Thursday night is opening night. CinemaQ: a celebration of queer cinema and indeed queerness itself. The opening night film, My Old Ass, makes me cry. A good way to start the festival.
CinemaQ is celebrating sixteen years this year, its “Sweet Sixteen”, as organizers refer to it. It’s a fun milestone, but also dizzying. Sixteen years of queer cinema: sixteen years that have witnessed seismic shifts leading up to this moment of contrasts. Progress and backlash, always dueling, seem to be pushed to both extremes. Film of this weekend will represent each in their own way.
Day Two
Friday evening sees CinemaQ continue. I catch a pair of documentaries: Teaches of Peaches and S/He is Still Her/e. The former follows musician Peaches across a reunion tour of the iconic Teaches of Peaches album, skipping across time to various points in Peaches’ journey. It’s an exuberant music doc that gives off the feeling of attending a live show.
The latter follows the life of musician and artist Genesis P-Orridge through various musical, artistic, and cult-like projects. The film is a potent mix of energy and melancholy, both ecstatic and funereal. A linear portrait of gender non-linearity.
Day Three
Saturday is the big day. Running late I first make my way to see The Judgment, a religious horror film set in Egypt. The film uses sound to incredible effect, evoking memory and history. It’s filled with themes of religious repression and trauma, but manages to find hope and happiness too.
The day continues with the two best, and perhaps most important, films that I see all weekend, a pair of films that couldn’t be more different: documentary I’m Your Venus and horror film Carnage for Christmas.
I’m Your Venus follows the families (biological and chosen) of Venus Xtravaganza, the star of Paris is Burning who was murdered before that film released, as they seek justice for Venus, including a legal name change, resolution to the murder case, and a landmark status for her home. The film is full of sadness but also joy, a theme of the weekend: there’s no denying the bad, but the good will outweigh it as long as we come together as a community.
The follow-up discussion with the filmmakers — director Kimberly Reed, executive producer Jonovia Chase, producer Mike Stafford, and moderated by community activist Michael Roberson — touches on the making of the film as well as deeper political concerns. More than anything over the weekend this film and discussion define CinemaQ 2024 for me. I’m Your Venus will later be announced as the audience award winner.
Carnage for Christmas is, stylistically, almost the complete opposite of I’m Your Venus. The film is a guttural, primal scream of bloody genre horror, but, as is the theme this weekend, there’s goodness to be found too, particularly when it comes to community. Directed by prolific young filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay and edited by The People’s Joker’s Vera Drew, Carnage for Christmas is basically everything I look for in a genre film mixed with a radical redefinition of what it means to be trans in a horror film.
Day Four
I skip day four. It’s a travel day for me, back home to process everything and hopefully get some writing done. Now that the weekend is over, I already miss it, but it’s nice to be home.
The Next Day
Out of all the takeaways from CinemaQ 2024, Carnage for Christmas sticks with me the most. I spend some time figuring out where I can watch Alice Maio Mackay’s other films. I throw another film on while I write.
The decor over the weekend has been full of birthday imagery: all very celebratory. It feels necessary. Like many, I’ve been preoccupied with the virulent transphobia displayed over the Olympics, when J.K. Rowling and others viciously attacked cisgender boxer Imane Khelif, who would go on to triumphantly win the gold. But we won’t let them stop us gathering and celebrating our queerness.