This is a film still from MEMENTO MORI showing at Queer East Film Festival (18 to 30 APR 2023).

Queer East Festival’s boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ programme returns to venues across London (18 to 30 APR 2023)

Queer East showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, & moving image work from 17 countries across East & Southeast Asia & beyond.

Submitted by Queer East

Now in its fourth year, Queer East returns to cinema screens across the capital and around the UK with another exciting line-up which mixes contemporary feature film and documentary with retrospective screenings, short films, artists’ moving image works, a VR cinematic experience, and, new for this year, dance.

The main festival will take place from 18 to 30 April 2023 across eight venues in London. This will be followed by a nationwide tour planned from September to November across ten cities. The programme features 50 films incorporating work from 17 countries across East and Southeast Asia and beyond.

Focus Korea is a dedicated strand consisting of 15 titles spanning from the 1960s to the present, that reveal a vibrant tradition of queer filmmaking across the decades, despite the country’s conservative social attitude to LGBTQ+ rights.

Collaborations with guest filmmakers worldwide have led to expanded Shorts and Artists’ Moving Image Programmes which offer in-depth explorations in the current queer landscape of East and Southeast Asia. From cross-dressing to gender-reversed casting, many of these works highlight playful and fluid queerness, showcasing the ways that gender and sexuality have been viewed and interpreted by filmmakers in different Asian cultural contexts.

This year, the festival is working with leading London dance venue The Place to welcome two international dance productions, Robin Numanong’s Cyborg DNA and Choy Ka Fai’s Yishun is Burning. These works highlight the themes of queer performance which are central to this year’s programme, offering an alternative way of navigating intersections between technology, digital art, physical movement, and queer identities.

Main featured image: MEMENTO MORI dir Kim Tae-yong & Min Kyu-dong, South Korea, 1999 will be introduced by Queer Horror Nights at Genesis Cinema as part of Queer East (28 APR 21:00).

This is a film still from MEMENTO MORI showing at Queer East Film Festival (18 to 30 APR 2023).

Queer East Festival’s boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ programme returns to venues across London (18 to 30 APR 2023), booking now!

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