Queer Forever! 2016

16 and 17 Sep 2016
Hanoi Creative City

From the organizer:

We are happy to invite you to Queer Forever! 2016. This year program will take place in Hanoi on two days: 16 – 17 Sept. 2016.

at Nhà Sàn Collective
Level 15, Hanoi Creative City Building
no 1 Lương Yên st., Hanoi

with the opening at
Goethe-Institut Hanoi
56-58 Nguyễn Thái Học st., Hà nội

Queer Forever! 2016 hopes to be an intimate film project that invites you to explore queer expression. The idea has been whirling in my mind ever since a coincidence that happened in last year’s Queer Forever festival. One day, some members of Ruby, a group of transgender models, came to the festival’s “queer market”. They picked up “Tuyền Từ Queer”, a queer lexicon comprising of collected and translated texts par artist Gabby Miller’s initiative, and read it aloud. Their voices were so provocative, “queeny”, humorous and lovely that the words were rendered with such glamour and extravagance! I realized then that queerness expresses itself in so many forms: through seemingly austere academic researches on queer identity and also through the queer refusal to be identified in fix categories; through various appeals, assurances, advocations for the rights of the LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer); through personal, intimate stories and emotions, through images, objects, memory, places. Queerness can also manifest itself in a single gesture, a sound, a voice, an emotion, a facial expression, or a glance. Cinema, I ponder, is a space in which these different forms and/or modes of expression can emerge together, mingle in each other, and influence one another.

This year program is composed of short fiction films, documentaries, film sketches, experimental sounds and moving images from Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Singapore, Taiwan, Philippines, China and Japan. We will also have visiting filmmakers and film programmers from Myanmar, Thailand, and of course, Vietnam. I hope that the festival will be another occasion for us to gather, to watch and fall in love with film together, to discuss with filmmakers and among ourselves the images, sounds, and stories brimming with queer love.

OPENING of QUEER FOREVER! 2016

20h00, Friday, 16 Sept. 2016
Goethe-Institut Hanoi
56-58 Nguyễn Thái Học st., Hà nội

FINDING PHONG – an award-winning film
by directors Trần Phương Thảo and Swann Dubus
Documentary | Vietnam | 2015 | 89 min
Vietnamese language with English subtitles

with a Q&A with directors Trần Phương Thảo and Swann Dubus

About the film

The documentary follows Phong, a young transgender woman during her struggle to fulfill her dream: to have sex reassignment surgery. Excerpts from Phong’s intimate video diary blends with Thảo and Swann’s documentation of her encounters with her family, friends, colleagues and doctors – each must come to terms with her determination to reinvent herself.

“Finding Phong” by directors Trần Phương Thảo and Swann Dubus won prestigious “NANOOK-JEAN ROUCH Grand Prix” in 2015.

We would like to thank directors Trần Phương Thảo and Swann Dubus, producers Nicole Phạm, Gerald Herman, and Varan Vietnam for their generous supports to make this screening happen.

See the film’s trailer here:

For updated information about Queer Forever! 2016, please visit our websites: www.facebook.com/Qforeverfestival and qfff2016.queerforever.org or contact us via email: [email protected]

Queer Forever! 2016 is co-organized by Queer Forever! and our partners Nhà Sàn Collective, Hanoi DOCLAB, Skylines with Flying People 3, Goethe-Institut Hanoi, Center for Studies and Applied Sciences in Gender – Family – Women and Adolescents (CSAGA), together with the generous supports from Heinrich Böll Foundation, Foundation for Community Educational Media (FCEM), Hanoi Creative City, and our communication partner Hanoi Grapevine.