CineQ launches a two-day queer film festival taking place on 22nd-24th March in venues across Birmingham.  Shortcut to website and tickets here.

Funded by BFI FAN Film Hub Midlands and supported by Centrala Art Gallery, Midlands Art Centre, and Mockingbird Cinema and Kitchen, CineQ Queer Film Festival aims to make safe spaces for cinema and discussion surrounding social change within the LGBTQ community.

CineQ puts the focus on new stories, and QTIPOC (Queer Trans and Intersex People of Colour) perspectives, while introducing ‘New Queer Cinema’ a type of queer cinema often overlooked.

After the film festival, CineQ will specially curate a selection of queer films representative of the LGBTQ community with which to tour cinemas, film festivals and film societies in the region in order to grow the appetites of LGBTQ cinema lovers in the Midlands.

Director and Film Programmer Rico Johnson-Sinclair says:

“Queer cinema has often been a blind spot in the region’s best independent and multiplex cinemas. Not to say that there isn’t an offer, it’s just very slim, Love, Simondid well, Call Me By Your Nameand God’s Own Country the year previous, but there’s a plethora of films from a variety of perspectives that are being made, but just not shown. The best place to watch a film is the big screen, but often we see that the only place to view queer films are on streaming services, we want to change that by bringing Birmingham and the Midlands, offers to see the kinds of films they love.”

CineQ was previously operating as a community cinema supported by Flatpack Projects. They’ve screened many titles such as The Wound, Closet Monster, and Check It as well as short film programmes at Centrala Art Gallery and Cafe, Mockingbird Cinema and Kitchen, and Flatpack Film Festival. CineQ has also worked with Cinemas outside of Birmingham such as Phoenix Cinema in Leicester and has been awarded recognition by Cinema for All, Britain’s leading authority for community cinemas and film societies.

The opening film of the festival will be Rafiki, a film that highlights attitudes to LGBTQ people in East Africa. The film itself was banned for reportedly ‘promoting lesbianism’ in Kenya before they briefly lifted the ban to support the submission of the film to the Oscars.

The rest of the programme will be made available via social media and their website on the 22ndJanuary 2019.

Website: cineqbirmingham.co.uk
Facebook @CineQBrum
Twitter: @CineQBrum
Instagram: @CineQBrum