QFest St. Louis Kicks Off Sunday with AUDRE LORDE: THE BERLIN YEARS

QFest St. Louis, the annual gay and Lesbian Film Festival presented by Cinema St. Louis, kicks off this Sunday, April 27th. It runs through May 1^st and all films will be screened at The Tivoli Theater(6350 Delmar in The Loop, University City, MO)

QFest uses the art of contemporary gay cinema to spotlight the lives of LGBTQ people and celebrate queer culture. The 2014 event features an eclectic slate of contemporary LGBTQ-themed feature films, documentaries, and shorts. Tickets are now on sale for all shows. Welcome to the Q!

This year’s event will feature an eclectic slate of contemporary LGBTQ-themed feature films, documentaries, and shorts as well as many post-film discussions and lectures.

QFest St. Louis kicks off this Sunday with the documentary AUDRE LORDE: THE BERLIN YEARS, which will screen at 1pm.

Audre Lorde, a highly influential, award-winning black lesbian poet, lived in West Berlin in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. She helped ignite the Afro-German movement and challenged white women to acknowledge their privilege and constructively navigate differences. Lorde’s influence encouraged a generation of writers, poets, and activists to examine racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, classism, and homophobia within German society and the black and white women’s movements. This documentary contains previously unreleased audiovisual material from director Dagmar Schultz’s archives, including stunning images of Lorde offstage. With testimony from Lorde’s colleagues and friends, the film documents the poet’s lasting legacy in Germany and the impact of her work and personality.

The screening of AUDRE LORDE: THE BERLIN YEARS will be followed by a discussion with Founder of AngryBlackBitch.com and Progress Missouri Communications Director Pam Merritt, Pride St. Louis Director of Outreach Audrey Pearson, and That Uppity Theatre Company Artistic Director Joan Lipkin.

David William Upton at SO SO GAY wrote:

“AUDRE LORDE: THE BERLIN YEARS  1984-1992 is an engrossing and illuminating introduction to a woman whose legacy is still affecting lesbians, poets, mothers, black people, and countless others. For those who have already been affected, moved, and inspired, this is a chance to see Audre Lorde at her most peaceful, but also her most inspirational. Her bravery continued to the last. Her words will never end.”

Donna Maria Alexander at America’s Studies wrote:

“The Berlin Years also gives generous time to Lorde’s significance as a unifying figure; many scenes feature Lorde discussing the notion of difference and encouraging her listeners, both onscreen and the viewers, to approach differences of race, gender and sexuality in positive and progressive ways. We see Lorde as muse who inspired many Afro-German women to write about their experiences and record their cultural history, for example, Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (eds. May Opitz,  Katharina Oguntoye, Dagmar Schultz). More importantly, the documentary represents the exchange of knowledge and ideas that Lorde encouraged.”

A Facebook event page for the screening can be found HERE

https://www.facebook.com/events/1379806828964534/

For a complete schedule of the QFest film’s visit Cinema St. Louis’ QFest page HERE

http://www.cinemastlouis.org/qfest

Contact artistic director Chris Clark for additional details or questions: chris@cinemastlouis.org or 314.289.4152.

Check back here at We Are Movie Geeks for much more coverage of this year’s QFest