Cinema St. Louis 12th Annual ‘QFest St. Louis’ Begins This Sunday With TRANSGEEK and More

By Tom Stockman | April 23, 2019

Come get your Q on! The 12th Annual QFest St. Louis, presented by Cinema St. Louis,runs April 28-May 2, 2019, at the Tivoli Theatre (6350 Delmar) .The St. Louis-based LGBTQ film festival, QFest will present an eclectic slate of 28 films (14 shorts, seven narrative features, and seven documentary features). The participating filmmakers represent a wide variety of voices in contemporary queer world cinema. The mission of the film festival is to use the art of contemporary gay cinema to spotlight the lives of LGBTQ people and to celebrate queer culture. The full schedule can be found HERE

The 12th Annual QFest St. Louis begins this Sunday, April 28th. Here’s Sunday’s schedule:

1:00pm April 28th: TRANSGEEK – This is a FREE screening
(though tickets are required from box office)

“TransGeek” brings together the stories of transgender people working in the tech industry and participating in geek and gamer cultures. The film documents people who, in pursuit of their passions, risked their careers and lives to be their authentic selves; who persevered in an industry that undervalues women, LGBTQ folk, and people of color; who found themselves in the pages of science fiction and fantasy or, when they didn’t see themselves represented, wrote their own stories; and who turned to the Internet to build communities that transcend geography and bigotry only to find themselves again the target of hatred and harassment. “TransGeek” allows transgender people to tell their own stories in their own voices, using in-depth interviews conducted over a period of several years to explore the lives, hobbies, politics, careers, and thoughts of transgender geeks. The film features an original score composed by Zoë Blade, a British electronic musician and transgender woman.

Shown with:

Listen (Jake Graf, U.K., 2018, 4 min.): Featuring young trans actors, this short frankly depicts some of the myriad struggles experienced daily by trans children and teenagers.

3:30pm April 28th: DEAR FREDY – Ticket information can be found HERE

Fredy Hirsch, a proud Jew and openly gay man, was born in Germany in 1916. When the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws were enacted in 1935, Hirsch fled from Germany to the Czech Republic, where he worked as a much admired sports teacher in a Jewish youth club. With the deportation of the Jews to Terezin — a combination of ghetto and concentration camp — Hirsch was appointed head of the Youth Services Department and helped care for more than 4,000 children and teens. Later, when he was sent to Auschwitz, Hirsch managed to persuade Josef Mengele to set up a daycare center, providing some 600 children their final moments of happiness. Ironically, it was in Auschwitz that Hirsch escaped homophobia for the first time in his life: He was out and had a lover, but people embraced Hirsch for his good work. Combining rare photographs, archival footage, witness testimony, and animation, “Dear Fredy” tells Hirsch’s amazing story, which includes planning a never-realized revolt with members of the underground in Auschwitz. 

5:30pm April 28th: VITA AND VIRGINIA – Ticket information can be found HERE

When aristocratic socialite and writer Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) first espies Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki) in Bloomsbury, London, she immediately vows to pursue the famous novelist — thus starting one of the most notorious and convention-shattering love affairs in literary history. This sensuous and highly literate love story — which would eventually result in Woolf’s landmark novel “Orlando,” whose androgynous, gender-bending title character was based on Vita — draws heavily on the letters the two married women exchanged. With its lavish costumes and seductive settings, “Vita & Virginia” transports viewers into a past that seems a century ahead of its time. Lauding Debicki’s “astonishing performance,” Variety writes: “With her as the lodestar, this is a stranger and more intriguing film than it really has a right to be, one that becomes less about a clandestine courtship between famous women, and more about Woolf’s relationship with her writing, and with the workings of her own beautiful, restless mind.” Isabella Rossellini co-stars as Vida’s stern mother-in-law, Lady Sackville. 

8:00pm April 28th: SORRY ANGEL – Ticket information can be found HERE

From acclaimed writer/director Christophe Honoré (“Love Songs,” “Dans Paris”), “Sorry Angel” — which premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival — is a heartbreaking film that offers a mature and deeply emotional reflection on love and loss, youth and aging. In 1993, Jacques (Pierre Deladonchamps), a writer and single father in his 30s, is trying to maintain his sense of romance and humor in spite of health issues and the turmoil in his life and the world. While on a work trip to Brittany, he meets Arthur (Vincent Lacoste), an aspiring filmmaker in his early 20s. Experiencing a sexual awakening and eager to escape his parochial life, Arthur becomes instantly smitten with the older man. A final side to the triangle is added in Mathieu (Denis Podalydès), Jacques’ fortysomething Paris neighbor. An inter-generational snapshot of cruising, courtship, and casual sex amid the rising worldwide AIDS crisis, “Sorry Angel” balances hope for the future with agony over the past, providing an unforgettable drama about finding the courage to love in the moment. The LA Times writes: “Among other things, ‘Sorry Angel’ is a lovingly detailed affirmation of gay male identity, albeit one that never feels as diagrammed or predetermined as that description.”

Check back here at We Are Movie Geeks for more coverage of this years ‘QFest St. Louis’