Queer East Festival
The Queer East Festival 2024 nationwide tour is heading to the Cameo Picturehouse in Edinburgh from 17th - 21st October.
About Queer East Festival
Founded in response to the systemic lack of East and Southeast Asian representation on stage, screen and behind the scenes, Queer East Festival was formed in 2020 and has made its mark across the UK with its bold programmes of LGBTQ+ cinema and visual arts, growing in popularity and size year-on-year, and celebrating its fifth anniversary this year.
Queer East Festival’s ground-breaking film programme challenges conventions and stereotypes giving audiences an opportunity to explore the contemporary queer landscape across East and Southeast Asia. With its fifth anniversary edition, Queer East Festival reaffirms a commitment to diversifying the cultural landscape in the UK, and to serving as a platform that nurtures dialogue on the multifaceted understandings of what it means to be Asian and queer today.
Films screening:
Bye Bye Love - 50th anniversary screening (Japan, 1974)
Until the discovery of a film negative in a warehouse in 2018, Bye Bye Love was long considered lost, but this new print gives audiences a rare chance to revisit this radical work of 1970s Japanese cinema, which recalls the 1969 queer classic Funeral Parade of Roses. Following two young people, Utamaro and Giko, on a doomed summer road trip through Japan, this poetic, surreal work reflects on the dissipating promise of 1960s counterculture and free love, transcending gender, sexuality and the body. With a blend of stylistic influences from the French New Wave and American New Cinema along with a rethinking of Japanese artistic traditions, conventional understandings are challenged through a queer lens, adding to the political charge of this rediscovered classic.
The Last Year of Darkness (China, USA, 2023)
Ben Mullinkosson’s (Don’t Be a Dick About It) coming-of age documentary is a love letter to the Chengdu underground scene. With construction cranes looming, the future of queer-friendly techno club Funky Town is unclear, leaving party goers forced to make the most of their remaining time there.
The River (Taiwan, 1997)
Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most celebrated ‘Second New Wave’ film directors of Taiwanese cinema and his shockingly subversive family drama centres around the disintegration of a troubled family after a young man is suddenly struck by debilitating neck pain. Shot in Tsai’s signature minimalist style and starring his muse Lee Kang-Sheng, who has appeared in many of Tsai’s groundbreaking films including Rebels of the Neon God and Good Bye, Dragon Inn, this controversial work confirmed the director’s place as a uniquely rebellious voice in LGBTQ+ cinema, offering a sly, queer critique of the nuclear family and the values it represents.
Love Bound + Q&A (UK, 2024)
Shanshan Chen integrates animation and anecdotes in her documentary centering on the journey of Qiuyan Chen who became an unexpected celebrity after suing the Chinese Government over homophobic textbooks. After moving to the UK to escape her suffocating family and government pressure, her life takes an unexpected turn when she meets Bling who has to return to China. Determined to reunite and build a life together, Qiuyan embarks on a challenging journey to bring Bling back to the UK.
Welcome to Neverland (shorts programme)
Blurring boundaries between reality and fantasy, the filmmakers in this programme delve into weird and wonderful experiences that ignite the possibility of change: personal, political, and philosophical. To be queer is, literally, to be strange or odd, which here serves as a means of challenging cultural understandings of gender and sexuality. Through blood, fish scales, and sexy copies of Hegel’s oeuvre, the films in this collection make otherworldliness a point of pride.
Image: Bye Bye Love
Where possible we will update our listings to notify of cancelled, postponed and rescheduled events, however we STRONGLY ADVISE that you check with the venue/organiser in the first instance for updates.
All information (whether in text or photographs) is supplied in good faith but should not be relied upon as being a statement of representation or fact.GOT AN EVENT TO SHARE? It's free to post your events on What's On Edinburgh, click here to find out more!
Want to be the first to hear about what's happening in Edinburgh? Just hit 'Like' on our Facebook page, join the What's On Scotland Facebook Group and 'Follow' on our Twitter account and you're all set!Sponsored Links
Other Events at Cameo Picturehouse
Latin Connections Film Festival: The Moving Picture Man
Screening at Cameo Picturehouse, El cine soy yo is one of the most representative films of Venezuelan cinema and a celebration of the power of cinema in the most unimaginable circumstances.
READ MORELatin Connections Film Festival: Daughter of the Volcano
This screening of 'Daughter of the Volcano' is presented in collaboration between CinemaAttic and the Ixchel project as part of the Latin Connections Film Festival on 29th May.
READ MORE
The Trail Left by Time
The Trail Left by Time is a film that drifts between fiction and non-fiction, told with stunning sensitivity and a poetic realism reminiscent of the most lyrical and folkloric Carlos Saura.
READ MORESponsored Links
Similar events you might like...
Latin Connections Film Festival: The Moving Picture Man
Screening at Cameo Picturehouse, El cine soy yo is one of the most representative films of Venezuelan cinema and a celebration of the power of cinema in the most unimaginable circumstances.
READ MORE
Latin Connections Film Festival: Daughter of the Volcano
This screening of 'Daughter of the Volcano' is presented in collaboration between CinemaAttic and the Ixchel project as part of the Latin Connections Film Festival on 29th May.
READ MORE
Into the Void: Brazilian Short Films - Edinburgh
This programme showcases a selection of contemporary Brazilian short films that reflect the country’s rich filmmaking talent and its political (and poetic) resistance.
READ MORE
EIUFF: Fantastical Realities
Chemistry and electricity shape our perception of reality. Nothing else. What if we dance it all away? Several short films will be screened as part of this programme.
READ MORE
EIUFF: How to Produce a Film Workshop
This workshop with the founders of the Scottish Youth Film Foundation will be an extensive 101 masterclass into all of the stages of producing a film.
READ MORE
EIUFF: Opening Ceremony and Out of Competition Films
Join the Edinburgh International University Film Festival at the Scottish Storytelling Centre as the film festival kicks off with it's opening ceremony on 31st May!
READ MORE
EIUFF: States of Mind
Blending documentary, dreamscape, and poetic collage, these films drift between waking worlds and subconscious depths, where trauma lingers, resilience stirs, and identity takes uncertain shape.
READ MORE
EIUFF: Tales of Becoming
Through a mix of humour, conflict, and magical realism, these films explore first loves, body awareness, and the complex path to adulthood.
READ MORE
EIUFF: The Shape Love Takes
Love is an eternal mystery. This programme of films traces the questions that linger in all of us, slowly revealing the strange and shifting shape that love takes.
READ MOREFind other events in Edinburgh
Sponsored Links