Gender Fest 27-29 January 2017
The festival will be compered every night by drag performer Melita Scabeau
Friday 27 Jan
19:00 Greeting by the Outview Film Festival organisers and the Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung-Office in Greece and opening of the exhibition with photographs by Amos Mac and Del LaGrace Volcano.
19:30 – 22:00 Del Lagrace Volcano lecture
Del LaGrace Volcano is a gender variant visual artist and cultural producer working with the body and gender/sexual identity notions for both social, political and personal purposes. According to the Encyclopedia of LGBTQ culture, Del is known as ‘one of instigators of polymorphous perverse queer culture’. Del has produced four monographs: Love Bites (1991), The Drag King Book (with Jack/Judith Halberstam, 1999), Sublime Mutations (2000) and Sex Works (2005), and has also been cited and reproduced in numerous publications, journals and books on visual art and queer and feminist theory. Del’s latest short videos include, GENDER QUEER: Qu’est-ce que c’est? (2005), The Passionate Spectator (2003) and Journey Intersex (2000). At Gender Fest, Del will give us a a performative visual lecture talking about and showing images from their ongoing collaborative project VISIBLY INTERSEX, and sharing their lived experience as an intersex parent, a Mapa.
22:15-00:00 The Trans List Film with Amos Mac + Q&A + Presentation
The TV movie The Trans List, produced by HBO, is one of the episodes of a series of ‘lists’, such as The Black List and The Out List, which are all directed by portrait photographer and documentary filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. In The Trans List we look at the lives of eleven trans people and their experiences before and after their transitions. One of those people is photographer Amos Mac, who, along with Rocco Kayiatos, founded in 2009 the magazine Original Plumbing, in which he captures the trans-men’s culture through photography and interviews. Through his work, which we see as a continuation of that of Del LaGrace Volcano, we come closer to a culture that, even today, is in need of more visibility. We will be presenting a sample of it during Gender Fest and, after the screening, Amos Mac will be present for Q&A and for a short presentation of his photography.
00:00-2:00 Meet-and- Greet party with our festival guests.
Saturday 28 Jan
19:30 Greeting by Marina Galanou
Marina Galanou, activist through the Greek Transgender Association and director of the publishing house and bookstore Colourful Planet, as well as the online magazine t-zine.gr. Galanou will talk about the Greek law concerning gender identity as well as the medical procedures that a person must go through in order to transition.
20:30-22:30 Something Must Break film + Girls Like Us Short Film + Vanessa Lopez Q&A
The film Something Must Break is about a love story between two young men where one is the androgynous Sebastian and the other is Andreas, who is not gay. They form a unity. It’s them against the polished Swedish, Ikea society. They dream about escaping boredom and the dreaded possibility of becoming what everyone else is. And then, there is Ellie-the superwoman growing inside Sebastian whom Andreas loves and fears. This is the summer when everything happens and both of them will choose paths that will determine their lives forever. It’s a battle for love and Sebastian finally has to realise that he has to let Ellie loose and find the strength within himself and not let his happiness depend on someone else.
Girls Like Us is a Swedish TV series about trans women and their everyday lives. The first episode of the series will be screened after Something Must Break.
Vanessa Lopez, Miss Trans Star International 2015 and one of the protagonists of Girls Like Us, will be present for Q&A after the screening.
23:00-00:00 Vaginal Davis Performance & Screening
Vaginal Davis is a performer, filmmaker and musician. Vaginal is the key proponent of the disruptive performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag. Disrupting the cultural assimilation of gay-oriented and corporate-friendly drag, she positions herself at an uncomfortable tangent to the conservative politics of gay culture, mining its contradictory impulses to interrupt the entrenchment of its assimilatory strategies. A self-labeled ‘sexual repulsive’, Ms Davis consistently refuses to ease conservative tactics within gay and black politics, employing punk music, invented biography, insults, self-mockery and repeated incitements to group sexual revolt – all to a hilarious and devastating effect.
She has been in films of various enfant terribles of queer cinema, such as Bruce LaBruce and Rosa VonPraunheim. At Gender Fest she will present a flamboyant performative lecture/screening, showing us some of her personal work.
00:30-1:00 Tami T Live
Tami T’s sound leaves you charmed at once. It is catchy pop along with very sincere and melancholic lyrics. Tami T has created their own musical instrument, which they wear as a strap-on and play percussion with.
Their participation in the soundtrack of the film Something Must Break gave a unique sound and sensation to the film, which would have not been the same without its music.
1-4 am Party with DJ Team: The Beatches
Drag Show by Zackie Oh
Sunday 29 Jan
19:30-21:10 Casablanca Calling Film
A documentary film entitled Casablanca Calling (2014) on the topic of women and Islam, about Muslim women and the ways they gain empowerment within the patriarchal society, sometimes with different rules and standards from the ones we know in western cultures.
21:30-22:30 Samania presentation and Q&A
Samania are a duo by Samira and Ania, who are performers and dancers. In their performances they deal with the body, female identity and how these two are policed, or how they resist. They will present their performative film ‘Cloth’, in which they ask the question: ‘How is freedom dressed?’ With this piece Samania opens an intercultural conversation that addresses issues like identity, oppression, empowerment, agency, freedom and the (false) perceptions around them.
23:00-00:30 Closing Film – Fucking Different XXY
Fucking Different XXY, 2014, various filmmakers, produced by Kristian Petersen
The sixth part in the compilation film series Fucking Different breaks new ground. Since 2005 producer and project initiator Kristian Petersen has asked gay and lesbian filmmakers from various cities to make short documentary and fiction films – in each case a lesbian taking on gay topics and vice versa.
Fucking Different XXY intends to finally dissolve the binarity of classic gender identities. Seven transgender filmmakers from all over the world have made short films about aspects of sexuality which are alien to them. The mixture is colourful and diverse and includes documentary contributions from pornographic filmmakers Buck Angel and Mor Vital and experimental approaches by J Jackie Baier and Gwen Haworth, both of who come from a documentary background. The film series attempts to overturn stereotypes about the ‘other’ and what is ‘normal’ – stereotypes which also exist in the queer community. To quote the film’s own motto:’ break stereotypes, create confusion and celebrate diversity!
12.30 – 3 am Party with DJ Team: The Beatches
Drag Show by Zackie Oh!