BQFF 2014 - your time and other contributions.

BQFF 2014 is coming up - Feb 28th, March 1st and 2nd.

If you would like to donate your time, here http://blrqueerfilmfest.com/volunteer/ you will find information about what we need from our volunteers, and the volunteer registration form. Send it in, and give me a few days to get back to you! Volunteering at BQFF is a great way to meet people and be social, watch movies all day and feel helpful at the same time, and generally be an awesome fun-having person.


If you would like to donate financially to BQFF 2014, please go here: http://blrqueerfilmfest.com/donate/

We are almost entirely community supported, so anything you give us is helpful beyond belief. (If you have any ideas that you think might help, call me at 9611 978 132, or anyone at BQFF: http://blrqueerfilmfest.com/contact-2/


It's been a stressful few months for us all. BQFF is one of our regular annual events, happening come metaphorical rain or shine. If you're not donating, contributing or volunteering, you're still entirely welcome and desired to come and watch the movies, which are always interesting and thought provoking and other virtuous things.

The Bangalore Queer Film Festival 2014 Call for Entries

The 6th Bangalore Queer Film Festival

Call for Entries

Last date for submissions: 15 January 2014

The Bangalore Queer Film Festival is open for submissions for 2014!

 We invite you to send us your short and full-length features, short and long documentaries, animation and experimental films. Please send us your entries and pass this call on to friends, lovers and colleagues who might want to send in theirs.

BQFF 2013 brought us a whole range of some-powerful, some-madcap, some-tear jerking cinematic numbers – a set of highly unusual Indian short films, such as Snarky Baudelaire,Item Number, Lonely Walls and Raat Baaki; exceptionally moving documentaries such asHow to Survive a Plague, Call me Kuchu, In-between Days, Madame and Lesbian Factory; Cary Cronenwett’s archival re-visioning of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921 in Maggots and Men;  Ira Sachs’ portrayal of love and addiction in Keep the Lights On as our opening night premiere, the lesbian period drama The Night Watch as our centrepiece and Khavn De La Cruz’s fabulously intriguing Mondomanila as our closing night premiere.

Besides the films, the festival included an exhibition of politically engaging artwork by transgender artist Living Smile Vidya, and activist Sylvia Karpagam, as well as the photographs that were a part of the ManiFest drag photo project. Our performers also kept their yearly promise of packing the hall with a wildly applauding audience.

We hope to be able to bring the same kind of film-viewing experience to our ever-growing audiences this coming year as well.

Please submit your films for preview. The final schedule of films will be selected in the second week of February 2014.  (See contact details below to ask for submission forms.) Please note the following suggestions:

Films

We accept films made by directors on themes related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and other queer populations. Films that challenge traditional gender and sex / sexuality notions are welcome.

Genres

Please submit films of any form: Features, Shorts, Documentaries, Animation or Experimental.

Preview copies

Submit preview copies of full films online (through vimeo, youtube etc. or by sending the full film via Dropbox or similar file transfers) or by sending us the DVD copies to our address. Preview copies submitted for selection will not be returned. Copies of all films will be kept with the BQFF Archives.

Format of Final Submission

Final submissions are expected on high-quality DVDs only. Contact the organisers if you require more information or want to use other formats.

Subtitles

Since accents vary even among English language films, all films should preferably have subtitles in English.

Submission/mailing costs

Mailing costs for the submissions have to be borne by the director/producer/distributor. The BQFF cannot, at this juncture, support the costs of receiving copies for preview. Please contact the organisers if you are unable to bear these costs so as to arrange for alternative ways to send your films to us.

Screening Costs

As always the BQFF is a FREE event and no charges are levied on submissions. Additionally, only films that do not charge screening fees will be accepted.

Submission Address

All preview copies should be sent to the following address.

Please write “BQFF 2014” on the cover of your submission.

SWABHAVA

4th Floor, M. S. Plaza

No. 1, 13th ‘A’ Cross

4th Main, Sampangiramnagar

Bangalore – 560 027

Karnataka, India

Phone: +91-80-22230959

Mobile: +91-9844181294

Decision making process

The festival organising committee and the BQFF Preview Committee will preview all films submitted. Directors or producers or the distributors will be contacted immediately on selection of their films and any additional requests for material or publicity may be made at the time. More information about selection of films will be made available soon. Films that have not been selected will be informed separately.

Contact BQFF

For any queries regarding the festival, submission, or any other matter please contact:

Email:             blrqueerfilmfest@gmail.com
Web:               http://blrqueerfilmfest.com

Phone:            +91-80-22230959 (Office) or +91-9844181294 (mobile)

Organisations involved

The Bangalore Queer Film Festival is organised by Good As You (GAY), SWABHAVA Trust, We’re Here and Queer (WHAQ!) and Pirat Dykes. GAY (www.goodasyou.in) is a support group (est. 1994) for LGBT people in Bangalore and is one of the oldest support groups in India. SWABHAVA Trust (est. 1999) is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation working with LGBT issues, including providing access to support services in Bangalore. Both GAY and Swabhava have co-hosted previous queer film festivals in Bangalore. We’re Here and Queer (WHAQ!), is a queer women’s support group (estd. 2009). GAY and WHAQ! regularly organise film screenings at their weekly meetings. Pirat Dykes is a group set up to screen films that do not generally get mainstream releases in India. All the groups are non-funded and depend on community donations to function.

Watch this space!

So many things to talk about, but I'm keeping a zipped lip until Sunday. Watch this space Sunday evening, and look out for us in DNA Bangalore!

In the meantime:

Bangalore Queer Pride is still coming up, and we still needs ze moolah to do all the fab things we want to do for you. And so, please look at this pig. Isn't she still the most adorable pig in the world? How can you not want to give her stuff?

You might also want to participate/contribute/save time for specific events.
We're having:
The TRANSGENDER DAY OF REMEMBRANCE!
The GARAGE SALE!
A MELA!
Three PANEL DISCUSSIONS!
A huge, huge, multi-project PHOTO EXHIBIT!
A week of THEATRE!
A LITERARY DAY (for both English and Kannada readers and writers!)
And of course: the QUEER PRIDE MARCH, so get your walking glad rags ready!

I am out of exclamation points, my darlings. 

Write for Sanghamitra!

Hi Friends, we're trying to organize the next issue of Good As You's magazine, Sanghamitra (http://www.goodasyou.in/sanghamitra). Like the last two years, we intend to release the 2012 edition on (or around) 2nd July, so we're already a bit late in sending out this request for submissions.

Please send us LGBT-related original work, particularly in the following categories:
Creative/Fiction:
- Short/Long Story
- Poetry
- Erotica
- Art Submissions/Photos
- Jokes & Factual Tidbits

Features/Personal Experiences:
- Stories of good dates, bad dates, relationships, humourous anecdotes, other personal experiences
- Stories/accounts from straight friends/relatives/parents/siblings
- Coming Out Story
- Inspiration Page (Something/someone that has inspired you to come to better terms with yourself and your sexuality)
- In Memoriam (Tributes you may want to pay to a friend/lover that you lost)
- Gripes/Rants (Any issue that you take objection to and would like to vent about)
- Relationship Profile (You can choose to be interviewed for this, you don't have to write it yourself. Discretion will be exercised per your wishes.)
- A writeup on issues of particular interest to bisexual people
- General LGBT-Interest articles
- Opinions on any queer related issues
- Feedback/suggestions about our previous issue(s)

If there is anything else that you think might interest the readers of Sanghamitra, please do feel free to submit it, we are open to looking at anything publish-worthy.
Please send your submissions to <editors.sanghamitra@gmail.com> BEFORE 31 MAY.

Please help make Sanghamitra YOUR magazine, expressing YOUR voices, addressing YOUR issues.

Looking forward to your submissions.
The Sanghamitra Editorial Team

Pride Mela details!

We are excited to announce that the 2^nd annual Bengaluru Pride Mela is scheduled for Saturday Nov 26^th, 2011.

 We are looking for:

PERFORMANCES

Skits, magic, dance (Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood, Hip hop, Classical, Latin American, Contemporary), drama, stand up comedy, poetry, etc.  All performance styles are welcome!

Performances should be under 10 minutes long.  Please email your name / the name of your group, along with a sentence description of the performance to Kareem: kareem.khubchandani@gmail.com.  Submission deadline is Nov 10^th. 

STALLS

We welcome NGOs and other LGBT friendly organizations, bookstores, arts and crafts, henna artists, tattoo artists, food and drink vendors, florists, gift vendors etc.

If you are interested in setting up a stall, please contact Rohini: romavenkat@gmail.com for further information.  Submission deadline is the 10th of November.

PICTURES

We are hosting a photography competition as part of the pride celebrations.  LGBTQ oriented photos that fit the theme “IN PUBLIC,” are invited for submission.   Interpretation of the theme is open to the photographer.  The winning photographs will be published in India’s queer magazines: Fun, and Pink Pages.

Please email your submissions to Prithvi: prithvijho@gmail.com.  Submissions should include a high-quality digital photograph, photographer’s name and contact info, and a title or one line description of the photo.  Submission deadline is Nov 10^th.

VOLUNTEERS

The mela is a big event and we need help making it run smoothly.  If you would like to help out, please email Krishna: krishnapatil22@gmail.com. 

Please do not hesitate to contact any of us for further information about the Mela!

Krishna, Kumar, Kareem, Rohini, Prithvi, and Sam

WHaQ! meeting: 31th July 2011

Small meeting yesterday, 4 women showed up. Funness, and Matteo's after. 


Short summary of what we discussed:

• A few OBLs ago, we used to screen movies rather more regularly than we do now - something to actively think about doing again? This is a good opportunity to remind those of us who missed it about Deliver Me - D's first movie. We watched it as a group back in June. More of the same? Not every week, since sometimes we do have other agendas - agendae? - but it would be nice.
• At least one of the people at the meeting is an avid photographer, so there was some technical and thematic discussion along those lines. We didn't discuss this at the meeting, but Gaysi is running a Queer Photo Contest: Queer Tasveer, looking for the best pictures of gaysi love. Click the link to check it out!
• We talked about lesbian stereotypes - in India, the lesbian stereotype is in fact that she is invisible. Women are traditionally supposed not to have sex drives, and when they are traditionally represented as sexy they are either vamps or they're mother goddesses. If a woman's sexuality is placed at the feet of her man, how on earth is a woman supposed to have a sex drive, a libido, if there is no man there but simply another woman? The simple answer to "Who is the Indian dyke?" is "Whatever we want it to be!" because that stereotypical invisibility works to our advantage here. 
• Following on from the last point, we talked about being in the closet in straight spaces, and staying in the closet in queer spaces because sometimes other queer women, men, could not be trusted to respect that you might not be out in your professional and other social spheres. If we have the freedom to be whatever we want to be, we have the freedom to be utterly human, and therefore the freedom to be Not Nice as well. 
• Menopause: The Musical. Just take a look, yo.
• Is Simi Garewal homophobic? In other new, Karan Johar is a bitch, and we like it.
• Lesbian weddings! Savita and Beena, whose families declared yesterday that they were willing to reconcile with their lesbian daughters. “Savita's parents as well as mine have accepted our relationship and forgiven us. It was Savita's parents who had agreed initially. Now, my parents too have fallen in line after several media reports. However, my uncle Satbir Singh still has a problem with our marriage and has threatened to shoot both of us," Well, okay. I'm not sure they should leave their fifteen day protection. But okay. We spent some time yesterday wondering about the legality of the marriage, but really so long as it is not challenged in the courts - especially now that the marriage is acknowledged in a Gurgaon Sessions Court - it may not make much practical difference. We'll find out, I guess.
• We talked about a few other lesbian weddings, specifically Baljit Kaur and Rajwant Kaur. The marriage was melodramatic and troubled - Rajwant left Baljit and Baljit slit her wrists in court. No. Really. The reporting style has changed a great deal in the four years between Baljit and Rajwant's marriage and Savita and Beena's. 
• Mangalsutras. The round ones, with little dots in the middle. They're breasts. No, don't argue, they are well-shaped boobies with perky nipples. The husband ties it around the wife's neck. He is giving her her sexuality. Okay? Which is tied into her feeding motherhood. 
• I found a new minion to write on this blog! We are pleased.

Then we left, acknowledging that the garage door was indeed an obstacle the defeat of which should be rewarded with cookies. We went to Matteo's, where there was nice coffee, and a yummy gossip session.

"Writing our own history - Finally!"

So this wound its way onto the WHaQ mailing list, and it seems like a good idea to pass it around as much as possible. 

Hello Queer People!

A recent chat, actually let’s say a recent comment thread on Facebook
led Udayan Dhar and I to a realisation that we’re sure most of you
would agree with — something that should have happened by now, but
hasn’t! So we took it upon ourselves to get this idea into action and
here’s why you’ve received this mail.

It’s been a good, super-happy and challenging 2 years since the law
‘came out of the closet’. Yes, we’re legally gay and how! But what
seems to have been missed in all this celebration or the lack of it,
are the wonderful stories of people who were involved in or affected
by the movement — personal narrations of varied individuals who were
most actively involved or affected by the high court ruling that week.
From the high spirited celebrations of the multi-city pride, news
stories of which, still elicit a tear in anyone involved in the
struggle in the smallest of ways, to the country erupting in joy over
the final high court order — we hope to capture and re-live those
moments, those nail-biting hours and those euphoria filled festivals
from the mouths of the very people who made it happen.

We’re looking for 15-20 stories and 15-20 nominations of people who
you think should make it to the book... and then we shall contact
these people and get them to share their story.

As they say, “Only when it is written, will it be known to have
happened”, and hence, this is our very own, small yet much-required
step towards writing our own History.

Please send us nominations and broad areas in which you think your
nominees can represent that wonderful week.

For example: Someone who worked on the legal front could be nominated
to write his/her experience with a legal perspective — personal, yet
legal all the same.

Get in touch with either of us, before the 23rd of July.
Udayan Dhar — udayan@pink-pages.co.in
L Romal M Singh — elromal@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you.

P.S. Please mail us all your nominees. Comments on the social network
service will not be accepted — only to avoid confusion.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gurl in the World has already blogged this, but please, take a look, pass it on: Children have been separated from their mother, kept captive in a foreign country. Their mum has legal custody, their dad kidnapped them anyway. Sign this petition, please? Help reunite a mother with her children.

A shout-out to queer writers -

I'm supposed to be blogging about babies, but all I've got so far is "I don't want 'em," which is not as verbose as I would like. Here is baby clipart, which as almost as good as a post about babies and the people who do want 'em:

Innit precious.

Anyway, while I was procrastinating instead of talking/writing/thinking about babies (I don't want 'em!) I found this on my email and Facebook both, somehow ignored until Not Working led me to it. It is, in essence, a call for submissions for an (so far unnamed) anthology of Queer Erotica by South Asian writers. Tranquebar Press (the same people who published The Electric Feather last year) will publish the collection sometime in 2012. I'm copy/pasting the text here:

Call for submissions: Anthology Of South Asian Queer Erotica [title forthcoming]

To be published by Tranquebar Press in 2012

The spaces for expressing queer concerns have increased across South Asia in the last decade. Much is being written about sexuality, rights and queer lives. Yet, in all of this, sex itself doesn't get written about very much and there is a dearth of queer erotica from South Asia. Contemporary queer erotica with a South Asian focus would make these queer lives apparent in newer and compelling ways. This anthology is an attempt to present queer, sexual, regional literature that pleasures and satisfies. It is about queer sex lives, erotic experiences and passions. Queer in this anthology represents non-normative genders, sexualities, lives and perspectives. It aims to bring out voices that have been limited to smaller groups or never heard before.

What we want:

We want stories of queer love, lust and craving. Sex, however you may define it, should be a big part of the story. We want gender play, auto-eroticism, dark fantasies, monogamous and non-monogamous sex, stories of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism. We are looking for stories of deep passions, stories that complicate sex. We want stories of desire, fulfilled and unfulfilled. Stories that defy the gender binary. Stories of how you sexed up your aids and appliances. Stories on masturbation or the pleasures of paid sex. Stories of how you steamed up a bus ride, ended a clandestine affair or fucked with sex toys. Share with us stories that confront, redefine, dispute and reclaim what sex is. Let your stories queer erotica itself.

We invite you to write short stories with South Asian themes, characters and places reflected in them. We are looking for a wide expression of experiences across age, region, class, ability, gender and sexual identities. Stories can be fictional, semi-fictional and non-fiction, but we are not looking for academic or solely autobiographical writing on sexuality. Your stories will shatter the silences around queer erotic lives and encompass their diversities, so let us have them.

Who can write:

We want to foreground the queer voices of people living in or originally from South Asia. Queer includes but is not restricted to identities like lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, intersex, hijra, kothi, questioning, genderqueer, genderfluid and pansexual. Authors do not necessarily have to identify with one or more of these identities but the stories they submit should reflect non-normative genders, sexualities, lives and perspectives.

How to submit:

We are looking for short stories with a word limit of no less than 3000 words. We regret that we are unable to include poetry.

All submissions should be in English. Translations from other languages are allowed as long as the author owns the rights to the translation as well.

Please submit the story as an email attachment on a word document. Please include a title and word count.

Do not include your name or any other identifiers in the word document. As we are using a blind submissions process, we will have to reject submissions that indicate the author’s identity in the body of the story.

Authors will be informed whether their work is selected by mid-October. At that time, we will request you to provide a name under which you wish to be published and a short bio.

All selected authors will receive a one-time payment. The copyright of the story will remain with the author.

The deadline for submission is 15th September 2011.

Send your stories to queerotic.stories@gmail.com

Now get writing about the kind of sex you have wanted to read about. And get us swooning!

About the editors:

Meenu is a queer feminist activist. She has been involved with issues of gender and sexuality through women’s rights organisations and autonomous collectives for the last six years. She lives in Delhi and is an avid reader of erotica.

Shruti is currently based in Bombay. In the last eight years, she has actively engaged with the women’s and queer movements in the country. Over the years, she has worked as a researcher, social worker and counsellor.

Pass the word around!