The 17th annual Reel Queer Film Festival, which kicks off Friday at Syracuse University, will continue its tradition of highlighting different experiences of global queerness.

The festival is presented by Open Doors, Syracuse’s graduate student organization for LGBTQ students and is the first of its kind in the United States. The organization has sponsored the event for all of its 17 years. From Friday until Sunday, the festival will screen six different films in Shaffer Art Building’s Shemin Auditorium.

To reflect experiences of the LGBTQ community worldwide, the festival screens movies that focus on current trends, said Cara Levine, a graduate student in counseling and counselor education and a member of the executive board for Open Doors.

“Every year, we see shifts and changes within the global queer community,” Levine said. “The films mirror developments in this community.”

The festival will offer a variety of different films, including documentaries and narratives. In order to decide when films to feature, Levine says they did a lot of research by speaking to people within the LGBTQ community. They also look at movies making an “impact” in the area, Levine said.

Levine said the festival is especially important considering the current political climate and recent legislation passed in Mississippi and North Carolina. She gives the example of one of Saturday’s films “In the Turn,” which is about a girl who can’t play on sports teams because she is transgender. Levine said it relates it to legislation barring transgendered individuals from certain restrooms.

In order to get funding for the event, Levine said she relied on sponsors from previous years but also reached out to different departments in the community for support. One of those sponsors is Assault City Roller Derby, who heard about the event through Erin Honeseler. Honeseler, the vice president of Open Doors and a graduate student getting her master’s in science in cultural foundations of education, is also a member of their roller derby team.

“We were really excited when we learned that she had programmed a derby-focused documentary for the festival,” said Espirit de Corpse, head of the public relations committee for Assault City Roller Derby.

The festival will begin Friday at 7 p.m. with the film “Sins Invalid,” which will precede the kickoff reception at 8 p.m. The kickoff will feature speaker Hina, the lead character in the second film, “Kuma Hina.” Both Saturday and Sunday will feature two films, with speakers and meals mixed in throughout the day, said Honeseler.

Saturday will also feature two prominent roller derby players, OMG WTF and Bonny Thunders, who will be hosting an informal Q&A and meet-and-greet.

“We’re beyond thrilled to have these megastars of the derby world visiting Syracuse,” Corpse said. “We think this would be a great opportunity for people to learn about our sport and the inclusive community it fosters.”

In order to draw support for the event, Levine and Honeseler created a Facebook event, printed and distributed over 300 posters all over campus. They also reached out to LGBTQ student organizations for support.

However, this event is not solely for LGBTQ students.

Honeseler said all the of the films are high-quality and good production-value films that target a large audience.

However, one of the major challenges of the festival was making the films accessible for all these diverse people. Honeseler and Levine had to outsource work to make sure all of the films were captioned, as they emphasized it was important to them to make everything accessible.

“If I learned anything from this experience, there is a lot (of) collaboration and partnership that can happen among marginalized identities.” Honeseler said. “Overall, the goal of the event is to learn something. You don’t know what you don’t know. Most folks don’t even know there are these communities out there.”

Honeseler encourages audience members to “come in with an open mind” and learn something new.

“Come, have fun, make new friends,” she said. “Or meet up with old ones.”

Published on April 13, 2016 at 8:45 pm

Contact Hanna: hrhorvat@syr.edu