Event Recap: ShPFF Visited TIQFF Again after 2 Years!

October 20-27 @ Taiwan International Queer Film Festival (TIQFF)

After work on 20-Oct evening, we flew to Taipei, extremely excited to meet organizers of TIQFF and friends from the Asia Pacific Queer Film Festival Alliance (APQFFA) since we last met at Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival late February.

Joining representatives of LGBTQ film festivals from other Asia Pacific countries, we had a fruitful meeting updating our progress and about working together to promote Asia Pacific queer films beyond the region. We also had 3 public panels discussing Asia Pacific queer films and cultural differences, including Confucianism in East Asia, Multiracial & Multi-religion in Southeast Asia and Natives in Oceania. Readers can still catch us via recordings from Facebook Live by TIQFF.

TIQFF opened with the amazing Canadian queer film Rebels on Pointe and closed with Thai favourite Fathers. In a week of film screenings, there were also special programs including APQFFA Shorts, World Shorts, and Midnight Marathon. Indian short film, Any Other Day, which was also screened during ShPFF in June won the APQFFA Best Film. We were very proud that Cocoon, Best Film at ShanghaiPRIDE Film Festival Chinese Short Film Awards was one of the finalists too!

While our schedule was packed with film screenings and discussions, we managed to spend an afternoon at MOCA Taipei, visiting the Asian LGBTQ Art and Now – Spectrosynthesis exhibition. It was exploring issues the Asian LGBTQ community faces and how far society has come and how much further it still has to go to secure equal rights for everyone.

As Taipei geared up for the annual parade and celebration of love and diversity, TIQFF set the city to a good start by bringing people together culturally and opened up discussions on diversity and community efforts. TIQFF is currently on their tour in Kaohsiung and Taichung. More info at www.tiqff.org.