ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

What is Kansai Queer Film Festival?
Just as its name suggests, a festival showing queer film in Kansai, Japan.
On the 23rd and 24th July 2005, the last festival was held in Hep Hall (8th floor of the building with the ferris wheel on top, Umeda, Osaka).
Including staff, a total of 1200 people were involved.
Along with films from Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, * we also showed several Kansai-only special programmes.

This year we will be using the same venue for five days from 21st to 25th July. This year's programme (see Japanese information) has a larger base of Kansai-only screenings along with some films in common with the Tokyo festival.

*Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival reached its 14th year in 2005 and is a highly regarded event, attracting several thousand people a year. It is a great opportunity to see in one pleace works from Japan and all over the world dealing with gender and sexuality. The festival is run by a team of volunteers including lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.
There is a friendly atmosphere with little distance between visitors and staff, making the festival an even more memorable experience.

The meaning of Kansai Queer Film Festival
Our definition of queer film is any film with themes of gender or sexuality. We hope that by showing queer films, more people can experience the diversity of gender and sexuality.
And we think it is significant for queers and our friends to get together to do this not abroad or in Tokyo, but in Kansai where we live.

What is queer?
We have borrowed the English word "queer", meaning odd or strange.
It's a word which people of 'variant' gender and sexuality, including lesbians, gay men, bisexual and trans people have turned around and appropriated as a positive label.
The work queer has not yet fully arrived in Japan, so it is used with many different meanings. Even within our committee, there are many different definitions.
" Homosexuality",
" Faggots",
" Anyone weird!",
" People who enjoy abnormal things" and so on.
There are even people who feel no conflict in their own gender and are attracted to the other gender
and would describe their way of living as queer.
We want to use the word queer without trying to erase this diversity.
What does queer mean for you? In the the chaos of overwhelming diversity, we hope you will find new experiences and dialogue.

Post script
At present, no-one on our committee identifies as intersex or aseuxal, so on this site we provisionally use the term lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT).
However, it is not our intention to permanently restrict the festival to being an LGBT festival.
Through this festival, I would like to create links between people of many different perspectives on sexuality and
gender.
This festival is not just for LGBT people, but, we hope, a wide range of different backgrounds.