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Festival Program

BE/LONGINGS

Southeast Asian Queer Cultural Festival 2021

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2021 SEAQCF Zine Cover

Featured Works

  • Khmer Trans Traditional Dancing

    Dance

    This is a pre-recorded performance of Transgender Khmer Traditional Dancing featuring five lesbians and transgender people.

    The "Blessing Dance" is performed as an act of blessing the audiences for good luck. It is traditionally used for event openings, especially cultural festival events.

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  • Days with Nina

    Visual Art

    Have you ever heard the sentiment that being gay is just a trend, or that it’s a product of “Western culture”? Deep down we all know that queer people have always been here, but have you ever wondered how it was like to be queer in 90s Indonesia?

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  • BACKSPACE

    Film

    An animated short about a recent graduate struggling with applying for work and having to make changes to their openly queer online profile to be deemed employable.

     

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  • To Be 'Me'

    Film

    "This film tells the story of Htet Soe Naung, who, from childhood has been so feminine, soft and lacking the courage to face the struggles of life and as a queer person. His identity clashed with the dreams and wishes of his parents. He seeks to find himself while wearing several masks that conform to social norms and the expectations of people around him.

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  • Lonesome

    Film

    Lonesome is an LGBTQ+ voicemail documentary that features stories of isolation and marginalisation experienced by the diverse Malaysian LGBTQ+ community.

     

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  • Queerator

    Visual Art

    Queerator is one of the first projects in Vietnam with the aim of keeping the history of the queer community alive through public display. By connecting the polarity of queer and non-queer through art, Queerator hopes to become a experimental playground for a mutual understanding of queerness.

     

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  • Lovewins

    Visual Art

    Lovewins is a collection of artwork made through mixed techniques of spray painting stencils of queer and human rights quotes. The artist, 100perhuman, started their collection as their final thesis. In 2019, they collaborated with Chiang Mai Pride 2019 and let people who participate in the pride parade choose their quotes on stencil or spray paint on their clothes.

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  • Diwata

    Visual Art

    Carl Sagan writes, “If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” And so we created mythology, interwoven narratives that seek to explain how things came to be. The Filipino anthropologist F.

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  • Pagsulat Duag

    Literary Work

    Pagsulat Duag was born out of the lack of narratives written by LGBTI youth in the city and province of Iloilo. The Iloilo Pride Team, a network of LGBT advocates and organizations, partnered with Hubon Manunulat, an organization of writers in Western Visayas that advocates reading and writing in the Panayanon languages of Aklanon, Hiligaynon, and Kinaray-a.

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  • Queer Skin

    Visual Art

    This photo exhibition expresses the pride in every queer person, including those whose gender identities have been oppressed and marginalised. The pride that we hold have been reflected in the social and political movements in Thailand. Even though Thai LGBTIQ communities face traditional cultural challenges, they stand firm in who they truly are against these imposed norms.

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  • Strengthening LGBTIQ Communities’ Collective Memory to Promote Inclusive ASEAN Values

    Film

    BlueChili is one of the LGBTQI business models in Cambodia. It was created to develop more job opportunities for LGBTQI people in Cambodia and provide a safe space for LGBTQI persons to show their skills and abilities and to be a safe space of diverse LGBTQI mobilization. The documentary will show the crucial role of entrepreneurs in LGBTQI activism in Cambodia.

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  • My Mamily

    Film

    My Mamily is a short animated film about the struggles and triumphs of a lesbian family as seen through the eyes of a child. It is a reflection of how children are born non-judgmental and how adults, schools, and other institutions are responsible for raising children who are accepting of difference.

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  • A/PART: An Anthology of Queer Southeast Asian Poetry in the Pandemic

    Literary Work

    A/PART gathers the multivalent and polyphonic voices of queer Southeast Asian poets who have experienced conditions and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It considers how we have been affected and transformed, creating a space for poems that reflect our diverse experiences during these troubled times.

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  • thenational.api

    Literary Work

    A new portal opens on your device, and you are invited to immerse in the stories of how a Malaysian takes root in Singapore while navigating their identity.

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  • Wa, Nan

    Film

    Wa, Nan is a 20-minute comedy-drama travel film about a senior citizen transgender who longs to join a beauty contest makes an unlikely connection with an aspiring beauty queen, the two go on an escapade in search of their dreams.

     

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  • Agony/Ecstasy

    Visual Art

    Agony/Ecstasy is an animation piece of disparate moments intimated by the Spanish Baroque flourishes. Baroque is not simply an epoch or an aesthetic style but an interlocking system of domination and control that seeks to slither itself into whichever colony it lands on. Thus, latching itself to the minds and bodies of its subject natives.

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  • Budjang

    Film

    Budjang tells the story of the blossoming of LGBT people in a conservative muslim barangay (community) in Mindanao, and highlights their customs. While this community has exercised tolerance towards LGBT people, there is still much that needs to be done in order to achieve acceptance and inclusion.

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  • Return To Sender

    Film

    A young mail-boy accidentally reads a letter that has been returned to its sender multiple times, and embarks on a mission to make sure the letter is read as it was meant to.

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  • Be Me

    Literary Work

    This anthology of short fiction features South East Asian writers depicting the place of LGBTQIA+ identities within our societies as validated by pre-colonial allusions, thereby asserting that homophobia and transphobia are colonial impositions used to weaken pillars within our community.

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  • The Second Skin

    Visual Art

    "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" was a movie that changed BBQ’s view on gender, sex, relationships and self love. In the movie, there's a scene where the main character uses a piece of fabric to wipe the sweat off her face, imprinting her full makeup on it.

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  • Twinkling Fortress

    Visual Art

    Twinkling Fortress extends the collaborative work between Khairullah Rahim and Lunar Lucah since they last presented 'Intimate Apparitions (Sightings)' at the 6th Singapore Biennale: Every Step in the Right Direction (2019) where Lunar Lucah was featured with head dresses created by Khairullah Rahim using ubiquitous everyday household objects.

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  • Berat Mata Memandang, Berat Lagi Bahu Memikul

    Performance Art

    This work encapsulates the internal turmoil of queer Malay Muslims when negotiating their identity in heteronormative, Malay-Islamic spaces. Using ablution as a tangible access point, the cyclical cleansing rite captures the constant disorienting experience in one's attempt to reconcile one’s queer and religious identity.

     

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  • My Voice, My Story in Cambodia

    Film

    Cambodia remains to be a conservative society. Social and cultural norms have controlled LGBTIQ lives. In this short documentary, CamASEAN, a youth organization, harnessed the power of visual and performing arts in changing minds and hearts of villagers across the country.

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  • Vietnam Queer History Month: Once Upon A Time

    Film

    TThe 3-part series aims to recreate and introduce a queerer side of Vietnam's rich and lively history of more than a thousand years by exploring the following themes: Vietnam's history through a gender-nonconforming lens, art represents heart, and a quick look at Vietnam's LGBTIQ+ movements. The film is directed by Nguyễn Thùy Dương.

     

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  • To Stride with Pride: A Human Rights Movement in Thailand

    Film

    "To Stride with Pride: A Human Rights Movement in Thailand" is an 18-minute video produced by civil journalist and documentarian, Jeffrey Warner (with linguistic support from Tanyarat Promburom), that informs about brave people who are striving toward attaining civic equity and societal equality. This is in a country where social activism is largely forbidden and can be quite dangerous.

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  • The Book of Sainted Aunts: The Illustrated Portraits of Mildly Martyred Sinners-Turned-Saints Since Queerdom Come

    Literary Work

    [obsolete] An “aunt” is slang for middle-aged and elderly gay men or lesbian women (who were often mentors taking on protective roles for younger queers), reclaimed from the original association with an old madam who runs a prostitution brothel.

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  • Echoes from our past: 3 digital exhibitions from the Queer Indonesia Archive

    Digital Exhibit

    Indonesia is facing a time when the lived experiences and narratives of queer* people are being challenged, erased, and delegitimized in the national collective memory. The echoes of our collective past continue to fade whilst the institutions built to preserve them continue to ignore and erase us.

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  • Deaf LGBTQIA

    Film

    Deaf LGBTIQ features the lives of deaf LGBTIQ people in Malaysia who have many stories to tell but rarely do because of communication and language barriers. The lives of deaf LGBTIQ people are never easy; not everyone accepts their deafness and LGBTIQ identity.

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  • Malaysians Read LGBTQ Stories

    Film

    "Malaysians Read LGBTQ Stories" is a four-part series featuring diverse people in Malaysia reading real-life experiences of LGBTQ people in the country.

     

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  • Invisible ไร้ / light / rise / rights

    Film

    This film tells the stories of Thai queer activists and people who are fighting oppression. These ""invisible"" people are rising up to demand for the rights and dignity that all human beings deserve. Queer activists are telling these stories because gender justice cannot exist without democracy.

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  • Liku: Off and On Stage

    Film

    Liku: Off and On Stages delves into the queer tradition of Balinese performing arts through an in-depth research about the character, ‘Liku’. The short documentary film and archive on the website is an initial step in a project that we will continue working on.

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