Queer Women of Color Film Festival Returns To California
The Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project is celebrating LGBTQ+, BIPOC communities with its annual film festival.
For our San Francisco friends and lovers, there is no better way to savor the June joys of Pride than immersing yourself in the stories and films of queer Women of Color. To our luck, the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project has its 21st annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival at San Francisco’s historic Presidio Theater from June 13-15. The 2025 festival focus, “Fierce Determination,” invites a variety of subjects, from ancestral traditions of Mauna Kea to Black Southern liberation stories. In its showcase of 49 films over 7 screenings, the film festival will illuminate how LGBTQ+ BIPOC communities and visionaries color a liberatory future with strokes of radical artistry and collective care.
At the festival, different themes will be woven into screenings throughout the weekend. On Friday, the opening night screening will highlight “Liberatory Black Futures,” where Southern liberation stories will be shared, accompanied by explorations of gender euphoria amongst Black trans folks. Queer Black artists will display an intertwinement of care and freedom in the journey to reclaim dance, land, and culture. RENEGADES: Celestine Tate Harrington: Building a Legacy, by Cashmere Jasmine, draws upon a Black disabled musician and artist who fights for her right to be a mother and earn an independent living. Chestbound, by Janine Anne Uyanga, tells a story of a Black person healing from top surgery as tensions with their mother resurface amidst news of their father’s stroke.
On Saturday, the theme “Think Global, Act Local” will be explored. From Women of Color surfing Alameda beaches to celebrations of lesbian love in Oakland, the screened films will take the audience through Bay Area storytelling and journeys of connection, love, and self-acceptance. Standing Above the Clouds by Jalena Keane-Lee will be Saturday’s featured screening at 5 pm. The film takes the audience through stories of Indigenous mothers and daughters who have sustained the largest political movement in modern Hawaiian history, exploring intergenerational healing and the social-emotional labor of retaining ancient traditions in a modernizing world.
The festival will end with Sunday’s dive into “Unapologetic Legacies,” exploring the transformation of grief and the preservation of QTBIPOC legacies and leadership, honoring the histories and ancestors of creators. Can’t Stop Change: Queer Climate Stories from the Florida Frontlines, by Natalia Villarán-Quiñones, Jess Martinez, Vanessa Raditz, Yarrow Koning, and Shoog McDaniel will be the featured screening on Sunday at 3 pm. The film shares a story of a state shaped by natural and political storms, where queer and trans artists, activists, and educators across Florida organize for climate justice. Through networks of mutual aid, they transform moments of disaster into opportunities for transformation and hope.
The QWOCMAP will also be hosting a special Asian World Cinema screening on May 31 at the Chinese Culture Center, in conjunction with Queer and Trans Asian Pacific Islander Week.
