For eleven years the Rainbow Reels Queer Film Festival (QFF) has worked hard to increase awareness of queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues by showcasing projects from new and emerging film-makers. We are one of the most recognisable film festivals in South-western Ontario, bringing in attendees from Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Hamilton, Guelph and Windsor. This year, the festival will entertain audiences again with exceptional films and programming between March 2nd and 6th, 2011.
The festival is a project of the Waterloo Public Interest Research group and has been since 2000. What started up as a small student-run event, screening films at the University of Waterloo, has since expanded and grown into an important community-wide event.
WPIRG is a student run not-for-profit organization operating out of the University of Waterloo campus. WPIRG’s mission is to foster and support students and community members to research, educate, and take action on social justice and environmental issues. The organization takes aim to motivate community participation through integrative processes encouraging social diversity and social equality while operating in a consensus based decision making model. To this end, WPIRG started the Rainbow Reels Queer Film Festival to satisfy a niche in the community by showcasing a variety of queer experiences on screen. Its objective has been to increase awareness of the many issues that permeate the greater queer community by providing content which spans a diverse range of subject matter and genres. WPIRG is the proud home of the Rainbow Reels Queer Film Festival. To learn more about the WPIRG visit www.wpirg.org
Vision
The Rainbow Reels Queer Film Festival features internationally acclaimed gay and lesbian works that present images of gay and lesbian lives and issues; emphasizes issues of multicultural diversity and gender; encourages local artists, critics and audiences to participate in the discussion of cultural identities and aesthetics and generally to present the public with an opportunity to see and discuss the thematic, aesthetic and political concerns raised by the work of lesbian and gay filmmakers.
Planning Committee
Each year, volunteers from the community and WPIRG staff get together in the Fall to plan the coming year’s festival. This year’s festival would not have been possible without the incredible work of:
- Nadia Hutton
- Kate Klein (staff)
- James Law
- Cassandra Polyzou (staff)
- Michael Schmidt
- Nathan Van Strien
- Scott Williams
- Jennifer Roe
- Derek Lindman
- Fai Hassan