Equal Rights

The message might be simple, it might even be self-apparent; but try to actually live that axiom out to its full and you'll soon see just how hard that is. So you say you don't have any prejudices, but let me ask you—what's ever really self-apparent? This is a short which leads us all to reconsider whether we aren't unknowingly forcing our own values upon our peers. Everybody has the right to decide upon their own identity, and upon which occupation they choose to pursue.

Sex Workers and the Anti Trafficking Campaigns

What, “Sex workers are tragic cases"? “We need to protect them"? Give off with your superficial words of 'support'! Your hypocritical values and incessant nannying aren't doing anyone any favours. Anti-trafficking policies work under the façade of philanthropy to threaten the safety and wellbeing of the very people they are supposedly in place to protect. Any real effort to understand what kind of safety the people working in this industry desire must begin by taking into account the voices of sex workers themselves.

(A)sexual

What do you think 'asexual' means? Just people who don't have sex? Don't desire sex? What about falling in love? Do they not even masturbate?—Do you take it for granted that everybody in the world wants and has sex? Within a society built upon the idea that everybody has sex and sexual desire, there are those who do not. 'Asexual' people don't experience sexual attraction to others. These people, who unlike lesbians, gays and bisexuals do not possess a sexual orientation, are under-studied and under-acknowledged, often misunderstood and often too the target of prejudice. Just how they can manage to come to terms with their own identities is a big question. This documentary, centred on the activities of David Jay, founder of Asexuality.org, follows the lives of multiple present-day asexuals.

Because Who Is Perfect?

You'll be effortlessly blown away by this short film of only five minutes. You know those mannequins that line shop windows. Sculptures of fit bodies with slender legs and long arms and a head-to-height ratio of precisely 1:8—that's right, perfect proportions. But who exactly decided they were perfect? Couldn't it be that we're being brainwashed to idealise some “imaginary perfection"? Everybody has their own definition of perfect. Maybe we each and every one of us have perfect bodies.

Wadjida

Wadjida made the headlines when it was selected by Saudi Arabia as its official submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 2014 Academy Awards. Its young protagonist is desperate to get her hands on something, a something which to use is seen as a violation of Saudi Arabian female manners. It's a bicycle. Wadjida finds out about a Koran recitation competition at her school with a cash prize, and she gears into an intense study regime in an all-or-nothing attempt to raise the money to buy the bicycle. This is a heart-warming story with the plight of a lovable hard-headed girl at its core, brought to us by Haifaa Al Mansour, the first female director from a country where cinemas are banned by the law. Should we, as its spectators, symphathise with the people of Islamic societies for being forced into rigid gender roles? Or will we come to think of the stereotype of its women being “oppressed" as being disrespectful to the people actually living within them? At this year's Kansai Queer Film Festival, we are planning to create a display featuring the ways we interpret the Islamic world.

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Love is different for each and every one of us. We can only live our own unique version of happiness. Weichung lives together with his beautiful wife and adorable child, and has a successful job at an optician's. He's a “winner at the game of life", but all the same feels somewhat incomplete, as though he's missing a vital something. But then one day he falls head over heels for a customer at his shop, and a desire he'd once tried so hard to forget comes surging up to the surface.

Roads

Carmela, still young, works with her poor-sighted grandfather at a small convenience store on the outskirts of town. Ordinary, plain, same old story day after day, until that is a liberated traveller called Abril arrives at her doorstep. A beautiful encounter, like a single drop of water falling onto the still-life surface of a lake, leads us to ask the question of what brings people to choose the paths they do. A simple and refreshing short film, quietly capturing that what's most important in life.

Change Over Time

This testosterone, these hormones. If I inject them, what's to become of me? Yes, that's it, I can become the me I want to be. In no time from now I'll be released, I'll be free.
A poetic film depicting with a hallucinatory touch the highs and lows of a transgendered heart and the hopes and expectations for a body reborn. Beautifully evocative landscapes accompanied by the subdued screaming of an internal voice are waiting. Please join us for the feast.

Kumu Hina

In Hawaiʻi, transgender people (known as 'māhū' in Hawaiian) have traditionally been given the greatest respect, seen as people existing between/across female and male, exhibiting the strengths of both sexes. Honoured teacher Hina Wong-Kalu (Kumu Hina) is a Native Hawaiian who passes down Indigenous song and dance to the next generation. Trying to bring preparations together for her students' end-of-year performance, she has a lot on her hands. But even strained by the anxieties of being 'māhū', struggling to co-exist in a white-dominated world and coping with the loneliness of living away from her husband, Kumu Hina doesn't back down from taking responsibility for her students' tuition. Ho'onani, one of her students, is too a 'māhū'. “Being 'māhū' isn't a big deal, and it shouldn't mean getting any special attention," Ho'onani tells the camera. “It's just that that's what's most natural for me, is all." What's left at the end of the film is the essence of Hawaiʻi and the warmth of humanity. This documentary offers a revealing perspective on the inspiring strength of people who live as double-minorities, both sexually and ethnically.

"Switching" The New Era of Vibrators

上映前 「すいっちん」の監督・ササタニーチェさん をお招きしてのトークタイムを予定★

Director Sasatani-chez's topical hit returns to the Kansai Queer Film Festival again this year, having wowed its audience once already in 2011. In this documentary, the director probes the elusive world of erotic culture from the unique angle of that trusty erogenous toy, the vibrator. We are introduced to the proprietor of a women's sex-toy shop, a vibrator-maker, an onanist, a retailer of traditional vibrators and an expert on erogenous development, who each wax lyrically about 'The Vibrator' and reveal how this object illuminates gender inequality in today's society. Is it really just a phallic symbol? Come and hear from the ladies who know about sensation in this riveting documentary, which is sure to give you a good shudder.

TSUYAKO

This hidden gem startled the audiences at last year's festival, and it's coming back this year to wake them up again. What is freedom? Tsuyako can't stop asking herself if she should be chasing after dreams with lovers, or putting her all into the family life which cost so much sweat and tears to obtain. This is a generation-spanning story of a woman, sure to plant courage in the hearts of all who see it. It all began with the inspiration director Mitsuyo Miyazaki received after stumbling across a single photograph left behind by her grandmother. The result is this moving, intoxicating portrait, realised through well-measured direction and refined camerawork. Now receiving attention on the world stage, it's coming back to KQFF 2014.

3(Drei/Three)

Now from director Tom Tykwer, the otherworldly genius behind Run Lola Run, comes 3, bringing to the screen a new vision of love. Life, aging, disease, rebirth, reproduction, death, and afterlife. When does the human existence draw to an end, and from where does it begin? From birth to death, is the life of a human being set on a one way course, or could it be scientifically possible to turn that around? Are sexual relations constrained to the link between two people? Is it right that people can only have one true love? The moment those assumptions we'd taken for granted are brought into disarray, we find our worlds expanding. Whether we welcome that expansion with pleasure or spurn it away as something uncomfortable is up to each individual viewer. From the symbolic use of blue peppered throughout the film, to the choice of David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' for the final credit roll, this is a beautiful work of art in every sense of the word. (Trivia: Sophia of Transpapa, featured at last year's festival, makes a comeback this year in the cast of 3!)

Equal Rights

The message might be simple, it might even be self-apparent; but try to actually live that axiom out to its full and you'll soon see just how hard that is. So you say you don't have any prejudices, but let me ask you—what's ever really self-apparent? This is a short which leads us all to reconsider whether we aren't unknowingly forcing our own values upon our peers. Everybody has the right to decide upon their own identity, and upon which occupation they choose to pursue.

Soul Flower Train

上映後 本作品の 監督・⻄尾孔志さん と 脚本・上原三由樹さん をお招きしてのトークタイムを予定★

A film for all the children hiding secrets in their closets and all the parents who've ever accidently peeked inside! Come and join a slightly dopey father on his dazzling Osaka road trip! Daddy goes to visit his absent daughter, who since starting university never seems to come back home, and he finds himself being taken by the hand by an all-too-friendly Akane into the lively backstreets of downtown Osaka, past Tsutenkaku Tower and Go-game parlours, to kebab stalls with esoteric local codes of conduct. He witnesses a tourist getting assaulted by a petty crook, and even winds up at his very first strip joint! This surreal rollercoaster adventure is injected with a dose of reality when Daddy stumbles upon his little girl's big secret. It doesn't stop there—his whirlwind tour-guide Akane starts to harbour a certain something... This father-daughter story shows that even within the most honest of relationships lurks a world of secrets, and even when it seems as if they're being covered up well, they can come bursting out from the seams. Parent and child eventually must learn to move on, accepting one another's independent lives.

Bumming Cigarettes

The car rolls to a halt outside the backstreet HIV Clinic. The passenger walks in as she is assaulted by feelings of anger towards her previous partner and fears of future transmission. With a ten minute wait for results, she steps back outside and starts a conversation with a stranger sitting nearby. He slowly starts to talk, at times forgetting the cigarette turning to ashes in his hand. At once welcoming viewers with the non-confrontational atmosphere of small talk, this exceptional short film simultaneously guides them slowly but surely to the darkness of people and their hidden inner-sides.

Intersexion

Description coming soon

For Dorian

The day to day life of a father and son. The father can't stop himself fussing and faffing over his son Dorian, unable to ignore his disability. However, when he finds himself coming face to face with his son, who in his eyes is still but a child, experiencing his sexual awakening, he can't hide his loss of composure. Dorian is becoming a man! What if it's not Dorian but in fact me who is “still but a child"? Capturing the moment where a father-child bond is shook to its core, this is a heart-warming masterpiece.

Kiss Me / With Every Heartbeat

This film, which filled the hall at the 21st Tokyo International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in 2012, is coming to Kansai this year for an encore! Frida and Mia are both involved in relationships. But as soon as their eyes first meet at the engagement party of their respective parents, they become completely infatuated, and find their hearts being torn apart by an ever intensifying desire. Mia tries to turn away Frida's passes, but is left speechless when Frida asks her, “What's wrong with loving two people?" Of course, “normal" and “taboo" have never meant exactly the same thing for everyone.