QUEER CINEMA CLUB
Animation by Paul Twa
Queer Cinema Club is more than a film series: it’s a mission to bring Toronto’s LGBTQ folks together in celebration of some of the best queer cinema ever made.
Every month at the Paradise Theatre, curator and host Peter Knegt will be offering queers (and anyone who loves them) a classic queer film, special guests and performers, and some good old fashioned drinks and conversation in the Paradise’s lobby bar. Each film is paired with a different local queer artist, who designs an original poster for the screening (which will be available for purchase the night of the event).
Up next…
Tender, deranged and totally singular, the great Miranda July’s Kajillionaire was the one of the very best films of 2020… but too many of us might have been a little too distracted to notice. So we are bringing it back to the big screen this September in all its be gay do crime glory.
Featuring a truly astounding physical performance from Evan Rachel Wood, Kajillionaire follows a family of con artists (Wood alongside the legends that are Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) whose lives are complicated when a stranger (Gina Rodriguez) enters their schemes. What evolves from there is a heartfelt and hilarious take on family and loneliness that only July could deliver.
So come join us on September 17th at the Paradise for the conclusion of our four part series on some of the great queer films released during the pandemic, when you can also pick up a physical copy of this beautiful poster created by Karolina Ficek.
And then…
We are kicking off our fall series by going back to 1965 and screening Canada’s OG queer film: a 4K restoration of David Secter’s truly pioneering Winter Kept Us Warm!
Made for $8,000 with a cast that entirely worked for free, Winter Kept Us Warm was shot via guerrilla filmmaking tactics mostly on the downtown campus of the University of Toronto, where Secter was a student at the time. It was a major breakthrough for its depiction of queer characters as fully dimensional, and even became the first English-language Canadian film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival.
David Cronenberg, who was a classmate of Secter’s at the time, has cited the film as a major influence on him, saying: “I can’t say that the University of Toronto led me to horror, but why it did do was lead me to cinema… Winter Kept Us Warmis the most influential film of my life in a weird way.”
With *many* special guests joining us both in person and virtually (more on that to come), save September 29th to come down to Paradise and kick off a fall series that will be very anniversary heavy. You can also pick up a copy of this gorgeous poster by Amy Noseworthy, which perfectly encapsulates the mood of this extremely special film. Tickets here!