CinemaQ Founder Keith Garcia Celebrates the Festival’s Sweet 16 Birthday This Weekend

Coming up this weekend is my favorite event hosted by Denver Film: it’s time for the CinemaQ Film Festival at the Sie Film Center, Denver’s own LGBTQ+ film festival. I think I might actually enjoy this event even more than the Denver Film Festival itself. Last year was my first year attending CinemaQ, and, on opening night, I was introduced to one of my new favorite films, the brilliantly absurd queer comedy Bottoms. I look forward to seeing what movies I’ll fall in love with this year.

This year’s festival promises to be really exciting as they celebrate 16 years of CinemaQ. For opening night on Thursday they’ll be presenting Aubrey Plaza’s new film My Old Ass, preceded by a Sweet 16 birthday reception hosted by local drag performer Zarah Misdemeanor, featuring food from vegan caterers SRY BB, a cake from vegan, black-and-trans-owned bakery Playhaus Bakery, drink specials, craft stations, and a photo booth!

The weekend promises some of the most exciting new queer films on the festival circuit including Australian transgender-centric horror film Carnage for Christmas, documentary Teaches of Peaches about the flamboyant queer performer Peaches, the powerful new documentary I’m Your Venus about the death of Paris is Burning subject Venus Xtravaganza, and, to close out the weekend, the queer Chinese film All Shall Be Well. They’re also celebrating a new partnership with YouthSeen/Black Pride Colorado called BLQ which will focus on Black queer films. You can look forward to my reviews of some of the films (and all the vegan food) next week.

We took a moment to sit down with Keith Garcia, the artistic director of the Sie Film Center and the founder of CinemaQ, to talk a little bit about the history of the festival and what this year’s edition of CinemaQ holds in store for us.

This is the 16th anniversary of CinemaQ. Is that right?

This is our Sweet 16, indeed.

How did this event first come to come to be?

It actually all started about 19 years ago. I worked with the Center back in their iteration around that time to produce a monthly queer film series, centered around Pride. But then I discovered that there was this large supply of brand-new, queer films that (were) making the film festival circuit. We did CinemaQ as a monthly program for about two or three years, and then it was like, “You know what? There is enough space and time to turn this into a film festival.” So 16 years ago, we switched to it being a film festival, and we haven’t looked back since.

How has it changed over those 16 years?

I’d say it’s only changed as much as queer cinema has changed. If anything’s changed on the physical, it’s that we did it first as two days in a particular month, and then three days, and now we’re a four day film festival.

But ultimately, it’s a matter of each year there seems to be a different direction, progress, setbacks, etc, within the LGBTQIA community and filmmakers are really great about being on top of kind of those movements. So each year defines this path of what’s out there. And it covers the gamut every year of particular themes.

This year, the theme is less centered around any particular subject or topic as much as trying to find the best films that (weren’t) entirely optimistic. Doesn’t mean that any of the films that we’re playing are downers by any (means). But there seems to be this trend, like we’re going to focus on a story or a documentary portrait of some folks that went through a lot of hard troubles.

And there are still, peppered within the festival, some really great comedies and uplifting films. But I’m hoping that this trend of a little bit of pessimism is temporary, and that we as a community can make a little bit more positive stuff for next year. At the same time, the downers are always an interesting challenge when it comes to any film festival. (But) there’s definitely a place for it, as there is a place for every other genre of film within our festivals.

What are the criteria you look for when you pick films for CinemaQ?

Well, it’s always been about (what) I’ve called the three V’s: it’s voices, visibility, and vision. Some of the bigger queer film festivals, like Frameline, they do a couple hundred films every summer whenever they do their festival. That is great. And I love to see that wide swath of films available. But I feel, for Denver, I prefer to always really get down to the cream of the crop. So, from that wide swath of films, I’m like, “What is a film that really seems like it’s got its message succinctly wrapped up, is presenting an original story or vision, and how do these all tie into a good, diverse coverage of the LGBTQIA community?” So that’s really what I look for is these films that are entertaining, thought provoking, challenging, and how we can put it up in this little bow, especially because we really only have about 12 or 13 slots for these films. So I want to make sure that what we’re presenting at CinemaQ every year is literally the best of queer film that year.

Last year was my first year attending CinemaQ, and I got introduced into what is now one of my top five favorite movies, which is Bottoms. That was an amazing way to open it. But I took a little bit of an issue—and I wrote about this—with the closing night film Problemista. I love the movie, I just didn’t understand how it was a queer film. What was your thinking on that one?

Well, the queerness of that film starts with its creator, which is Julio Torres, who is a very out actor, writer, (and) director. And the notion (is) that sometimes the films that we play don’t always have to be signaling the queer flag for the duration of its running time. It’s slowly revealed in the film that the main character, played by Julio Taurus, is queer himself. But really, the core of that is that this is a queer person presenting the story of another marginalized issue, which, in this case, is immigration. And that’s an issue that is affecting a large population of queer people in America and beyond.

This captured all that in a very queer package as well. There’s a very campy aspect to Julio’s writing, and this overabundance of creativity that I like to cement with queer filmmakers. And I think it was just on full display with that film. You don’t have to start the film being like, “Here’s the queer person, and then I’m going to follow this queer story and the issues that come with being queer being the driving force of the film.” When you have a film that is about a million other issues that happen to be put upon a person who’s queer, it’s okay, just given how much film is out there. Queer doesn’t have to be the layer on the very top. Queer can be the sixth layer down, while immigration and all these other things come up on top of that. So that was our reasoning behind supporting Problemista as a closing out film.

This year for your opening film, you have My Old Ass, which, as soon as I read about that, I wanted to see it, and then I was really excited then to see it would be at CinemaQ. Why did you want that one to open the festival this year?

Because it’s a really great comedy, and I’m a big fan of opening a film festival with laughter and a really upbeat direction, knowing that the journey, if you stick with us all weekend at CinemaQ, is going to go in many places, I always like things to start out with a positive bang and then go from there. My Old Ass is hilarious; it’s really fun. Aubrey Plaza, of course, is a really fantastic performer. And it’s got an interesting skew too, along with its scope of the queer lenses that audiences who watch it will discover. So (I’m) excited to put that out in front of everyone.

And what are you most excited about for this year’s festival?

I think I’m probably most excited about announcing a new track of programming that we’re doing here at CinemaQ. It’s called BLQ—or black is really how we pronounce it—which stands for Black Lives Queerly. It’s a new partnership with Black Pride Colorado and YouthSeen to underline very important Black queer stories that oftentimes get pushed down into the margins of things. We’d like to give (them) a place front and center. So our partnership has been launched this year with two amazing films.

(The first is) Any Other Way(: The Jackie Shane Story), which is about an amazing singer, musician from Canada who was trans at a time when it was not at all safe or expected to do so. But they went on to win Grammys and change the direction of music for many people. Their story is an amazing one, and so (I’m) very happy to present that film as one of the of the first in our BLQ track.

And second to that is I’m Your Venus, which takes a look back at the documentary, Paris is Burning, and one of the people that we met in that documentary who famously, when you get to the end of that film, we learn that that person was murdered before the film was released. And Venus Xtravaganza is that person. So this documentary opens up what essentially is still a cold case in the murder of Venus Xtravaganza. (The film) comes at it from two different family aspects, from Venus’s blood family and Venus’s chosen family, and how the two of them worked together so many years later to find some peace for the story of Venus, who became such a personality because of this film, but never got to enjoy the success of the life that they deserved to have had post this film coming out. The filmmakers of I’m Your Venus will be in person for post-film discussion. And we’re just excited to have that hit the community and have a conversation.

(Author’s Note: It occurred to me after the interview was over that Venus Xtravaganza was not Black but was Latina. So I emailed Keith to ask him why I’m Your Venus was included as part of the BLQ track, and this was his response:

The film was chosen by our partners at YouthSeen / Black Pride Colorado for its exemplary intersectionality. Ballroom and ballroom culture is rooted in the Black queer community first but intersects with other POC and non-POC as well, but is first and foremost Black. Venus Xtravaganza was not Black (based on her blood family) but her chosen family within the ballroom and queer community were Black and she became an icon to them regardless of her race. The film further explores that intersectionality with the coming together of her blood and chosen families in an effort to solve her murder and honor her place in the ballroom community as a whole. All of these things are issues that our partners in BLQ face every day and are working towards leading our community to overcome.)

I noticed that, in the program for this year, nothing is technically listed as the closing night film, The last movie is All Shall Be Well, but it doesn’t specifically say “closing night film.” Were you trying to move away from a focus on a closer?

Not really. I don’t know which exact level of programming you’re looking at, but it should say, at the very least, “closing.” We’ve been doing it about five o’clock, too, because sometimes I think, on a Sunday, closing night seems a little like, “I don’t know if I can stay out that late on a Sunday.” But our closing film, indeed, is All Shall Be Well.

We are very excited to present this film as well. It’s a very poignant piece (about) two women in China who’ve had a long relationship for many years, and when one of them passes away, what happens when the other member of that relationship has to deal with that person’s family who may or may not have been aboard their relationship all these years. Real interesting look at another culture’s experience with queer relationships, and especially senior queer relationships, and how that might compare and contrast to how things happen in America.

This is just a little side thing, but I’ve been covering Denver Film stuff for about a year now for OFM, and I’ve been going to all the festivals, and I am vegan. I don’t know who it is who makes sure there’s so many vegan options at all of your events, but I just would like to say “Thank you” to whoever it is, because it’s consistent. Last year, it was Easy Vegan that catered opening night. This year SRY BB, which is also vegan, will be catering opening night, plus a cake from vegan bakery Playhaus Bakery. It’s great.

I think we have enough staff members who, (even) if they’re not vegan themselves, they’re like, “We definitely should be thinking about other people.” And it’s not necessarily falling into the scope of accessibility, but we also take a look to be like, “How accessible can we be to everybody?” That also goes down to receptions and diets and things like that. So we’re always happy to be as all-encompassing as we can for everybody.

That’s all I wanted to go over. Was there anything you wanted to talk about or plug for the festival?

Not really, other than it’s going to be a great four days. Can’t wait for people to pop in and watch all these films and let me know what their favorites were, or what films they had a problem with, or any of it. I’m always down for having conversation about all this stuff.

CinemaQ runs this Thursday August 8 through Sunday August 11. You can get tickets to films from Denver Film.