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We were invited by the amazing Amanda Elizabeth Apgar to present a curated screening program, Fairy Film Festival: A collection of queer and experimental films for children and adults at Pomona College on February 8^th, 2019.  Many students from Amanda’s “Queering Childhood” class were in attendance as well as members of the Pomona College Gender and Women’s Studies Program, faculty and staff and their kids. The experience was made even more wonderful by the attendance of many dear friends: Erin Cosgrove, Ian Ingram, Carrie Ungerman, Chelsea Keene.  The event was sponsored by: Pomona Gender & Women’s Studies Program; Pomona Department of Media Studies; The Claremont Colleges’ Queer Resource Center; and with the generous support of the Johnson Fund.

We were invited by Ingrid Schaffner, Curator and Liz Park, Associate Curator  to curate a program for the Cinematheque, a program of the 57th Carnegie International.

Our program, Tales of Transformation and Belonging is a collection of eight international short films, on which both kids and adults can fly away. Escape to gorgeous worlds of true friendship, magical metamorphoses, and enchanted lands. A swan befriends a hunchback, a mom is an airplane, and a dumpling goes for a ride on a bus. These visually arresting, funny, and endearing films will warm you right down to your toes.

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Hilary Harp traveled to Newcastle, United Kingdom to participate in the Imagine Queer: Exploring the Radical Potential of Queerness Now Conference at Newcastle University, October 12-13, 2018.  She presented Fairy Fantastic!, including a screening of The Sausage, on the panel Disrupting Archetypes.

Conference Program

On Saturday, Oct 20, 2018, Suzie Silver presents research conducted with Hilary Harp that expands our catalog of queer folk and fairy tale films and queer and anti-bullying films for youth as part of the Keyword International Symposium at  Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh.

"In this lively symposium, equal parts public forum and celebration, hear the findings of 20 creative research projects for Keyword: International. Launched in January 2018 as a partnership between Kelly Strayhorn Theater and Carnegie Museum of Art, Keyword: International is a collaborative initiative seeking to creatively define Pittsburgh as an international city at this moment in time.

Twenty applicants were awarded microgrants of $1,500 to support their research. The awardees will present their findings for the first time at this symposium."

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Hilary Harp + Suzie Silver present the inaugural Fairy Fantastic! screenings of Out in the Woods: Queer Folk and Fairy Tales and Over the Rainbow: Queer and Experimental Shorts for Kids of All Ages at Pittsburgh Filmmakers as part of their Luna Park Experimental Film and Media Series.

Out in the Woods includes eleven queer interpretations of world folk and fairy tales including Filipino and Chinese mythologies exploring queer diasporic identities; same-sex love in a prehispanic Mexican ritual; a Samoan Cinderella; and a queer retelling of a Swedish folk-tale about two sisters, three wishes and a calamitous obsession with a sausage. The films in Out in the Woods are both a reinterpretation of traditional folklore or mythology and the invention of a new queer folk culture.

Over the Rainbow: Queer and Experimental Shorts for Kids of All Ages presents eight short films on difference-affirming, gender-variance, and anti-bullying themes. A shy boy’s heart jumps out of his chest to follow a bookish boy right into school – will the shy boy ever get his heart back?  Why are all of Alexa’s favorite things, like car-shaped beds, super balls, and soccer called “boy things?” If your Mom is an airplane, what is your Dad? Can a merman ensnare a beautiful landsman by playing a song from Disney’s Little Mermaid on the violin? Can a bat who sleeps all day find a night-time friend?  The answers to these and many more questions can be found in Over the Rainbow a screening of queer and experimental videos for kids of all ages. The short films in Over the Rainbow are moving, hilarious, beautiful and inventive visions of a genderfluid world.  As finely wrought as they are entertaining, the films in Over the Rainbow will delight kids and parents alike.

Over the Rainbow was preceded by Drag Queen Story Hour presided over by the delightful Akasha L. Van-Cartier.

Press: WESA, Pittsburgh City Paper

April 6, 2018, Harp & Silver presented an overview of Fairy Fantastic! as well as a preview of our curated film program, Over the Rainbow: Queer and Experimental Shorts for Kids of All Ages. This two day conference hosted by University of Pittsburgh explored "how to conceptualize, theorize, and approach research on children and childhood in the rapidly changing context of the twenty-first century."

We learned so much and were inspired by every panel and presentation we were able to attend. Thanks so much to Julian Gill-Peterson and everyone else who helped to put together such an amazing event.
https://www.playingwithchildhood.com/

We are thrilled that The Sausage was selected for inclusion in the second edition of the QUEER KAMPALA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (QUEERKIFF) to be held from December 8^th – 10^th  2017.  The first queer film festival to be held in Uganda, QUEERKIFF celebrates the diversity of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Intersex and Queer communities by providing spaces where Queer films are screened, discussed and celebrated.

The inaugural Queer Kampala International Film Festival was held 9th – 11th, December 2016 at different venues in the country’s capital, Kampala, marking the  first time in Uganda that a festival celebrating and reinforcing the right to be LGBTQI was held.

From the Queer KIFF website:

“History: The inaugural Queer Kampala International Film Festival was held 9th – 11th, December 2016 at different venues in the country’s capital Kampala. Security measures included screening of attendees, keeping the venues secret and mobile daily. The attendants had to go to a different venue in the morning and afternoon. Venues were announced within hours to the event. Encouragingly, the LGBTIQ community, supporters and sympathizers hung in there and religiously followed us to the different venues attracting a turn up of more than 836 visitors with in a space of three days.”

On 8th December 2017, the first day of the 2nd edition of the QKIFF opened in Kampala and was a huge success, the festival sold out. It was however raided by the Uganda police on the second day 9th December 2017 . The Festival was later completed on 28th and 29th December 2017 but held in private spaces and with only trusted persons invited.

News story about the raid from Human Rights Watch.

Learn more about this important festival and their determination to persevere in a hostile here: http://www.queerkiff.com/home/

The Sausage screens at Deep Trash in the Underworld at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club in London on Saturday October 21, 2017.

“Deep Trash is back with a reincarnation of a to-die-for night of live art! Punk witches, cruising and cursing, afro-futurist Voodoo, leaky rituals, feminist sigil magick, queer zombies, camp vampires, anti-capitalist hell-raising, blood-spilling… and many other supernatural experiences!

Deep Trash is a one night only exhibition-cum-performance-club-night featuring live performances, installations, artworks, visuals and videos spread over 3 floors by 40 artists in East London’s Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.”

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We are thrilled to be exhibiting five felt banners related to the Fairy Fantastic! story Better Out Than In in Push Comes to Shove at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.  The exhibition is a  cross-disciplinary collaboration between SMoCA and ASU Intermedia Professor Muriel Magenta, Ph.D., Push Comes to Shove: Women and Power (October 1, 2016 – January 8, 2017) aims to use art as a critical catalyst in rethinking and transforming the advancement of women.

The exhibition will feature 19 artists whose works deal with the themes and issues of how women exercise and think about power. The exhibition is grounded by the experiences of five women who have held positions of great leadership: Kyrsten Sinema, U.S. congresswoman, 9^th District, Ariz.; Rebecca White Berch, former chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court; Barbara Barrett, international businesswoman, former U.S. ambassador to Finland and namesake of ASU’s Barrett Honors College; Diane Enos, former president of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community; and Gloria Feldt, Co-Founder & President of Take The Lead, activist, former CEO of Planned Parenthood and faculty member of the ASU School of Social Transformation.

Trans*studies is a 4-day international academic conference from September 7th – 10th at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Mauro Cabral and Sandy Stone will give keynote talks and international panelists will address topics such as transgender issues, sex/gender variance, gender nonconformity, and diverse embodiments - as well as work that draws upon trans* methodologies to inform research in other areas of inquiry. The Sausage, along with our videos, Eric Moe’s Idyll and Robot Love will screen in the Gallagher Theater at 2:30 on Saturday, September 10th.