Bleach

She made her entrance on the steps of the Historical Museum in 2017. Dressed in a long red gown, with her blonde hair and the voice of an angel, she took Stockholm by storm and has since reigned as Cinema Queer’s official Queen. Now she returns to guide us through this year’s wild opening and to step behind the DJ booth together with Lasse Långström at Friday’s most decadent party. We welcome our revolutionary Queen back to Stockholm to spread her trademark chaos across the entire festival!

Diva Monroe

Meet Diva Monroe –  trans, blogger, activist, and the leading role in Cinema Queer’s featured Queen of Joy. With a long background as a television host and drag superstar, she has since Russia’s full-scale war become best known as an influencer and for her YouTube blog. In Queen of Joy, she speaks honestly and openly about everyday life for the LGBTQIA+ community in war-torn Ukraine, and how, despite all horrors, they continue to live their lives. She will be in Stockholm to open the festival and to take part in a discussion together with Olga Gibelinda following the screening of Queen of Joy.

Funny Livdotter

Funny Livdotter is an artist who works thematically with psychosocial issues, as well as lifting humanity in her hand and studying it like an anthropologist. She is the museum director and founder of the Homografiska Museet, a physical queer museum that purchases five works of art each year that become part of a permanent collection. Here, queer art and queer artists are highlighted – and the question is asked; if queer were the norm, what would storytelling look like then?
The Homografiska Museet is located in Fengersfors, Dalsland – in the park of the artist cooperative Not Quite.

Image:: Naomi Pongolini

Lasse Långström 

Lasse Långström is a film director and artist with a distinctly punk approach to cinema. Together with his crew, he produces anarchist musicals, queer-erotic short films, and a wide range of other works—always with a sharp critique aimed at those in power. He has long been involved in The Homosex Syndicate of Precarious Avantgarde Artists, a queer network of creators teetering on the edge of either a major breakthrough or complete collapse. This year, he joins Cinema Queer in collaboration with 6film to present his latest works. On this occasion, he will also take to the DJ booth, performing alongside Bleach.

Marte Reithaug Sterud & Ann-Christin Kongsness

All the way from Norway come the dance artists Marte Reithaug Sterud and Ann-Christin Kongsness. Sterud and Kongsness met through a theoretical and personal interest in the relationship between dance, body, gender, and performativity. In their earlier production Soft Manifesto, which premiered at Black Box Theatre in 2015, the story was based on an androgynous and ambiguous body. The performance had a playful and fluid relationship to gender expression and moved in and out of different bodily embodiments. For Cinema Queer, they are bringing their latest work Flanell dream – a butch tribute. An artistic and political exploration of what a butch is and can be.

Olga Gibelinda

Olga Gibelinda is a Ukrainian director and screenwriter who has created more than 20 documentary films over the course of her long career. Her work is always rooted in a deep political commitment to minority issues, and she has long been a strong advocate for LGBTQ rights in Ukraine. She is coming to Sweden together with Diva Monroe to present her latest film Queen of Joy and will take part in a discussion following the screening.

Popo Fan

Popo Fan is a Chinese filmmaker and artist based in Berlin, known for his queer documentaries since 2009. His work explores themes of migration, gender, and often blends in comedy or thriller elements. Beyond filmmaking, he has been a longtime organizer of the Beijing Queer Film Festival, teach at the Queer University Video Camp, writes for Chinese media, and occasionally performs stand-up. He loves cooking and singing—and sometimes coincidentally combines the two in his “Kitchen Karaoke” videos, which can be found on Instagram.  At Cinema Queer, he presents a retrospective of his work and this year’s festival vignette.

Team Moldova

Since January 2019, Queer Voices International Film Fest has been organizing the Queer Voices International Film Festival, screening feature films and documentaries about and with the participation of the LGBTQIA+ community around the world. Moldova’s LGBTQIA+ and queer communities are still silenced by structural and social violence, religious dogmas, and traditional patriarchal values. As a result, queer discourse is practically lacking in the Republic of Moldova.