Call for Submissions: Voices of Pride 2011 (India)

Deadline: 21 January 2011


An open call to community writers, singers, poets, authors, musicians, performance artists.

Queer ink announces a special Queer Azaadi Mumbai production..

Voices of Pride 2011: an original evening of spoken word, poetry, & song by and for by our LGBTQI community on 28 January 2011 at Coppergate, next to Candies, Pali Hill featuring

YOU!!

Do you have a sexy story, a hilarious comedy routine, a proudly pink poem, or a superqueer love song to share with your community? Queer Ink is excited to launch its open mic series for 2011 with a special Queer Azaadi Mumbai event. Everyone is encouraged to submit work and share your voice.

Guidelines :

• Please submit 5-7 minutes of your own work (see below, How to Submit, for details).

• Performers should self-identify as LGBTI/queer or, if heterosexual, plan to share work that has substantial queer content.

• Work should be in English or Hindi or, if in another language, include an English or Hindi translation component.

• In limited circumstances, performance of someone else’s writing/music may be undertaken with permission of the original artist; please query.

• A microphone will be available. Sorry, we cannot accommodate requests for other audiovisual equipment. If you will be bringing your own equipment/props or if your performance requires setup time, we would be glad to try to work with you; please let us know with your submission.

• No restrictions on genres (poetry, theatre, stories, songs, etc.). However, performers should have rehearsed prior to the event, to ensure a quality show. Time limits will be adhered to strictly.

• Works containing homophobia, racism, sexism, classism, and personal attacks will be disqualified.

• This is a curated performance event. All performers MUST submit their work in advance to assure allocated timeslot for performance.

If you are interested in performing or have a question, please send an email to events@queer-ink.com NO LATER THAN January 21st. Selected performers will be notified by Jan 24th. Qi and QAM are committed to an inclusive process and will strive to include all performers whose work meet the deadline and follow the guidelines below.

If you would like to volunteer to help organize or assist at the event itself, please email events@queer-ink.com.

More information here.

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Call for Entries: Khashish 2011 Mumbai International Queer Film Festival

Deadline: 15 January 2011


CALL FOR ENTRIES

It is time once again to get ready for India’s largest queer film festival: KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival.

The first edition of KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival 2010 organized by Solaris Pictures and Bombay Dost in association with The Humsafar Trust was held from April 22-25, 2010 turned out to be a milestone event in LGBT movement in India.

It had many first - the first ever queer film festival in India to be held in a mainstream theatre: PVR Cinemas; the first queer film festival in India to apply for and obtain an exemption from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the first ever queer film festival in India to have competitive categories and cash awards.

The four days of the film festival drew an unprecedented audience turnout of over 1200 people who came to watch 110 films from 25 countries. The festival was attended and supported by a host of Bollywood and media celebrities including Celina Jaitley, Zeenat Aman, Manisha Koirala, Rahul Bose, Sanjay Suri, Purab Kohli, Rajit Kapur, Dolly Thakore, Suhasini Mulay, Onir, Mahesh Dattani, Manvendra Singh Gohil and Ashok Row Kavi, to name a few. There was coverage in more than 200 news sites, ezines and blogs with exclusive features in mainstream newspapers in India and leading international newspapers.

KASHISH 2011 to be held in April intends to be BIGGER, BOLDER & BETTER.

We call upon filmmakers, both in India and across the world, to submit shorts, features and documentaries that highlight / focus on gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender characters, communities and expressions.

Requirements-

* Submissions should be of interest to gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, transgendered people. * Films should be submitted only on DVD. We will not be able to preview online. * Films / videos of any length and in any language are accepted. All films, other than in English, should be subtitled in English.
* Each film must be accompanied with a duly filled entry form. Submissions without completed entry form will not be accepted.
* Please note THERE IS NO ENTRY FEE for submission.
* We believe in investing all our resources in showcasing the films to the best possible extent, hence NO SCREENING FEE would be paid to filmmakers / distributors.

CLOSING DATE FOR ENTRIES IS SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 2011.

Entry forms are available on the festival’s website www.mumbaiqueerfest.com and blog http://kashishmiqff.blogspot.com, or write to kashish.miqff@gmail.com.

Entry form here.

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Call for Queer Poetry: Bengalaru Pride Queer Words

Date: 25 November 2010

WHERE : Jaaga, 16/1, Rhenius Street, Off Richmond Road, Opposite Hockey Stadium, Shanthinagar

Let the poetry flow – Queer themed expressions of Pride from poets in our community.

“As part of the upcoming festivities and activities for Bengaluru Pride and Queer Karnataka Habba, we announce Queer Words. Please send your Queer themed poetry submissions, in any language, to queerwords@googlegroups.com. We are looking for submissions that are 5 minutes or shorter. Depending on how many submission we receive, we would love for you to read more than one, so please send us what you’d like. If you don’t have access to email to get us the submissions, please contact us on the site.”

More information here.

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Queer Ink Book Fair at Gulabi Adda

Date: 22 October 2010
26 Dominic Road, Bandra

Queer Ink presents the first in a series of offline events: Qi Book Fair @Gulabi Adda. Over 300 titles in the Queer genre of fiction, non-fiction: romance, erotica, biography, anthologies, culture & history, etc. Books for LGBTQI, cross-dressers, young adults and for families.

The collection of books are published in India and imported are for sale for up to 40% discount (conditions apply.)

Meet authors, be part of a daily prizes and an Saturday evening event.

More information here.

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Call for Entries: The Bangalore Queer Film Festival 2011

Deadline: 15 December 2010

Call for Submissions

The Bangalore Queer Film Festival is open for submissions for 2011.

Send us your films, your friends’ films, your lovers’ films, anything that an audience absolutely must watch – goofy comedies, mind-numbing thrillers, bizarre experimental films, short shorts, long shorts, daring documentaries, historical retellings, animations, music videos, slasher films or slow-mo tales of love.

Bangalore has hosted film festivals on themes related to LGBT or Queer communities since 2003. These smaller events later transformed into The Bangalore Queer Film Festival (BQFF) in April 2009, held at the Alliance Française, Vasanthnagar, Bangalore. This is the BQFF’s third year. As always, we seek to push boundaries, hoping to also push the limits within which filmmakers produce, and audiences view, films. That is therefore what we want from films being submitted for this year’s festival––something straining at the leash that won’t be tied to the usual ideas or forms of expression, or cinematic styles or stories. BQFF 2011––to be held in February 2011––continues on the path to bring you a festival you won’t easily forget.

BQFF Screenings and Cultural Events

This year, like the earlier versions of the BQFF, we will have film screenings alongside panel discussions, performances of poetry, music, drama, dance and exhibitions. BQFF screenings have always had full capacity audiences of all ages and backgrounds. BQFF caters not just to film buffs but also to the general public and anyone interested in films that are not always accessible in mainstream theatres.

Media

Media coverage of the events has been phenomenal with both print and electronic media covering all events and side shows at BQFF. Tie-ups with print magazines like Time Out Bengaluru during BQFF 2010 ensured that the schedule was available to the public at large. Sometimes press reviews of films in the BQFF schedule appear prior to screening bringing awareness to both the festival and its films. BQFF 2010 also hosted the all-India premiere of Tom Ford’s A Single Man in collaboration with PVR Pictures, Mumbai. More such premieres are expected this year.

Organisers

BQFF 2011 is organised by Good As You (GAY), SWABHAVA Trust and We’re Here and Queer (WHAQ!). GAY (www.goodasyou.in) is a support group (est. 1994) for LGBT people in Bangalore and is one of the oldest support groups in India. SWABHAVA Trust (est. 1999) is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation working with LGBT issues, including providing access to support services in Bangalore (www.swabhava.org). Both GAY and Swabhava have co-hosted previous queer film festivals in Bangalore. We’re Here and Queer (WHAQ!) is a queer women’s support group (estd. 2009). All groups regularly organise film screenings at their weekly meetings. All groups are non-funded and operate entirely on donations. BQFF 2010 was organised with the support of donations from the LGBT community and from UNAIDS, New Delhi.

Festival details

The Bangalore Queer Film Festival will be hosted in the last week of February, 2011. The venue will be the Alliance Française de Bangalore.

Submission details

BQFF uses only DVD or VCD formats for final screening. Please send in your screener disk (for preview) to the address listed below. Filmmakers will be notified about selected films and further requests regarding subtitling or better quality disks may be made at the time. All films will be required to have English subtitles for final screening.

BQFF 2011 is a FREE event and no charges are levied on submissions. Additionally, only films that do not carry a screening charge will be accepted.

Please post your screener disks to:

SWABHAVA
4th Floor, M. S. Plaza,
No. 1, 13th “A” Cross, 4th Main,
Sampangiramnagar, Bangalore – 560 027
Karnataka, India
Phone: +91-80-2223 0959

Please mark your submissions: “BQFF 2011”

The last date for entries for BQFF 2011 is 15th December 2010.

For enquiries

Please contact us by email on blrqueerfilmfest@gmail.com

More information here.

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Call for Submissions, Feminisms, Queer Politics, Sexual Minorities

Deadline: 31 October 2010

Annual International Conference | Dept of English, University of Delhi

February 14-16, 2011

Feminisms and modernities have had a long and interlocked history. Now that we are, arguably, in a post-feminist, post-modern era, is it a fitting moment to stop and take stock of this critical encounter?

This provocation emerges out of a particular trajectory of debates, controversies and confrontations in gender studies over the past two decades. Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) destabilised understandings of these interlocked categories about two decades after feminism emerged as a serious tool of critical inquiry. In 1990, also, Gayatri Spivak in The Postcolonial Critic re-located critical feminisms outside the Anglophone world.

As a result of such foundational interventions, gender and modernities have encountered each other in and across unlikely cultural geographies, and have produced unforeseen critical progeny. Recent developments, in particular, dislocate any universalist assumption behind such mercurial categories, and allow us to re-conceptualize both gender and modernities across multiple spatial coordinates spanning innovative understandings of postcolonial feminisms, queer studies, performance/film studies, legal studies and so forth. Following on leads offered by such significant scholarship in these areas, this conference in the 21st century will look for fresh evaluations of modernities and gender across the arts and social sciences. The conference will seek to understand the complex interactions of gender/sexualities with a large array of social identifications including race, class, nation and caste within the framework of modernities across literatures, cinema, art, music, dance, photography and theatre in western as well as in post/neo/colonial sites.

Possible topics may include but are not restricted to:

· Literary modernity and gendered politics
· Sexualities and contemporary modernities
· Queer politics and cultural tropes
· Postfeminist interventions and contemporary frames of knowledge
· Reframing political thought and gendered citizenship
· The gendered subaltern and modern historiographies
· Gender, sexualities, and everyday life
· Postfeminist geographies and locational politics
· Metropolitan modernities and feminist interventions
·Gender, sexualities and contemporary visual cultures
· Genres of modernity
· Postsecular interrogations
· Consuming modernities and public/private spaces
· Performing gender and modernities
· Gender and science/technology
· Sexual minorities and contemporary legal discourses
· Class, caste and gendered politics
· Islam, the veil and the West
· Gender and development/environment
· Radical queernesses
· Violence, sexuality and power
· The desiring/desired body
· Affective modernities

Please send your abstract (300 words) and a brief bionote (150 words) to the following email or postal address by October 31, 2010:

DUgendermodernitiesconf@gmail.com

Conference Committee :

Brinda Bose (Director)
Baidik Bhattacharya
Tapan Basu
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (Visiting Professor, 2011)
Sumanyu Satpathy (Head of the Department)

More information here.

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Gaysi is Looking for a Counselling Columnist

Deadline: open

Gaysi Family is looking for qualified (and sane) psychiatrist/counselor to do a bi-weekly column on Gaysi, answering reader's sent-in questions.

Gaysi is a space where the Desi-Gay community comes together and shares personal stories, their triumphs and failures, their struggles and their dreams, their hopes and despair. And in doing so, gives other gaysis a sliver of hope too.

Email - gaysifamily@gmail.com

More information here.

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Gay Bombay Film Festival

When: 8 August 2010
Where: Mumbai, India

Details:

Sunday 08 August, 2010; between 13:30 and 18:30 Hrs. ENTRY ALLOWED FROM 13:15 – 13:30 Hrs. The first film will start at 13:30 pm sharp and we SHALL close the doors after 13:30 Hrs. So be there before 13:30 Hrs.

Venue: Conference Room, Ground Floor, National College, Linking Road, Bandra West,
Mumbai 400 050.

Gay Bombay offers a safe space for non-hetero men to convene, chat, express themselves and support each other. The Gay Bombay Film Festival features films related to this community. The event is free and open to those above 18 years of age.

Read more: Gay Bombay Film Festival | CNNGo.com http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/play/gay-bombay-film-festival#ixzz0w0nYnJBF

More information here.

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Gaysi, India, gay

Gaysi, India, gay
Category: Online Magazine
Founder/Editor: Undisclosed
E-mail Address: gaysifamily@gmail.com

Description:
Gaysi Family was started to provide a voice and a safe space to desis who identify as LGBT. What began as a simple idea of sharing stories about what it meant to be gay and desi (gaysi!) has evolved into a space with multiple authors and multiple sections and traffic from around the world. We, here at Gaysi Family, provide a forum for gaysis with something to say, whether it’s personal opinions, coming out stories, poems, erotic fiction, book reviews, movie reviews, event notices or anything at all that is related to being gaysi. In addition, we also interview published authors, activists that work towards our cause and media personalities.

(Directory entry)

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Queer Ink, India, LGBT

Queer Ink, India, LGBT
Category: Bookstore/Press/Publisher
Founder/Editor: Undisclosed
E-mail Address: books@queerink.com

Description:
There are certain words that, over time, acquire power through hate. There is a history to such things, and then, the long-drawn process of healing. We, at Queer-Ink seek to disempower those who look at others with derision or suspicion or ignorance. We do it not by shutting ourselves out but by embracing the world and all its treasures. We do it through the retailing of books, or the publishing of new works, or even setting up our special Qi Community. After all, this isn’t about being a tribe of its own - a law unto itself, or the kind of flotsam that gets washed on to the shores of a new self-styled ghetto each day. This is about being a part of the WHOLE, but an effusive, assertive, valid part. This is about embracing that whimsical quality that makes each one of us distinctive individuals, irrespective of gender identity or sexual persuasion, irrespective of where we’re placed in the social hierarchy to which we inextricably belong. If you feel you have a whiff of the ‘queer’ about you, and that it adds a special kind of bounce to your stride, do not hesitate to contact us immediately. Queer-Ink is all about the urgency of inter-personal connections. We reach out, so that everyone else can. Queer-Ink has been initiated under the aegis of Offside Enterprises, a partnership of two queer women with over 20 years of experience each in corporate and non-profit sectors, and a shared commitment towards creating empowering and self-sustaining undertakings.

(Directory entry)

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Call for Entries for Art Exhibition - Transportraits

TRANSPORTRAITS: Women and Mobility in the City An exhibition by JAGORI. Curated by Gauri Gill JAGORI presents ‘Transportraits – Women and Mobility in the City’, an exhibition that aims to understand women’s actual experiences of navigating a city. It hopes to include a range of voices; working class women living on the periphery of the city as well as middle class women commuting to work in the heart of the city. The exhibit hopes to include also the voices of the more vulnerable, such as girls, elderly women, disabled women, indigenous women, lesbian and transsexual women, and those from ethnic and cultural minorities. Professional photographers and artists will engage with the issue, alongside laypeople, and collectives such as Blank Noise and Lucida.

We invite you to share your experience as a woman (or thinking about a woman’s perspective if you are a man) in whatever form you are most comfortable with – photographs (even those taken on a cell-phone camera qualify), slogans, collages, illustrations, posters, cartoons or any other kind of scanned artwork that you like.

Selected works will be displayed at the India Habitat Centre during the Third International Conference1 on Women’s Safety: Building Inclusive Cities which will take place on November 22–24, 2010 in Delhi, India. The exhibition will travel to schools, colleges and other public spaces later.

Email address: transportraits@lucida.in

SOURCE

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Call for Films: Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival 2010 - Orissa

Greetings from Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India (SAATHII) and Sampark! Please find below the call for films for Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival 2010 in Orissa. Earlier the film festival was scheduled to be organised on July 2010 but due to some unavoidable situation it was postponed. Now it has been rescheduled on mid August 2010.

Note: Those who have already submitted their films as per the previous announcement in the month of June 2010, please ignore this announcement.

Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival 2010
Call for Films
For the Sixth Edition of Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival in Orissa
from August 13-21, 2010
Entry Closes on: August 3, 2010

Greetings from SAATHII on behalf of Sampark, a civil society advocacy forum for advancing the health and rights of sexual minorities and people living with HIV (PLHIV) in Orissa.

It’s our immense pleasure to announce that SAATHII and Sampark are going to organize “Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival 2010” in Orissa from August 13-21, 2010. This will be the sixth edition of the film festival, and third in Orissa.

Interact Worldwide, London and DFID-Civil Society Challenge Fund, Glasgow are providing us technical and funding support respectively for this initiative through a project titled “Building the Capacity of People Living with HIV and Sexual Minorities in Orissa and West Bengal to Advance their Health and Rights”.

About Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival

Siddhartha Gautam was a lawyer and human rights activist and worked on a variety of issues related to discrimination against vulnerable groups of people inIndia. He was one of the first persons in India to talk about sexuality and HIV/AIDS as human rights issues, and started AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan, the first Indian AIDS activist group, in New Delhi in 1989-90.

This is an effort to continue Siddhartha’s engagement with human rights issues, and through it, pay tribute to his vision and spirit. The event is a humble contribution to remember and take forward the pioneering work done by Siddhartha Gautam to promote and protect the rights of sexual minorities and people living with HIV. In particular, the film festival tries to support and encourage Indian filmmakers.

For the first time, SAATHII and its partner organizations organized the festival in Kolkata in 2003. In 2007, the festival crossed the borders into Bhadrak district in Orissa, the first ever venue for the festival outside West Bengal. Bhadrak was also where SAATHII started mobile film shows, adding another innovation to the Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival agenda.

About SAATHII and Sampark: SAATHII is a registered non-profit organization that strengthens HIV prevention, care, support, treatment and associated gender, sexuality, human rights and sexual and reproductive health initiatives in India. Sampark is a civil society coalition for advocacy and capacity building of sexual minorities and PLHIV in Orissa to advance their health and rights. Sampark was formed in March 2009 as part of an initiative of SAATHII, undertaken in technical partnership with Interact Worldwide, London and with funding support from Department for International Development – Civil Society Challenge Fund, Glasgow.

About Siddhartha Gautam Film Festival 2010

Like 2009, SGFF 2010 would be organized through hall based screenings and mobile film shows. Hall based screenings would be held on August 13-14, 2010 inBhubaneswar and mobile film shows would be conducted from August 16-21, 2010 in some of the selected districts of Orissa.

Festival theme: This year the festival aims to highlight and support legal efforts to protect the rights of people living with HIV and decriminalize same-sex love inIndia. The films will be seen by a diverse audience of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, Kothi, Hijra and other queer people; people infected or affected by HIV; social workers; health care providers; government officials; college and university students; and media persons. Families and friends of queer people and people living with HIV will be especially welcome.

A Brief on SAATHII Rainbow Film Award 2010

We are happy to announce the SAATHII Rainbow Film Award 2010, the first award of its kind in India that honours Indian films portraying sexual minorities, issues that concern them and actors in the roles of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters. The main aim of the awards is to make the “voices of sexual minorities” heard by filmmakers and convey the message that sexual minorities have an opinion on the films that portray them. These opinions should be taken seriously by the filmmakers and other artists involved in the making of films, so that the portrayal of sexual minorities becomes more sensitive and mature. This year the awards would be decided by a five-member jury of community leaders representing the “rainbow diversity” among sexual minority communities. At the end of SGFF 2010, the jury will declare the award winning film(s).

Call for entries

Filmmakers interested in participating are requested send their films in the following format, along with the mentioned documents

a) Format: DVD formats (compatible with Indian systems)

b) Documents : Screening permission letter, synopsis (which should include – film title, genre, production / release year, duration, director’s name, and full contact information - e-mail address, landline / mobile number, complete postal address)

c) Still Images: Also please don’t forget to submit one or two digital photographs of the film

d) Length of Videos and Subtitles: Festival films (shorts, documentaries, docu-features and feature films, music video) of any length suitable to the festival themes will be welcome. But all films must be subtitled in English.

We especially encourage films produced in India and those that focus on the Indian, Indian Diaspora and South Asian contexts.

We will also be approaching a number of filmmakers whose productions are already available in SAATHII’s reference libraries in Kolkata and Bhubaneswar.

Please note that there is no entry fee for participation. All films will be subject to a selection process by the festival jury. SAATHII will be happy to include the films submitted in its reference libraries which together constitute one of the largest resources in eastern India for material on health and human rights.

The selected films along with the festival programming and schedules will be announced on the SAATHII website in the coming days. Please also look out for further announcements.

Deadline for submission: August 3, 2010

All queries related to film submission, selection or any other issue should be addressed to saathiihelpline@rediffmail.com with a subject line “SGFF 2010 – Orissa”

Submission Address: All copies of the films should be sent to the following address (Please write “SGFF 2010 – Orissa” on the cover of your submission)

SAATHII, Bhubaneswar Office
N3/301, IRC Village, Nayapalli
Bhubaneswar – 751 015
Orissa, India
Phone: 91 674 255 2845
e-mail: saathiihelpline@rediffmail.com

For further queries, please contact members of SGFF 2010 organizing committee:

1) Biswa Bhusan Pattanayak
2) K. Santosh Kumar
3) Mitali Mohanty
4) Pawan Dhall

On behalf of Sampark coalition

SOURCE

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