Queer Futures, a series of four short films (each 15 to 20 minutes in length) from Multitude Films, imagines a future as buoyant as it is radical. Anytime we try to shape our future, we find ourselves engaging with the past. But with so much of queer history lost to erasure, we must turn instead to invention. Showing one night only at the Belcourt, Queer Futures finds catharsis and beauty in the power of our collective imagination.
In “The Script,” directors Brit Fryer and Noah Schamus collaborate with performers to explore the trans and nonbinary communities’ careful navigation of the medical establishment. As the directors and actors workshop their fictional scenes of medical appointments, the act of creative play helps unknot some of the deeply complicated emotions tangled up in queer health care.
Lindsey Dryden’s “The Callers” also engages with narrative boundaries, shifting among documentary and fictional narratives to tell the story of England’s oldest LGBTQ phone helpline. Since 1974, queer people have called in for guidance, hope and connection, and after the phone calls end, the helpline volunteers are left to imagine a more glorious future.
Sasha Wortzel’s “How to Carry Water” centers on Shoog McDaniel, a queer, fat, disabled photographer who uses Florida’s immaculate freshwater springs as a backdrop to their dreamy portraits of fat bodies. “MnM,” meanwhile, celebrates the abundant realness and joy of director Twiggy Pucci Garçon’s drag daughters, Mermaid and Milan, who formed a profound connection over their nonbinary identities within the drag ballroom community.
The four films envision a future of communal care and nonconformity, in which our true selves are visible but unpoliced — where the rigidity of language isn’t nearly as important as the fullness of your whole being.
Queer Futures will show at 4:15 and 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 12. Find more info and purchase tickets via the Belcourt’s site.
