Luststreifen - Queer Film Festival Basel

10 Year Anniversary Luststreifen – The Future is Queer

Luststreifen – Queer Film Festival Basel
28. September - 1. October 2017, neues kino & kult.kino basel

Luststreifen – Queer Film Festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary!

It all started as an idea from a few members of the Homosexuellen Arbeitsgruppen Basel – habs, for short – who wanted to create an event that would bring more visibility to their organization. Here we are, ten years later, and Lustfreifen has turned into an internationally recognized film festival.

The past ten years have been marked by constant evolution. During the first two editions of the festival, the emphasis was on gay films. As the festival team grew and became more diverse, so did the focus for the festival expand to honor this diversity.

Luststreifen’s primary focus is now on films that take a critical stance towards heteronormative societal and gender orders, in order to question identity norms and gender stereotypes. We want to capture the zeitgeist by showing and exploring, through film but also through the festival concept itself, new and different images, stories and identities.

In the meantime, we are constantly receiving submissions from all over the world. Aside from the feature films and documentaries, emphasis is placed on the short film program. This year, we have even decided to split this program into two short film blocks: the Shorts and the Liquid Porn Shorts.

There is also some news to share with regards to our venue. For the first time, the festival will be screening in two locations: in neuen kino as well as kult.kino. Pre-ticket sales will take place at kult.kino. This year’s big anniversary party, on the Friday, will take place in the Turbinenhaus of the Aktienmühle.

Ten years Luststreifen – ten years of change, politicizing and visibility. That is our focus for this year’s special anniversary edition.

The Future is Queer!

«The Future is Queer» is a reference to the numerous protest marches that took place globally in 2017. Not a day passes by in which you don’t hear news from and about queer-feminist issues. There is much discussion taking place, both in the media and through social channels, about a new intersectional feminism wave. Meanwhile, activists, politicians and academics have been aware of gender and sexuality issues and complexities for decades, and these topics have long been the focal point of much academic and political work. Still, the present media hype illustrates the new found self-confidence in the queer-feminist movement, which successfully transforms the public discourse through a number of means, both political and judicial means, and by combating prejudice – equally online, through hashtags and information distribution, as well as offline through protests and demonstrations.

This year, Luststreifen wants to reflect this growing self-confidence, not only through our film selection but also by way of our promotional poster design. This is why we have chosen to use in our graphic design the same iconography that is used around the world for queer protest and demonstration signs. In this way, Luststreifen positions itself among and within the queer activist movement.

«When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history.» – Gloria Steinem

The Future is Queer because radical change is here. We are loud, we are self-confident and we are transforming the world.