Join Ilya and Maroula for a deep-dive into trans Byzantium.
We will read about eunuchs being banned from monasteries for fear of the gender trouble they could cause, trans monks mortifying their flesh through working out too hard, and ordinary trans girls playing with dolls to the consternation of famous intellectuals. We’ll discover some of these sources over a two-hour session of discussion and guided creative writing that brings past and present together.
Join members of the team behind the 'Forgotten Battles: Gender in the Armouries' project to discover the hidden queer histories within the Royal Armouries Museum - and get your hands on some objects from the collection! Created by local queer people, 'Forgotten Battles' is a trail and exhibition (on display until November) which reclaims the Royal Armouries as a queer space, revealing hidden stories of gender within the museum.
Ability level: Advanced beginner level. Ability to stand, stop, turn and push a skateboard with confidence are essential.
This is a free bookable skate session for marginalised gender skateboarders aged 16+ with Skateboard GB accredited coach Ro Elliott. In this two-hour session you will get to explore the skateable sculptures by artist Dani Abulhawa titled Drift Tricks using your boards and your bodies in different ways. Book a free place, have a skate, meet some folks and learn something new!
More about Drift Tricks
QUEER HISTORY TOURS ARE BACK!
Join Hold It Up Collective or Kit Heyam for a jaunt round Leeds visiting queer history landmarks. You'll hear about the first ever national trans conference, the vibrant queer clubbing scene in the 90s and lots of tales of activism, politics, arrests and cottaging.
Be inspired by your local queer history!
The walks are wheelchair accessible.
Join Oskar for a gentle and practical exploration of rest and recovery using qigong practices that are intended to be suitable for all levels and abilities. Qigong (chi gong) is a group of holistic systems developed for maintaining, conditioning and recovering the health and wellbeing of the body. The session will include some moving and stillness (standing, sitting or lying down). Comfortable non restrictive clothing would be best for this session. All movements can be adjusted for different levels and abilities.
Following the screening of the documentary film Queer Mama, join a panel of queer parents for a discussion and Q&A about their experiences and different routes to parenthood.
Facilitator: Kit Heyam (they/he) is a LQFF organiser, writer and historian. They gave birth to their baby in August 2023 and are currently writing a history of trans family.
Try out two different techniques (erasure and cut-up) for using ‘found text’ (e.g. old books) to produce new creative works. This workshop is for anyone who enjoys getting playful with words and paper, as well as for anyone who thrives on weird and sparkling juxtapositions. The ‘vintage market’ of creative writing, found text encourages relaxed and communal writing processes, while provoking questions about what exactly it is that we do when we write.
We're thrilled to be closing our festival with the award-winning documentary Kokomo City.
Filmmaker D. Smith interviews four black trans sex workers in Atlanta and New York City, offering an honest, entertaining, and unfiltered look into their daily lives.
This film is boldly shot in black and white, and creatively produced to go beyond a standard talking heads film. It is challenging, funny, thought-provoking, and an overall awesome way to bring LQFF 2024 to a close.
This documentary examines what horticultures look like when binaries such as nature and culture, human and more-than-human, body and environment are deconstructed in creative ways.
Interviews of eighteen LGBTQIA+ gardeners about their relationships with plants and the land give glimpses of gardening as a resource, a form of resistance, and as places of world-making through alternative queer narratives, spiritualities and grieving rituals.