In an initiative funded by the European Union and the Startup Europe Regions Network, within the scope of the Youth 4 Outermost Regions program, Queer Lisboa was invited to organize a queer film program, to take place in Angra do Heroísmo and Praia da Vitória, which will span three periods in the months of May and June, culminating on the dates of the Azores Pride celebrations, and involving several cultural institutions of Terceira and other social agents.

The Queer Terceira program, all spoken in Portuguese and composed of 14 films, including feature-length and short films, documentaries and fiction, produced in Portugal and Brazil, was put together according to three different themes, which seek to address a set of pertinent issues in the current political and social panorama and their impact on queer people and communities. All screenings and activities are free of charge.

First moment – ​​May 16th to 18th, Auditório do Ramo Grande, Praia da Vitória

Theme: youth, religion and family

In this first moment of our program, we suggest a gaze upon our individual relationship with those places of belonging and growth - the neighbourhood and school, family and religion -, and the frequent urge to break away from these same places, to build those others, where we feel safer and happier: our communities turned into alternative families. Three films help reflect upon this. Lobo e Cão, by Claúdia Varejão, shot in São Miguel, where this search for community is combined with the issue of living in a peripheric region, in a double effort to belong; Pedágio, by Carolina Markowicz, which focuses on family and religion and the very pertinent subject of conversion therapies; and Intransitivo: um Documentário sobre Narrativas Trans, by the Intransitivo collective, a filmmaking based on the idea of ​​belonging and giving voice to a marginalized polyphony that has so much to say and teach.

2nd moment – ​​May 30th to June 1st, Centro Cultural e de Congressos and Recreio dos Artistas, Angra do Heroísmo

Topic: sexual health and mental health in queer people

It’s about memory and the AIDS epidemic that Joaquim Pinto talks about in his autobiographical documentary E Agora? Lembra-me, masterfully filling a huge gap in Portuguese cinema, which historically has always been afraid to address such themes. And if the AIDS epidemic paved the way for greater attention to be paid to sexual health among queer people, mental health has also received special attention, particularly in recent years. Brazilian fiction, A Metade de Nós is of a rare sensitivity in its approach to this theme. In the context of these two screenings, after the screening of A Metade de Nós, there will be a debate with the presence of psychiatrist and clinical sexologist Mariana Bettencourt, and Vanessa Barcelos, a specialist in General Medicine with a postgraduate degree in HIV/AIDS.

Also in this 2nd moment of Queer Terceira, in a special screening in partnership with the Cães do Mar troupe, we present O Carnaval é um Palco, a Ilha uma Festa, by Rui Mourão, a documentary that proposes a look at Terceira's Carnival Dances from the perspective of sexual and gender identity.

3rd moment – ​​June 13th to 15th, Recreio dos Artistas and Lar Doce Livro, Angra do Heroísmo

Topic: activism and queer voices

Over the past decade, Portuguese cinema has been progressively inhabited by a polyphony of queer voices, charged with urgency, eager to make up for lost time, focused on telling their stories, without forgetting our pasts, nor imagining utopias for the future. Alongside the documentary As Fado Bicha, which presents us with one of the most relevant projects in the current music scene and queer activism, this weekend is dedicated to a set of recent short films from those other voices of Paula Tomás Marques, Ary Zara, Sérgio Galvão Roxo, Joana de Sousa, Ricardo Branco, André Godinho, and David Pinheiro Vicente, a director born on Terceira Island.

In recent months we have seen the publication of a series of books that help us trace a much-needed history of queer culture in Portugal. To help us with this reflection, we organized a debate at the Lar Doce Livro bookstore, with the presence of Jó Bernardo, who this year edited “Quem?”, Rute Bianca’s autobiography; António Fernando Cascais, who recently launched the works “Estar Além - A Persona Queer de António Variações”, “Masculinidades debaixo de fogo: Homossocialidade e homossexualidade na guerra colonial” and “Dissidências e Resistências Homossexuais no Século XX Português”; and Isabel Rodrigues, one of the authors of “Dar e Receber Amor em Todas as Suas Formas”.