QUEER CINEMA CLUB
Queer Cinema Club is more than a film series: it’s a mission to bring Toronto’s LGBTQ folks together in celebration of some of the best queer cinema ever made.
Every month at the gloriously restored Paradise Theatre, curator and host Peter Knegt will be offering queers (and anyone who loves them) a classic queer film, special guests and performers, and some good old fashioned drinks and conversation in the Paradise’s gorgeous lobby bar. Each film is paired with a different local queer artist, who designs an original poster for the screening.
Up next…
On May 27th, we will be continuing our Local Queeroes series by celebrating the 20th anniversary of Ian Iqbal Rashid’s absolutely delightful 2004 romantic comedy Touch of Pink. The screening will be in collaboration with SanghumFilm Collective, and we have invited quite the lineup of special guests: The film’s writer and director (and an absolute local queero) Rashid will be joined by various members of the cast and crew for a Q&A after the film, and the screening will have a very special introduction by Bilal Baig!
Touch of Pink follows Alim (Jimi Mistry), a gay man living in London to escape the domineering eye of his conservative Muslim mother, Nuru (Suleka Mathew), who lives in Toronto. But a surprise visit from Nuru forces Alim and his boyfriend Giles (Kristen Holden-Reid) to play it straight, all with a little help from none other than the spirit of Cary Grant (played by Kyle MacLachlan, no less).
The film was the feature film debut of Rashid, who has since gone on to write and co-executive produce on the Peabody Award-winning series Sort Of (which stars and was co-created by Baig), in addition to a slew of other work in film, television and literature both in Canada and the U.K. We are incredibly excited to welcome him to Queer Cinema Club, as are we to collaborate with Sanghum Film, which is a collective dedicated to showcasing films from the Indian subcontinent and its diasporas. You can read more about their work here.
The screening’s poster was created by Toronto cartoonist and illustrator Sami Alwani, and will be available for purchase before and after the film. Get your tickets here!
And then…
Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine as sapphic headmistresses at a girls’ boarding school in the first mainstream American film to *ever* feature a lesbian character in a leading role? What more could you possibly want?!?
Well if you do want more, we are pulling out a few stops for this screening, which will go down June 5th at 8pm and celebrate not only William Wyler’s 1961 film The Children’s Hour but the release of Julia Erhart’s book about the film for the fabulous McGill-Queens University Press series Queer Film Classics. Erhart will be joining us live via Zoom from Australia to talk about the film afterwards!
And then before, we will be graced by the majestic presence of Miss Juwanna Dewitt, one of the subjects of the latest season of the CBC Arts docuseries Canada’s a Drag and one of the oldest regularly performing drag queens in North America! All we’ll say is Juwanna will be serving 1961 lesbian in her perfomance and you will be living for it. GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!
Erhart’s book will be for sale at the screening, as will this haunting original poster by the wonderful Tess Reid! This will also be the first of several screenings we have at the Paradise this June, so if 1961 lesbians aren’t your thing (which would honestly be kinda tragic for you), there’s more coming…