The 2024 team
The HIQFF team sees itself as a diverse team of queer people who love queer stories and want to bring them to the cinema screen in all their facets. If you share this love, have the desire to promote queer film culture and would like to volunteer, get in touch with us!
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Who are we and what do we want?
The Hamburg International Queer Film Festival is the largest queer film festival in Germany. The festival is organised by a volunteer collective and it is important to us to work with a minimum of hierarchy and on an equal footing. The festival has been organised since 1995 by the non-profit association Querbild e. V., which forms the legal basis of the festival team and helpers. We are a queer team of varying ages: trans*generational.
What unites us is that we are passionate about film and want to use this medium to get people thinking and talking about LGBTIQ+ issues. With the festival, we offer a platform that enables queer filmmakers worldwide to present their work to the public. It is important to us that as many different perspectives and experiences as possible become visible, e.g. through our curated programmes.
What values do we stand for and how do we make them a reality?
As organisers, we strive to create a welcoming and discrimination-sensitive environment for visitors, guests and filmmakers. We stand up for the rights and concerns of queer people in particular. We take a clear stance against all forms of physical or verbal violence and group-based misanthropy: this includes queer and trans* hostility, sexism, racism, fascism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred, ableism, as well as discrimination based on religion, age, social and economic status, neurodiversity or individual ability and appearance.
Our aim is to make the differences and complexity of identities and realities of life visible time and again. We all have different experiences in our every- day lives. In our work, we always try to reflect on our own privileges and our own behaviour.
The festival team – planning, designing and networking
The festival is organised by committed queers for the queer community, the organising team works on a largely unpaid basis. All fundamental decisions are made together as a team.
Until May the team meets every two weeks, and weekly from May onwards, in order to discuss and design the look of the festival in October, and to decide how to make it all happen
This is how we work
During this time, the programme committee also meets weekly to view and discuss by turns short and feature-length films.
The films we show come to us in many different ways: they are submitted via our website, we find them in other festival programmes and they are suggested to us by befriended filmmakers and festivals. In the programming group we screen numerous films over several months and put together a programme. Our aim is to put together a balanced programme of feature films, documentaries and short films. Furthermore, our work repeatedly reveals that queer films cannot be produced equally in all countries and that the stories of marginalized groups are underrepresented even within LGBTIQ+ communities.
This includes work by non-binary filmmakers and trans* artists, women and feminists, and also stories about Black people, People of Color und people with disabilities.
The selection of films always presents us with challenges that we, – white, mostly cis, people – in the programming group, are not always able to deal with sufficiently. When it comes to content, we strive to include affected groups in the decisions for or against films. With curated guest programmes created by groups or people outside the festival, we give other voices a space at the festival. We are continually working to raise our awareness of discrimination and to break down barriers. Once the programme is finalised, we invite film guests for the festival week and look forward to sharing a wonderful festival with them and you.
Do you want to take part?
Many former team members remain in contact after ending active involvement, continuing to help current team members where possible. Nevertheless, the team almost always feels as if it’s operating at the limit of its capacities – a not uncommon aspect of working in voluntary projects.
Would you like to get involved? Read more here!
We look forward to having you on the team!