Queer Film Festivals and Urban Space: Reclaiming the City

by Theresa Heath

Overview

This timely and innovative book argues that queer film festivals reclaim urban space for queer women and other marginalised queer subjects through the mobilisation of both material and diegetic space.

It is a response to the loss of queer urban venues and community spaces across across many parts of the Global North and a claim for the political potential of queer film festivals in the context of late-stage capitalism. Drawing from critical events studies, film and film festival scholarship, archival research, cultural geography, and research in the creative industries, the book deploys an interdisciplinary arsenal of tools in order to understand the complexity of festival space. Covering the period from 1980 to the present, the volume posits original case studies of two long-running festivals, as well as analysis of ephemeral, grassroots events. This thorough and critical exploration offers significant insight into the strategies deployed by queer film festivals to carve out queer geographies in the city, and the potential of event-driven place-making to construct alternative morphologies and more equitable approaches to urban space.

This volume will be of pivotal interest to students, scholars, and academics of critical event and festival studies, film and film festival studies, cultural, creative, and media industries, cultural geography, sociology, and urban studies, as well as those with an interest in these areas more generally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040320921
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/10/2025
Series:	Routledge Critical Event Studies Research Series.
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Theresa Heath is Vice Chancellor Independent Research Fellow at Loughborough University London, specialising in queer, feminist, and disability film festivals and cinemas; festivals, events, and urban space; disabled access in the creative and cultural industries; and disability activism. Theresa has a PhD in Film Studies from King’s College London where she researched the relationship between queer film festivals and urban space in the context of increasingly neoliberal approaches to art and culture. She holds an MA in English Literature (1850–Present) from King’s, where she researched queer women’s writing about the city.

Table of Contents

Introduction. 1. Urban Space Reclamation at London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage: 1986-2000. 2. Right to the City? Queer Film Festivals, Neoliberalism, and Urban Space. 3. Experimental Pussies: Queer Film Festivals as Sites of Desire. 4. Running on Queer Time: Imagining Accessible Worlds at Queer Film Festivals. 5. Queer Film Festivals, COVID-19, and Digital Worldmaking. Conclusion. Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

"Queer Film Festivals and Urban Space: Reclaiming the City offers an exhilarating account of the queer film festival’s transformative potential. Writing across film studies, cultural geography, disability studies, and queer and feminist theory, Theresa Heath beautifully synthesises aesthetic, institutional, and activist approaches to queer film festivals and their precarious urban communities. This much-needed book animates a history of struggle to create film culture by and for marginalised people."

Rosalind Galt, Professor of Film Studies, King’s College London, UK

"This book lucidly explores how queer film festivals have the unique power to connect the way films represent ideas on screen with the physical or digital space of the festival itself. Queer film festivals are treated, here, as activist events that boldly claim a space in the city. The connection between different forms of queer worldmaking creates a dynamic space where the relationship between queer people and the city can be rethought, helping to push queer politics forward and imagine more inclusive and fair spaces. Dr Heath’s own lived experiences inspire her to push boundaries, as a producer and as a scholar. She looks into the ways hybrid spaces can produce more accessible, queer, counterpublic events."

Stefanie Van de Peer, Reader in Film and Media, Queen Margaret University, UK

"In this book, Theresa Heath beautifully weaves together a historical trajectory of queer film festivals as regionally specific sites of queer cinema. Informed by her first-hand experience as festival organizer, she connects discussions of programming, activist labor in the face of pressures of neoliberal gentrification and pandemic responses between AIDS and COVID-19 with the struggle to create space for community."

Skadi Loist, Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Germany

From the Publisher