Celebrating the Queer-core of Adelaide on screen
This month’s Feast Festival is delivering its biggest film program in years, but a smaller film collective screening shorts should be on your radar.
Underexposed (UX) Film Festival: Queer-core is an event screening seven short films from Australian emerging filmmakers at the Mercury next week.
It’s a precursor to Feast’s queer film festival which will screen cult classics like New York ballroom-culture doco Paris is Burning and lesbian indie rom-com Go Fish at North Adelaide’s Piccadilly cinema (Feast’s hub in 2024).
SA filmmaker Jasmin Watkins says UX Queer-core is a nice accompaniment to this year’s queer film offering.
“We’re three days before the queer film festival starts, so, come and see the up-and-coming locals, and then go and see where we hope we’ll end up,” Jasmin says.
Aced It cast L–R: Jackson Barnard, Katherine Sortini, Danielle Lim, Lauren Koopowitz, Isabel Vanhakartano, Michael Katsambis and Timothy Pigott. This picture: Kellie JantkeJasmin’s film Aced It will be screening at Queer-core, which is a comedy following an aromantic, asexual woman who reluctantly attends her 10-year high school reunion and realises she still doesn’t fit in.
Even though back in the day, everyone was, you know, ‘I’m in love with so and so’ or ‘boys, boys, boys,’ whatever the deal was,” Jasmin says.
“Now, they’re all talking about babies and getting married, and she’s not about that and it’s very hard for them to have conversations where they can find common ground.”
Jasmin says she made Aced It because she had never seen an asexual character on screen.
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“When queer stories are represented on screen, it is very much focused on sexuality and freedom to have sex, as opposed to freedom to choose to have sex,” she says.
“So while there are parallels between queer stories of enlightenment or finding yourself, or acceptance, or whatever queer stories want to tell, I feel like an asexual story is sometimes not there.
“I feel like both Aced It and Queer-core, it’s a space for people to see themselves up on screen, to see young people discovering themselves and understand themselves better.”
Jasmin, who wrote and directed, and Aced It producer Jasmin J Leech were eager to have a local screening.
“We wanted to get together, have a low-stakes screening and so why not get together with other queer filmmakers and have a bit of a celebration of the queer core of Adelaide,” she says.
Producer JJ Leech in action. This picture: Drew RossThey teamed up with Sam Sharplin and Maisie Fabry of Counterfeit Collective, a team of artists that create opportunities for local makers “especially those who are up-and-coming and are non-straight-white-guys” to curate this edition of UX.
UX is a Fringe Film Festival highlighting emerging and experimental filmmakers, but this is the first time they’ve put on an event for Feast.
“The Underexposed/Counter Collective crew of Sam Sharplin and Maisie Fabry, but then there’s also myself and JJ leech, we’ve all, I believe, at some point, made a queer story or queer short,” Jasmin says.
“The brief that Feast Festival gave about showcasing strengths and resilience of queer people really resonated with us, with emerging filmmakers as well.
“We have to have so much resilience and then just keep striving to succeed against a lot of odds, and we felt like it worked really well.”
A still from Connies, directed by Matt Sav, written by Patrick Hogan and produced by Elsie Shaw.Subscribe for updates
The UX: Queer-core lineup features five South Australian short films, one from Victoria and one from Western Australia.
Jasmin says when the team was curating, the film Connies, from WA Reflections, a project which tells stories filmmakers find in state library archives, inspired them to include standout interstate films.
“[Connies] looks at the Connections Nightclub on the eve of its 50th anniversary,” Jasmin says.
“It was a real stalwart of queer culture, and especially building and existing in a time where there was a lot of persecution and there weren’t very many safe queer spaces, but Connies really cut through and keeps going to this day.
“We just loved the way that that story was told and we thought, well, we show that sort of stuff here, we might be able to inspire South Australians to go and seek out those stories locally.”
See UX: Queer-Core at the Mercury Cinema on Wednesday, November 20 at 7pm. Tickets are $10–15 and available via the Feast website.
The rest of the UX: Queer-core lineup:
Blue
Created by Linden Roberts, Blue follows the story of a trans girl trying to get ready for her girlfriend’s birthday but a blue ribbon stalks and hinders her every move.
Blue is a film by 21-year-old film student Linden Roberts.Bulldog
A short drama about a complex relationship between two country footballers, written, directed and produced by Tom Lawrence-Doyle.
Bulldog was screened at Adelaide Film Festival and Melbourne Queer Film Festival.Crossroads
Created by Lucas Joseph Stewart Crossroads is a 2D animated music video exploring a queer relationship.
Crossroads is a Victorian short film by 19-year-old artist and aspiring character designer Lucas Joseph Stewart.The Unrequited Life of Farrah Bruce
Written by Daisy Anderson and Claire Hannon and directed by Daisy, The Unrequited Life of Farrah Bruce follows old-school romantic Farrah living in a dating app world who takes her love of love too far and winds up in a facility.
The Unrequited Life of Farrah Bruce was screened at the Adelaide Film Festival and St Kilda Film Festival.