Founded by filmmaker Madeleine Lim in 2000, the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project runs free filmmaking bootcamps; the work is then screened at an annual film festival in San Francisco. This year’s festival opened to a packed house at the Brava Theater Center on June 9. The shorts ranged in subject matter, from the humorous chronicle of “a woman’s struggle to get out of the house” to “trauma and healing,” as two directors put it.
Between bagels at a brunch for filmmakers hosted by author and artist Jewelle Gomez — who wrote the black lesbian vampire novel The Gilda Stories — and her feminist activist spouse, Diane Sabin, BuzzFeed News caught up with a film scholar and some of the writer-directors and asked: