The Scottish Queer International Film Festival takes place at the end of the month. Paul Cardwell caught up with its director Helen Wright to hear why everyone should be interested.

This year’s Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF) is packing a punch from the Scottish premiere of Strike A Pose, the no-holds-barred look at life as a backing dancer for Madonna, to the world premiere of the BBC’s new Glasgow online show They.

This is just the second year of the event, but it includes an impressive line up of films from around the world – including the Philippines, New Zealand, Germany and Cape Verde – playing at venues across Glasgow from 29 September for four days.

Created by a group of friends, who had visited the London LGBT Film Festival and bemoaned the fact there wasn’t a Scottish equivalent, SQIFF is a not for profit organisation of 10 staff and a 14 strong committee.

"We're excited that the second edition of SQIFF will feature even more diverse representations than last year," Helen Wright the festival’s co-ordinator told TFN.

“With increased resources, we're hoping we'll be able to get the programme out to more people and generally put on a better, slicker event.

“We've also changed things a bit by having more focused strands in the festival, so for example, we have a queer horror retrospective with a range of features, such as Fright Night and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 as well as horror shorts and special guests."

SQIFF’s goal is to get people watching, talking about, and making more queer films because there is clearly a market. An impressive 1,800 people attended last year's inaugural festival. This year it wants to attract even more people with movies that people don't get a chance to see in mainstream cinemas alongside inspiring and informative events that challenge inequality and barriers to accessing the arts.

It does this in part by inviting queer film-related guests, including actors and directors who don't get invited to appear at bigger, mainstream film festivals. It also creates a friendly community space in its hub at Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Arts, where LGBTQ+ film buffs can come together, meet people, and get involved if they want to through additional question and answer sessions, discussions, and workshops.

Knowing how it feels to be excluded from the mainstream, SQIFF has also been deliberate in its attempts to be as inclusive as possible in its programming and accessibility.

Tickets are free for people who are unemployed, refugees, or in the asylum system, and although some of the content is suitable only for adults there are family friendly pieces including a free screening of Pixar film Inside Out at Platform in Easterhouse.

There are also screenings suitable for people 12 and over, such as Coming Out, in which a young man documents his journey coming out as gay to his family and friends, as well as the closing film Real Boy, which documents a trans teenager and his sometimes difficult relationship with his mother.

The committee has also reached out to third sector organisations that is sees as the allies of many LGBTQ+ people for support.

“LGBT Youth Scotland is sponsoring our schools event, a screening of Pride followed by a question and answer session with an original member of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners,” Wright said.

“We have a screening of documentary Intersexion looking at intersex identities with a post-screening discussion led by campaigning group Intersex UK, for example, and a great documentary from Spain called Yes, we fuck! looking at disability and sexuality with the directors in attendance.

“We are also putting on an event around deaf LGBTQ+ experiences with short films, a British Sign Language (BSL) performance from Scottish comedian Leah Kalaitzi, and a panel discussion.

“On the general theme of creating an event accessible for deaf and disabled people, we're pleased to be able to offer audio description for two screenings this year alongside BSL, English subtitles or captions on all films, and good wheelchair access.

“We hope this way to augment SQIFF's reputation for being an open and welcoming festival for all LGBTQ+ people and their allies.”

Like anyone trying to start something new, and like a lot of voluntary organisations, hard work and a good dose of sacrifice has been required from those running the festival.

Creative Scotland has granted it £31,512 to support its programme this year, meaning for the first time Wright, who is 34, and moved to Glasgow from Edinburgh in her 20s, has been able to take a wage.

“We don't have regular funding, so I run SQIFF unpaid year round and ran the festival unpaid last year,” she continued.

“Running a queer film festival is not a thing to do if you want to get rich! However, this year we have more funding and so I can count festival coordinator as a job for several months leading up to the event, which is great. The rest of the time, I work freelance doing a little bit of other film-related work – filmmaking, speaking, or writing – and then I teach English, do proofreading, and work in customer service as well.

“We would like to grow the festival in terms of audience size and number of days it takes place across and number of locations and venues used. However, we also want to keep it as an accessible, community event, so wouldn't want it to become too big and overwhelming. Somewhere in the middle would be good.

“A big aim is to get more resources in so that we can use them to support local filmmakers, so perhaps a biggish cash prize for Best Scottish Short or a pot of money to be able to commission filmmaking projects would be good.

“I have been a big film geek all my life and I didn't feel living in Scotland there was a huge outlet for people who were into films and were LGBTQ+.

“Everyone is very welcome to come along. LGBTQ+ people watch straight films all the time, so why shouldn't it be the other way around?

“I feel like if I was straight, I would want to go to a festival which offered something a bit different from the usual!”