The Las Vegas Queer Arts Film Festival is two years old now.
Founded by Kris Manzano (UNLV Film Alumni and Instructor), and a superb team of fellow Las Vegas based artists, the festival kicked off with an opening night on November 8th at The Center (The Gay And Lesbian Community of Southern Nevada). Regal Cinemas hosted the festival at the Colonnade location on Novembers 9th and 10th. Narrative, documentary and experimental pieces in short and feature length represented the LGBTQ+ community and their voice in all festival blocks.
One of the works, screened on Saturday, was Unsettled: Seeking Refuge in America by filmmaker Tom Shepard, followed by a Q&A curated by Kynan Diaz and sponsored by the UNLV Film Department and department chair, Dr. Heather Addison.
A feature length documentary, Unsettled unfolds the unsettling story of four queer refugees and asylum seekers: Cheyenne and Marie form Angola, Junior from Congo and Subhi from Syria. The narrative follows three storylines (as two of them have an intertwined story as a lesbian couple) about four human beings and those who cross paths with them. Shepard’s film humanizes the story of folks who are always in danger of becoming “stories” that we only read or hear about with the cold distance that mass media or anecdotes might create. Activists and social workers, attorneys and volunteers, offer help while the bureaucratic labyrinth of the system weaves a never-ending story throughout each respective journey.
The making of this documentary started in 2014 when the political air was entirely different than the post-2016 election era which resulted in new policies and outward attitudes that are affecting the lives of many, including refugees and asylum seekers, in a tremendous way.
The four arrive in San Francisco and their stories take them through different paths; activism and advocacy for LGBTQ+ refugees, romantic relationships, heart break, music and art creation, marriage, housing struggles and the danger of homelessness. We follow them from Emerald City to where they each find themselves by the end of the film.
Produced by Jen Gilomen and Tom Shepard, Unsettled succeeds in showing the audience the other side of a story which might remain unknown to the majority. And through works like this, LVQueersArtsFilmFest gives a voice to those who are rarely, if ever, given a platform by Hollywood or the media. By giving these voices an opportunity to be heard, empowerment becomes a reality, a global community comes together through a local effort and filmmaking and art creation turn into powerful instruments that make positive change a possibility.
