Industry Day

Queer Speed Dating

Victorian Pride Centre, St Kilda

This year Melbourne Queer Film Festival, in collaboration with queer filmmakers Timothy Despina Marshall and Steph Parsons, is excited to present an industry day open to the public!

We’ll have a Q&A panel discussing queer storytelling today and offering invaluable career advice for queer screen creatives. Our line-up includes showrunner, screenwriter and director Tony Ayres, trans horror filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, Production Executive, First Peoples at VicScreen and writer/producer Davey Thompson, and Mardi Gras Film Festival Director Lisa Rose. The Q&A will be followed by networking drinks open to all LGBTQIA+ screen creatives/professionals and their allies.

We’re excited to provide a space for queer creatives to mix and mingle, and maybe even form collaborations for the future!

Victorian Pride Centre, St Kilda

MQFF speed dating returns to help introduce you to that special someone or just as important, your new BFF (best-film-friend). Dust off your Friday night fanciest, get your small talk on, and be ready to date! Speed dating is an all-LGBTQIA+ inclusive event.

Hosted by local comedian Scout Boxall.

“A SUCCESS RATE GREATER THAN TINDER” – PAST MQFF SPEED DATING PUNTER.

Followed by Laugh-Out-Proud Shorts at the Rooftop Cinema.

Limited spaces available. Bookings are essential.

Queer Film Trivia

Homage to Drag

Victorian Pride Centre, St Kilda

Are you a cinephile overflowing with queer film and TV knowledge? This is the event for you. Grab a group of your favourite mates for MQFF’s Film Trivia – hosted by Melbourne drag icon, Frock Hudson, as internationally infamous queen and John Waters cinematic superstar, Divine. With fabulous prizes you don’t want to miss out.

Minimum table of 2. Maximum of 10. Make one booking for your team only.

Followed by The Mattachine Family at the Rooftop Cinema.

Victorian Pride Centre, St Kilda

Requires tickets to Who’s Queen? Shorts package.

In conjunction with our screening of Who’s Queen? Shorts, MQFF takes over the Victorian Pride Centre Rooftop for an afternoon of all things drag. Dressing in drag isn’t just encouraged, it’s practically mandatory! With live performances, a rooftop bar and a good old-fashioned Aussie BBQ with vegan options galore, Homage to Drag is our celebration of Melbourne’s fabulous queens and kings.

It’s A Girl Thing

The Capitol and The Kino Cinema, Melbourne

It’s A Girl Thing is a celebration of all queer women. A night of fascinating film in Melbourne CBD across The Capitol Theatre and The Kino. Join us in The Capitol lounge for a few cheeky surprises throughout the night. Enjoy a fabulous evening of women on film, including Australian outback documentary, Isla’s Way, hysterical new comedy, Cora Bora , sapphic period drama, The Chambermaid and a collection of short films for women-identifying and loving fans in L-Word Shorts.

Filmmaking Masterclass with Goran Stolevski

Queer Film Now: The Festival Experts

The Capitol, Salon

Goran Stolevski’s feature in the MQFF33 program, Housekeeping for Beginners, is this year’s Queer Lion winner at Venice and is North Macedonia’s Oscar candidate. It is Stolevski’s third feature, following his MIFF Opening Night premiere in 2022 with his second feature, Of an Age.

Stolevski was born and grew up in North Macedonia before migrating to Australia as a teenager. He completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne and a Masters in Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts. He won the Rouben Mamoulian Award for Best Director at the 2016 Sydney Film Festival with You Deserve Everything, before attending the Berlinale Talent Campus and MIFF Accelerator, as well as receiving the $50,000 Lexus Fellowship for his short film My Boy Oleg. His 25 shorts have screened at more than 100 festivals across six continents, including the Clermont-Ferrand, Melbourne, Raindance, Adelaide, London Shorts, Iris Prize, Frameline, NewFest and Flickerfest International Film Festivals. He is an alumnus of Screen Australia’s Talent Escalator initiative. He is the director of three episodes of popular Australian adventure series Nowhere Boys. He has written nine feature scripts and his tenth, You’ll Love Me, has received a development grant from Screen Australia.

Stolevski’s masterclass in filmmaking is suitable for aspiring filmmakers and working professionals alike.

Limited spaces available. Bookings essential.

The Capitol, Salon

We’re discussing queer film now – where have we come from and what’s new with Australia’s leading LGBTQIA+ festival experts. Join Mardi Gras Film Festival Director, Lisa Rose, tilde CEO, Ro Bright and MQFF Program Director, Cerise Howard, for this fascinating conversation moderated by MQFF CEO David Harris about how we curate film festival experiences for LGBTQIA+ cinephiles.

Limited spaces available. Bookings essential.

Next Gen: In Conversation with Alice Maio Mackay, Gabriel Carrubba and Zane Borg

It’s a Goal: Queers in Sport

The Capitol, Salon

Join MQFF Program Director, Cerise Howard in conversation with Alice Maio Mackay who, at the age of 18, has already completed four feature films – the Australian premiere of T-Blockersand the Victorian premiere of Satranic Panic are included in MQFF this year – alongside Gabriel Carrubba, the writer-director-producer of the stunning, Melbourne-set Sunflower and his fellow Sunflower producer, Zane Borg.

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas describes Mackay as a ‘one-woman horror filmmaking machine whose already impressive filmography of low-budget genre bangers barely gives us time to exhale before she is ready to throw another one at us.’ Join Mackay to learn about her two titles in this year’s program, as well as leading the way in trans horror filmmaking in Australia, and hear from Carrubba and Borg about what it takes to get a debut feature steeped in lived queer experience in suburban Melbourne off the ground and into cinemas.

Limited spaces available. Bookings essential.

The Capitol, Salon

Gather your teammates for a scintillating day of queers in sport! As a curtain-raiser for screenings at The Capitol of Equal the Contest and Offside Joy FM’s Game On! program host, Jacqueline Shields will moderate an all-star panel featuring non-binary filmmaker and director of Equal the Contest, Mitch Nivalis, co-founder of Proud 2 Play, Dr Ryan Storr and Dr Kasey Symons, Post Doctoral Research Fellow at Swinburne University working within the Sport Innovation Research Group.

They’ll be discussing queers, women and trans and gender-diverse folk in sport, the challenges to getting on the field and the goals we’re kicking.

Limited spaces available. Bookings essential