Lights, camera, resistance: How film schools and queer festivals shape de futures of LGBTQ+ fillmakers

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Enactment Matters: Empirical Perspectives on Curriculum Implementation

Proposal

Around the world, queer representation is under attack. In the U.S., Florida and Texas have been at the forefront of anti-trans bills and book bans that take LGBTQ+ narratives out of schools and libraries. Abroad, queer film is censored or banned altogether, ranging from Hungary to the Middle East. These are not isolated incidents, and they are among a growing wave of cultural and political backlash that endengers freedom of expression and quite literally the lives and safety of queer artists. Here, in this case, then, film storytelling is not entertainment alone, but act of resistance: a way of building a community and of demanding that our very presence and stories are present and matter. This roundtable explores how queer filmmakers navigate two key entry points into the film industry: film schools and film festivals. My ongoing qualitative research, including participant observation at Frameline Film Festival (San Francisco, 2025) and interviews with queer filmmakers from various countries, this study examines how these two institution open (or restrict) the gates to career development, safety, and visibility. At Frameline, I witnessed conversations filled of honesty, and they touch on topics that are often filtered in formal education settings: masculinity, transness, and the loneliness of being a queer artist. These post-screening Q&As often replicated informal classrooms, spaces where lived experience was the leading factor of discourse. Where learning happened in the messy and human moments of storytelling. One director even candidly discussed how portraying queer sex onscreen led to their film being denied state funding, sparking audience debate around artistic censorship and queer visibility.

Film festivals allow raw, unfiltered conversations about queer life, and they often become informa classrooms where lived experience leads the discourse, but film schools may sometimes constrain those conversations under the institutional norms. Sometimes they can operate in ways that limit how queerness can be expressed or studied. This tension raised an urgent question: what gets taught, and what gets left out?
A shared thread across these two places was identified: mentorship. Queer filmmakers often share finding a mentor as the single most transformative factor in their careers, and it can be through academia or within the industry. This insight reframes mentorship from a professional asset to a radical act of peacebuilding as it affirms idenity and helps queer creators feel less alone. This mentoriship is far from neutral - it is a political commitment to hold space for marginalized stories and to challenge erasures. Mentorship becomes a form of resistance.

This roundtable invites participants to critically think about how peace and justice are cultivated in educational settings, and also in creative ecosystems that validate and encourage marginalized voices to speak up. My goal is to collective imagine more inclusive pathways for LGBTQ+ creatives around the globe, with the help coming from within and from outside the community.

Author

• Marcos Vinicius Reginaldo de Souza, Soka University of America