Over 30 feature and short films have been chosen for the 2023 Damn These Heels Queer Film Festival, a pioneering event showcasing LGBTQ+ cinema and culture. The Festival will take place October 12-15, 2023, in person at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in downtown Salt Lake City, along with a selection of films available online starting October 15th. The Damn These Heels curated lineup of films has been selected by an LGBTQ+ programming committee that has cultivated the most impactful queer films for festival attendees this year.
FEATURE FILMS
While uncovering the origins of homophobia of the conservative church, a gay seminary scholar and a straight activist make a shocking discovery: An erroneous translation in the Bible that has been weaponized against the LGBTQIA+ community ever since.
Growing up, Frankie Gonzales-Wolfe learned to be a fighter, but never imagined having a chance to make history as the first openly elected transgender official in Texas.
Opening Night Film. Post-film Q&A with the film’s subject Frankie Gonzales-Wolfe, moderated by KUER’s RadioWest host Doug Fabrizio.
A teenage boy’s unexpected crush turns a camping trip into a weekend of self-discovery in this heartwarming coming-of-age comedy.
Empty Orchestra is a documentary based in Provo, UT, where a group of self-proclaimed misfits seek alternative methods of devotion and community through weekly karaoke singing.
1982, in the heat of a Sicilian summer, two teenage boys, Gianni and Nino, meet and fall in love. The relationship soon becomes a topic of gossip in the small town and while the two dream of living together, their community is determined to stop it.
Parodying classic Hollywood films about Hollywood, Richard Day’s drag-drama showcase follows three actresses at various places on the Hollywood food chain navigating the minefield of love, aging, and ambition.
When basketball-obsessed Aleks moves in across the street, Asian-Canadian teen Jake finds himself trying out for the basketball team to get his attention in this classic coming-of-age drama set in the digital age.
The coexistence of a family of drag queens and a trans woman who travel by motor-home to Murcia to show their support for a child who was assaulted by another minor at the gates of his school.
In the wildly entertaining and refreshingly unfiltered documentary KOKOMO CITY, filmmaker D. Smith passes the mic to four Black transgender sex workers in Atlanta and New York City.
Novelist Stéphane Belcourt returns to the city of his youth, where he meets Lucas, the son of his first love. Memories flood in: irrepressible desire, bodies coming together, a passion that must be silenced?
Listless Milo becomes the surrogate for an older gay man she meets at a bar. As the pregnancy progresses, she must contend with the implications of their evolving relationship.
Feña, a young trans guy bustling through life in New York City, is afflicted with an incessantly challenging day that resurrects ghosts from his past.
Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism, and put her life in danger.
A smart, varied, rare and risky collection of the best queer short films from around the world this year. This program includes Aikane, Greetings From Washington DC, Mama Doesn’t Want to Go to the Beach, Y, Stone, Apayauq.
Screening as part of the Saturday Short Film Program
Women have been shut out of the financial world, making it almost impossible to get their ideas and inventions funded. This film is a compelling and crucial reminder that money is power and women need it to achieve true equality in business.
Mariña has an intense love affair with Ada when Tomás, a mutual friend, enters the couple’s intimacy. Six moments of the relationship articulate the film, thrown like flashes of light.
The Sunday Short Film Program includes Insta Gay, Shafted, A Spell For Queer Home, Happy BirthGay
Screening as part of the Sunday Short Film Program
Thomas and Oscar are a couple very much in love, but after their first foster child returns to his birth mother, they find they have different ideas about what it means to make a family.
Evading a mob contract on his life, a straight man winds up hiding out at a gay bathhouse.
A down-on-his-luck movie collector discovers a legendary lost film and must deliver it to the right hands before it is lost forever.
An autobiographical documentary by a mother who interviews her transgender son as he comes to his identity, addressing the conflicts, certainties, and uncertainties amidst a deep search for his true self.
As religious discrimination against LGBTQ+ people intensifies in the US and abroad, a team of creatives upends 1700 years of religious iconography by producing photo art depicting Jesus as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
SHORT FILMS
Braiding together embodied exploration, spell songs, stories and wisdom from queer and trans folks across the country, the film asks- what does it mean to be at home as a queer person?
Screening as part of the Sunday Short Film Program
A wounded island warrior falls into a mysterious underwater world and is rescued by a valiant young man.
Screening as part of the Saturday Short Film Program
Apayauq Reitan’s journey of gender, mental health, and purpose on her way to become the first out transgender woman to complete the legendary Iditarod sled dog race.
Screening as part of the Saturday Short Film Program
A whack, irreverent comedy about a black trans woman who tries to dilate, after four years of not dilating, to hook up IRL with her online boyfriend.
Opening Night Film. Post-film Q&A with the film’s subject Frankie Gonzales-Wolfe, moderated by KUER’s RadioWest host Doug Fabrizio.
A kaleidoscope of music, dance, stories and laughter shared at the first gay and lesbian rights march on Washington.
Screening as part of the Saturday Short Film Program
A mom throws her son a grandiose surprise BirthGay party, celebrating a year of his coming out of the closet.
Screening as part of the Sunday Short Film Program
Five queer past and present BYU students tell of their struggle to live truthfully to themselves and their identities while trying to avoid academic and social backlash from the conservative Mormon University.
Martina, a young novice, helps priest Francisco with funeral masses but must confront her own fears and past in the LGBTQ+ community after the death of drag queen Aphrodite, leading her to embrace love and authenticity.
A gay millennial reels after breaking-up with a popular influencer.
Screening as part of the Sunday Short Film Program
A touching tribute to the pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, told through the lens and love of her partner of over 30 years.
A transgender mother resumes her hormone treatment while her daughter begins puberty. Their bodies’ changes make going to the beach a new chore.
Screening as part of the Saturday Short Film Program
The documentary exploration of a three-storey high mural in downtown Portland, Oregon that is dedicated to the Queer community.
A nervous young gay man has an eye-popping first experience hosting a hookup.
A vibrant documentary following local drag in the scene of Utah. Join a group of local SLC queens through their ups and downs, local pressures from a conservative environment, and celebrate the art of drag.
A teenager is rooted to a misunderstanding where he nearly drowned and cannot hide his queer desire anymore.
This standard romantic comedy about finding love in an elevator falls apart when the filmmaker is forced to step out of the fantasy and decide whether he believes in the story he’s telling.
Screening as part of the Sunday Short Film Program
A fluid examination of physical closeness, which matches itself in repetitions, reflections as well as irregularities.
A young woman’s discovery that her father was a transgender woman makes her rethink her childhood.
Screening as part of the Saturday Short Film Program
The hubris of an inept conflict negotiator leads two warring gangs into an 8-way standoff. The consequences are both comical and tragic in this whip-smart short.
An empty paper depicts a struggle between artistic composition and decomposition a woman reminisces on her tumultuous relationship with a former girlfriend.
Screening as part of the Saturday Short Film Program
