See Us – Dark Matter: Tampere Film Festival

We see you, we see ourselves, we see how you see us. Now we want you to see us on our terms. 

Cultural Dark Matter is the massive yet mostly invisible web of makers and making from which new stars and movements are born. What moves from the unseen into the institution is filtered through our society’s ableism, classism, racism, queerphobia and transphobia. Marginalised makers are integral to the dark matter, yet they face many more barriers in breaking out of obscurity than more institutionally palatable ‘professionals’. By bringing the emerging, underground and ‘amateur’ to the big screen, The Swedish Archive of Queer Moving Images (SAQMI) is giving space for Sweden’s queer dark matter to speak for itself.

From a saucy tease to surreal dreams, spoken word to big tits and filthy kitchens, this programme features short films ranging from the ethereal to the comedic, the erotic to the furious. Bringing together a diverse range of perspectives, styles and subject positions, this programme focuses on the lenses that queer and trans people use to see themselves and each other, as well as their thoughts of and demands for how people see them.

The film will be followed by the panel discussion ‘Dark Matter: What About Finland?’ which will explore these themes within a Finnish context.

This programme is curated by Sam Message from SAQMI – a platform and an archive for queer moving images in Sweden. As an active archive, it works to make the hidden queer history of moving images visible.

Language: English
Duration: 57 min

More about the filmprogram:

INTERVENTION 1
Kolbrún Inga Söring | Sweden 2021 | Experimental, Documentary | 6 min
Intervention 1 served as an erotic, visual and meditative break to an otherwise heavy e-pub release by internationaleonline.org. The work looks at how we become more tied to online social networks and blurs the line between public and private.

BARA VARA
Camilla Rydberg | Sweden 2019 | Experimental, Fiction | 11 min
The film looks at being in one’s own body, especially for people that identify as women, queer, trans and non-binary. Challenging norms around cleanliness and its relationship to femininity. Camilla breaks bodily ideals by being rowdy and ugly.

BREV TILL MIG SJÄLV ELLER TRANSVÅRDEN ELLER VITA PERSONER
Jon Ely Xiuming Aagaard Gao | Sweden 2019 | Experimental, Documentary | 5 min
A poetic letter from a nonbinary trans person of color as a reply when getting the first letter from the gender clinic in Stockholm, Sweden.

ARE YOU STRAIGHT. FAM?
Veronica Odetunde | Sweden 2019 | Documentary | 8 min
Are You Straight. Fam? was inspired by Odetunde’s poem Straight. and touches on the subject of textured hair and rewriting one’s connection beyond the white norms and beauty standards. The film shows behind the scenes of a photoshoot for the project.

INTERVENTION 2
Kolbrún Inga Söring | Sweden 2021 | Experimental, Documentary | 6 min
Following Intervention 1, Intervention 2 continues to eroticize Zoom as a meeting place where public and private meet. Taking on a cam aesthetic, Inga becomes an object to be desired, both through their own gaze and that of others watching.

BEND OVER, PLEASE!
Saga Bok | Sweden 2019 | Experimental, Fiction | 7 min
A teasing seducer tempts the viewer and invites them to patiently keep watching as they repeatedly put on and off revealing outfits. They moves confidently in the hypnotizing borderland between masculinity and girliness.

THE 4TH ELEMENT
Futuro Berg | Sweden 2019 | Experimental, Documentary | 2 min
Using Odentunde’s poetry, the film explores a complicated relationship with texturized hair. Here, water is both the medium which returns texturized hair to its natural state and the medium over which black and brown people were enslaved and colonised.

SPACE IS QUITE A LOT OF THINGS
August Joensalo | Sweden, Finland 2021 | Documentary | 12 min
Curiosity about a world without gender sets a journey through a world of jellyfish and disco uncles, creating space for four trans people to share how they relate (or not) to their own gender, imagine visions of their own queer utopia, and reveal whether gender can be felt in your toes.