Over 20 feature and 20 short films have been chosen for the 2023 Damn These Heels Queer Film Festival, a pioneering event showcasing LGBTQ+ cinema and culture that is celebrating its 20th anniversary. 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
Featuring rock-star female investors who invest in diverse women entrepreneurs with innovations that will change the world, Show Her The Money reminds us that money is power, and women need it to achieve true equality.
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
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
Featuring rock-star female investors who invest in diverse women entrepreneurs with innovations that will change the world, Show Her The Money reminds us that money is power, and women need it to achieve true equality.
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.