We're Here All Week: Public Formation and the Brisbane Queer Film Festival

The Brisbane Powerhouse was reopened in 2000, an election year for the Brisbane City Council, by then Lord Mayor Councillor Jim Soorley. Built in a decommissioned power station, the ‘Centre for the Arts’ was one of the culminations of Soorley's $4 billion Urban Renewal Program (‘About Urban Renewal’). It was also a major — $22 million worth, to be precise — addition to the Brisbane arts scene (Buzacott: 11). It is of particular interest, then, that one of the highest profile events of the Brisbane Powerhouse's inaugural program was the first screening of the Brisbane Queer Film and Video Weekend (now the Brisbane Queer Film Festival or ‘BQFF’). Now in its eighth year, and still screened at the Brisbane Powerhouse, the BQFF continues to be Queensland's only regular public film festival dedicated to explicitly queer films. But at a time when queer film festivals around the world are under increasing pressure to disband, given claims that ‘queer’ is supposedly such an accepted part of mainstream media that separate events are superfluous, what role — if any — does the BQFF have in Brisbane's and Queensland's queer culture (see Rich 2006)?