Queer Mvmnt Fest: International Film Screening

Wednesday, June 3, 2025

Doors Open: 5pm

5:30pm Act 1 Films begin followed by Q&A

6:30pm Act 2 Films begin followed by Q&A

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego - La Jolla

700 Prospect St, La Jolla, CA 92037

We’re showcasing queer movement and artistry from across the globe on screen with our 2026 Queer Mvmnt Fest film selections! Following the screening, please join us for a brief discussion with some of the film artists! During the event, you’ll have the opportunity to vote for your favorites, and film prize selections will be announced on the last day of the festival - Sunday, June 7th!

This event is made possible thanks to the MCASD's Prebys Venues and Spaces program.

Learn more about Queer Mvmnt Fest here: https://discoriot.org/qmf2026/

This event is $25 for general admission, $15 for artist/student/low-Income, and $40 for pay-it-forward.

Access

No one turned away for lack of funds. This event is ADA accessible. DISCO RIOT is committed to accessibility and holds with great care the needs of our entire community, especially those who are disabled and economically marginalized. We encourage you to contact Marty (email: queermvmntfest@disoriot.org) regarding any specific accommodation needs or waiver of admission fees.

Location: Please follow the signage to enter via the Coast Boulevard entrance on to Palmer Terrace. A DISCO RIOT and/or MCASD team member will be out front to direct you further to the check-in table. Please email Milana (at communications@discoriot.org) or Marty (at queermvmntfest@discoriot.org) if you run into any issues.

Parking: Downtown parking in La Jolla can take time especially in the summer! Please reserve 15-20 extra minutes of your commute to find parking and make your way to the building. There is often traffic on La Jolla Parkway in the evening so make sure to leave early. If you are able to, consider carpooling. There is free parking (2 hours and unlimited) along Prospect St., Silverado St., and Coast S Blvd.

Meet the Artists:

‘a shy,[RED] moon’ by Okwae A. Miller (he/they)

@okwaemiller /www.okwaemiller.com

Okwae A. Miller is a research-based and interdisciplinary choreographer, educator and community activist that explores curiosity as a mechanism of personal healing, ancestral veneration and the decolonization of black/queer experiences. An Atlanta native, he studied dance at The University of North Carolina, Duke University/ADF and The Ailey School. Nuanced, reflective and athletic, his work has been featured with exceptional acclaim throughout the eastern coast, including New York, DC and the Atlanta since his establishment of Okwae A. Miller & Artists in 2017. Throughout his artistic career, Okwae has collaborated with Spelman College, The Lucky Penny, and T. Lang Dance. In 2022, Okwae relocated to San Diego, to explore intentional displacement in efforts of healing, contemplation and redefinition of process and composition of dance and performance. In his time in SoCal, he completed his IMPACT artist residency at Bread & Salt Gallery where continues to incubate his creative practice.

‘a shy, [RED] moon’ is an integrated choreographic short-film combatting the complex and volatile attitudes of a silent killer that has succeeded in claiming the lives of millions of black gay men, the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Understanding that HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence, we must acknowledge the crumbling and discouraging impact of stigma on kept secrets, personal sickness and community. Employing investigative qualitative research, this work follows the HIV-positive lives of four black gay men within the city of Atlanta. Connected by their status, we will identify with the literal rearrangement, painful past and the powerful gesture of healing from the awkwardness and discomfort surrounding being infected and accepted. Additional research includes a collection of personal essays, Fighting Words by Charles M. Smith; research studies from the Center for Disease Control; and HIV-positive author, Danez Smith, collection of poems, “Don’t Call Us Dead.”

I'm a Person I Promise by Casey Hall-Landers (they/them)

Born and raised in San Diego, Casey Hall-Landers is a production and stage manager, AV technician, choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and accessibility advocate working at the intersection of live arts, disability justice, and performance technology.

I’m a Person I Promise is a short dance film exploring the visibility of identity through the lens of trans and disabled experience. This abstract film follows dancer, Casey Hall-Landers, wearing a patchwork of past and present clothes tied to their gender presentation. As they dance with their coffee date, Forest Lee, paint streaks across their skin and bleeds through the surface of the patchwork. Attempts to stay within the intimacy of the dance and participate in the seemingly normal activities of the coffee date give way and Casey must uncover what they try to hide alone.

Caltrops by Eon Allum (they/them)

@eon_aallu

Eon Allum (they/them) is a queer Asian American dance artist and filmmaker born and raised in San Diego, California. They trained at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts and received their BFA in dance at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University in 2025. They have a love for dance film and use visual effects, makeup, and poetry to craft their worlds.

Their art is drawn from the whimsy and disquiet of modern life, and they ultimately strive to fight the dilution of the soul. They aspire to make more space for queer and Asian voices in the arts and create works that fascinate and comfort through liminality and fantasy.

The crepuscular rabbit emerges from the crevices of humanity's forgetfulness.
Dripping and falling,
You sit on the edge of a dock, gazing into the endless horizon.
You’re made of oil paint, eyes melting into your skull,
waiting for a train that will never come
Never wanting for that train to arrive
If you’ve ever felt the urge to run away, the urge to stop time, you’ve felt it. The longing for the in between, the nostalgia that sticks to you like honey, the desire to desire, but never to have.

Gearwheels by Lázaro Louzao (he/she/them)

@lazarolouzao

Lázaro Louzao (Lugo, 1988) has been exhibiting photography for almost two decades, with eighteen solo exhibitions so far. He started to work in cinema in 2013 as a director, producer and screenwriter, making three short films and a feature film, ‘That Night of November’ (2018), the first LGTB-themed film shot in Galician language. He rerturned to cinema in 2024 with his fourth and fith short, Gearwheels.

The factory closed its doors long ago, but traces of its past activity still remain. What mechanical work was carried out within its walls? What did the workers who dwelled it suffer or feel?

Two souls, lost gears, echoes of the past, wander through the now-decaying space. They reveal with its dance the spirit of that place, which still resonates today in the building's scars.

This piece features full artistic nudity throughout.

Already Within by Shraesht Chitkara (he/they/she)

@sure.ayy.sht shraeshtchitkara.com

I am a LA based movement artist exploring themes of fluidity in gender, tradition, and modern movement. My work encompasses global influences through dance, drawing from kathak, street styles, vogue fem, contemporary forms, and lived experience. I am deeply interested in how movement becomes a site of global storytelling, self expression, and progress.

This dance film reimagines Hindu mythology through gender-affirming storytelling, centering Ardhanarishvara as a symbol of balance. Blending street, contemporary, and South Asian movement, it explores gender fluidity and identity, set to Beyoncé’s “Already,” with my mother’s voice reflecting on representation, community, and queer belonging within cultural narratives.

Abjad Ḥawaz (أبجد هوز) by Hadi Moussally (he/him)

@hadi.moussally www.HadiMoussally.com @SalmaZahore www.SalmaZahore.com @h7o7Studio www.h7o7.com

Hadi Moussally is a Lebanese-born filmmaker, photographer, producer, and performer. Trained in fiction and documentary cinema in France, his work blends genres and disciplines. Co-founder of h7o7, he creates hybrid films spanning fashion, dance, and experimental forms, with award-winning works screened in hundreds of international festivals worldwide.

Abjad Ḥawaz (أبجد هوز) takes its name from the ancient ordering of the Arabic alphabet. Through the body of Salma Zahore, each letter is danced and embodied in the ruins of Barcelona. Blending fashion, music, poetry, and performance, the film reclaims a language often feared and misunderstood, turning it into a celebration of identity, resilience, and artistic freedom.

a subconscious return toward the spaces within your bodily memory by earthfruit (they)

www.erikaaa.info / @earthfruit___

earthfruit is a queer, mixed-race, mixed-species artist, creature, and organism. through tactile, experimental practices with 16mm film and site-sensitive installation, erika contends with how bodies (im)materialize, move, touch, and shift, with attention to complex, interspecies, inter-elemental relationships.

This is about be(com)ing a complex organism through entanglement of celluloid, earth, human. The hand is a site of touch, care, and relation. Hands cycle relentlessly, becoming other hands, becoming other bodies, reaching for modes of survival in our bones, our cells, our gestures.

Soap Armor by Benedito Ferreira (he/him) / Glauco Gonçalves (he/him)

@fbenedito @glauco_goncalves_

Benedito Ferreira and Glauco Gonçalves are Brazilian artists based in Goiás, in central Brazil. Ferreira holds a PhD in Arts from the State University of Rio de Janeiro, with research focused on contemporary photography and video. In recent years, his works have been exhibited in several countries, including Uruguay, Mexico, France, Germany, Georgia, and South Korea, among others. Gonçalves holds a PhD in Urban Geography from the University of São Paulo and is a professor at the Federal University of Goiás, where he develops research on ruins and modern architecture. Armadura de Sabão (Soap Armor) marks the first collaboration between the two artists. In their trajectories, they share an interest in discussions around territory, everyday life in central Brazil, and the multiple forms of queer corporeality in urban contexts.

In the shade of a tropical tree, a cowboy-cria slowly guides his ox cart. Between soap bubbles and latent desire, the journey opens onto an electro-country musical dream in the heart of Brazil’s Central-West.

Spect(RE-)m by MK Ford (they/them)

@mkford.art / @mk.ford / www.mkfordart.com

MK Ford (they/them) is an antidisciplinary dance artist whose work includes performance, choreography, film and visual arts. Presently, MK Ford holds the role of Clinical Assistant Professor of Dance and Media at Arizona State University.

This ScreenDance activates queer imagination through the layered composition of movement, clothing, and fantasy. Themes explored are motifs of codes, gaze, euphoria, magical realism, and technologies of intervention. Implemented in this film are the disciplines of dance choreography and performance, green screen and animation, and cinematography + video editing.

The Colors of Our Flag by Reese Johnson and Kenya Jade Smith

Reese Johnson is a California-based filmmaker and editor. She's collaborated with Aspen Fitness located in Modesto, CA to produce instructional gym equipment videos for their website. She made a short film called STAGNANT that was shown at the Indie Shorts Mag Short Film Festival in 2021. Currently she is working with Girls In Focus in the Los Angeles area to edit their podcast episodes.

Kenya Jade Smith is a Los Angeles-based choreographer and performer. She’s collaborated with musicians, poets, and creative producers across Southern California. Currently she is a Teaching Artist with Pan America Chinese Dance Alliance instructing across elementary schools in Paramount CA teaching Dragon Dance.

The film is a dive into the many vibrant and intimate sides of lesbianism through examination of the flags beautiful colors. To honor how womanhood can be applied or rejected from the individual we wish to share how the choice is ours. Creating a pedestrian structure for the movement vocabulary held weight to our narrative that our identities shouldn’t be denied or forgotten.

Bullying by Christophe Madrolle (he/him)

“Bullying” is a work that poignantly and symbolically addresses the devastation caused by psychological and physical violence experienced at school. This video features a solitary character dancing in an abandoned, stripped-down setting. Little by little, the viewer understands that this figure is the ghost of someone who was bullied—deeply affected, traumatized, and broken by what they endured. The dance, both fragile and intense, takes place around a hanging rope, suggesting that this person took their own life.

ARE YOU HUMAN by Oddalys Salcido (they/them)

Oddalys Salcido is a choreographic media artist born and raised on the internet. Their work slips between movement, technology, and critical theory. Rooted in dance and expanded through screendance, their work invites urgent, joyful, and speculative play toward futures where bold emotionality and radical tenderness are not only possible, but necessary.

Captchas are everywhere and they're getting difficult. People are pushed to absurd and surreal lengths to verify their existence. Are You Human explores the glitching lines between flesh and machine while questioning how dance may be the last indicator of being human.

Q&A Facilitation by Amber St. James (she/her)

Amber St. James is the African Bearded, death dropping & dipping, cartwheeling, split queen known for her revolutionary activist work in and out of drag and her entertaining high energy performances. She is also the First Ever San Diego Mx. Gay and the first ever Mx. International Pride, both of which being gender neutral titles in the International Imperial Court System and the Imperial Court De San Diego. Outside of performing, Amber has been recognized for her amazing work building and sustaining the drag community at San Diego State University along with many other colleges across Southern California.