We’re excited to announce a milestone in the next chapter of our annual queer film festival! Damn These Heels Queer Film Festival has been renamed Utah Queer Film Festival (UQFF), marking the festival’s growth and commitment to representing Utah’s diverse LGBTQIA+ community and its allies. This name change highlights the festival’s evolution and alignment with its vision of greater inclusion, intention, and impact.
KEY EVENTS
Life After Laramie: A Matthew Shepard Memorial Concert (Live Performance)
Sunday, October 27th
2:30 pm
120 min | USA | Musical Performance
Utah Queer Film Festival is proud to present the world premiere live performance of four new musical works that ask: “Where do queer people find Home?” written as a response to last year’s 25th anniversary of the October 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming.
Performed by musicians from the Ballet West Orchestra, NOVA Chamber Music Series, Utopia Early Music, and the Utah Symphony.
About the Program
The program begins with If You Use Your Senses, a new work by Garrett Medlock composed to their own text. The piece will feature Garrett and their husband, bassoonist Dylan Neff.
Medlock and Neff met while undergraduate music students at the U. Garrett is a longtime vocalist with Utah Opera and The Cathedral of the Madeleine. Dylan is principal bassoonist of the Reno Chamber Orchestra.
Composer Miranda Livengood and poet C.E. Janecek’s new folk-infused song cycle, Saddle Stitch Venus, appears next. As a trans woman who grew up in Salt Lake City, Miranda provides a unique perspective on how the impact of the Shepard murder has been mirrored in more recent events in the US.
Livengood grew up in Salt Lake City and studied music at the U; her father, Lee Livengood, is clarinetist with the Utah Symphony, and her mother, Melissa Livengood, is a respected classical pianist. C.E. Janecek is a poet with an MFA from Colorado State University.
Livengood’s piece will be followed by a performance of May Swenson’s Bleeding, set to music by Jared Oaks and performed by bass Yvette Gilgen. Swenson and Oak’s piece examines the ongoing and increasing trauma created when victims are blamed for their own harm — a theme which extends beyond the queer experience to all walks of life.
Oaks is conductor of the Ballet West Orchestra. Gilgen studied at Westminster University and performs with Utopia Early Music.
The evening will conclude with A Boy Like Me, a new work for tenor and chamber orchestra by composer Chris Myers and author Taylor Brorby (Boys and Oil, Coming Alive). Drawing on his own teenage experience, Brorby’s text evokes the memory of a closeted young man in rural North Dakota stunned by the news of Shepard’s murder. How is it possible to find happiness and love if this is how the world treats people like him?
Myers works for NOVA Chamber Music Series and Park City Chamber Music Society. Brorby was the Annie Clark Tanner Teaching & Research Fellow in Environmental Humanities at the U.
CLOSING NIGHT SCREENING – Chasing Chasing Amy
Sunday, October 27th
5:30 pm
95 min | USA | Documentary
12-year-old Sav Rodgers watched the film Chasing Amy, and his life was forever changed. Developing a kinship — and maybe a slight obsession — with it as he grew into his queerness, he decides to fund and direct a documentary that examines its role in LGBTQ+ film culture.
Featuring a post-film Q&A with the film’s director, Sav Rodgers, cast member, Riley Rodgers, and Senior Director of Entertainment & Transgender Inclusion at GLAAD, Alex Schmider.
