Second Annual QDoc: The Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival
Portland, Oregon – QDoc: The Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival celebrates its second year and rolls out the 2008 line-up. This year's QDoc, which takes place at the Clinton Street Theater, brings strong international flavor with a program of films dealing with LGBT people living in South Africa, Italy, Kenya, Australia, Iran, Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States.
QDoc aims to engage the public on core issues of LGBT identity in politics, history, culture, family, aging and coming out issues, queer diversity, gender and sexuality. Kicking off LGBT Pride Month in Portland, QDoc, is the only festival of its kind in the United States, and only the second in the world, devoted exclusively to documentaries with queer content.
This four day event packs in fourteen award winning films from around the globe and includes visiting filmmakers from as far as Rome to Australia, heading into Portland. From Rome, QDoc welcomes on Opening Night directors Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi, who will introduce and screen the film "Suddenly, Last Winter". Also in attendance are director Johnny Symons to introduce "Men Having Babies: Beyond Conception", director Kami Chisolm to introduce "FtF: Female to Femme", and from Australia, director Poppy Stockwell to introduce "Searching for Sandeep". On Closing Night, co-director Rob Epstein is scheduled to introduce the classic academy award winning, "The Times of Harvey Milk" with special guest Gus Van Sant, who is currently completing work on his new film, "Milk".
QDoc was founded by Portlanders Russ Gage and David Weissman. Gage served for 10 years as the Operations Director of the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the oldest and largest LGBT Film Festival in the world. Weissman is a filmmaker and film festival participant with over 20 years of experience in the field. He is best known for his award winning feature documentary, "The Cockettes" (2002). After only its first year, QDoc was named "one of the top 10 LGBT film festivals in the US" by planetout.com.
The screening schedule for QDoc is attached. For detailed information on the films, visit www.queerdocfest.org.