Canadian filmmakers Bruce LaBruce and Louise Weird, both known for pushing the boundaries of LGBTQ film, will be honored at Italy’s Sicilian Queer Filmfest in Palermo from May 25th to 31st.
LaBruce’s latest film, The Visitor, a thought-provoking London-set reinterpretation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema, will premiere in Berlin in 2024 to rave reviews and win the festival’s Career Award, which is dedicated to the versatile Sicilian avant-garde Nino Gennaro. The fest hailed LaBruce, a renowned photographer and artist, as “a master of queercore cinema and New Queer Cinema, a movement that revolutionized contemporary cinema from the Americas to other parts of the world.”
LaBruce’s body of work consists of his first full-length novel, “No Skin Off My Ass!” ‘ (1991), followed by ‘Super 81/2’ (1994) and ‘Hustler White’ (1996). There’s also Skin Flick (2000), The Raspberry Reich (2004), Gerontophilia (2013), and Saint Narcisse (2020).
Sicilian Queer Fest will also celebrate Weird’s first European retrospective, best known for his anthology “Castration Movies,” which follows a trans woman named Michaela “Trap” Sinclair, a Vancouver sex worker played by Weird. Shot largely on Hi8 video cameras, this anthology of castration movies has garnered attention on the queer festival circuit, including Frameline in San Francisco, the Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival, and the Scottish Queer International Film Festival. The first part, “The Trap”, was released in 2024, and the second part, “The Best of Both Worlds”, was released in 2025. The premiere of the first episode of Part 3, The Year of the Hyena, will be shown at the BFI Flare Festival in London.
Weird was praised by Sicilian Queer Fest for pioneering a body of work that is “radically unconventional, rebellious, romantic, comical and humanist” and “definitely deserves to be called ‘New Trans Cinema'”.
It added: “Through these two figures, SQFF will affirm its role as a hotbed of exploration and discovery and host an unprecedented intergenerational dialogue. This is a symbolic passing of the baton from directors who have helped shape visions of freedom and revolutionary fantasies to filmmakers who today explore the contradictions and paradoxes of the queer community with pathos and humor, highlighting the need for new forms of freedom.”
