More FIRE!!

The young generations of the “SWANA” countries (i.e., South-West Asia and North Africa) have been fighting resolutely for more freedoms since, one day in December 2010 in Tunisia, demonstrations ignited what would be called the “Arab Spring” and which would spread to different countries in this immense part of the world, with uneven results and progress obscured in the following years by new systems of power and armed conflicts. The LGBTIQ+ groups in these countries have not yet benefited on a large scale from this incipient evolution and are still fighting to achieve fundamental rights.

On the other hand, their queer scenes, spurred by the globalization of social networks or the circulation of LGBTIQ audio-visual productions, have become increasingly visible. And also, what is now an immense SWANA queer community residing outside its borders, is doing an extraordinary job not only to remain linked to its networks of origin, but to increasingly provide them with spaces of visibility and transformative audio-visual tools. The new Arab and Persian queer cinema is not only opening our eyes to its realities, but is also profoundly changing the lives of these groups, offering positive models and references for millions of LGBTIQ+ young people still extremely limited by their social, political and legal environment.

To talk about this slow but inevitable (r)evolution, different Lebanese professionals from the audio-visual world will be with us, the Lebanese queer community being perhaps the most active in this movement: the producer and distributor Amar Sokhen, the director and producer Liliane Rahal, the director Mohammad Moe Sabbah, and the director, with the moderation of photographer and performer Hadi Moussally, aka Salma Zahore.