SQIFF: Birthday Boy, dir. Leo LeBeau

Birthday Boy, directed by Leo LeBeau and screened at this year’s Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF), perfectly captures this feeling of being on the “wrong” side of the gender binary. It follows the character of Alex, a transgender teenager attending an all-girl’s private school, played by Sebastian Emmerson - an out trans man himself....

SQIFF 2021: Poetics of the Visual

David Ellington stands in front of a wall. He points to the sky, making a bird with his hands. The overlaid text says, “Two birds shoot and dart as one. Around a far, far tree. He runs the distance. And watches the other. Together.”Here, in his film Liberty, Ellington’s BSL is like a dance. Heart...

SQIFF 2021: Aspects of the Embodied Self

Content warning: discussion of self-harm and HIV/AIDs “They need to make sense of this nonsense. Together”, says the voiceover of The Devotions, one of several short films shown as part of the Aspects of the Embodied Self event at this year’s SQIFF.  SQIFF, the Scottish Queer International Film Festival, is hosted each autumn at the...

Trans experience through TTRPGs in ‘Roll For Confidence’

I was ecstatic when indie visual novel game studio Toadhouse Games announced that they were releasing Roll for Confidence, a vignette about a Chinese-American trans woman playing tabletop roleplaying games in an arcade she runs. I had always wanted to see TTRPGs explored through the medium of videogames. Specifically, I wanted to see the experience...

No Story Is Too Small: Becky Chambers In Conversation With Laura Lam

I call Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series “queer domestic sci-fi.” All of the space opera, but all of the internal monologue too. It’s amongst my favourite book series ever, so naturally I was ecstatic when Waterstones announced a virtual talk between Becky Chambers and Laura Lam. Lam is the author of Goldilocks and the co-author of...

Festival In A Box

Propositions for Alternative Narratives from Photoworks is a stunning selection of contemporary photography packaged in an appealing and thought-provoking way. Although every piece is of high quality, the work of three women artists in particular stand out: Pixy Liao, Ronan Mckenzie, and Alberta Whittle. Taking inspiration from Dayanita Singh’s portable exhibitions, the show comes in...

Thoughts on A Fairytale

Like many of us, my favourite Christmas song is ‘Fairytale of New York’ by The Pogues. From the very first lines its sentimentality is grounded in a hard realism, “It was Christmas Eve babe / In the drunk tank / An old man said to me, won't see another one / And then he sang...

WayWORD Festival: Art is Activism

The WayWORD Festival, a student-led creative arts festival run by the WORD Centre at the University of Aberdeen is without a doubt, summed up with the expression “maximum effort, maximum reward,” in terms of the time and energy it took to get it all together, and the obstacles we overcame. The tagline we chose, “unconventional...

Highlights From Hysteria’s First Poetry Slam

Hysteria is an art collective and performance night featuring women, non-binary and trans creatives in Aberdeen, which held their first ever competitive poetry slam on Thursday 13 August over Zoom. Founded by Hanna Louise and Mae Diansangu, Hysteria prides itself on elevating marginalised voices. Since Hysteria hadn’t been charging their regular fee for events over...

The Psychological Effects of Time Travel

Imagine you could go back in time and have a drink with a younger version of your wife. Would it be cheating? What if you went back to the apartment you share? Would it be a betrayal? How do you think the younger version of your wife would feel if she knew? The Psychology of...