Utah Queer Film Festival 2024 preview 

• Courtesy Photo
• A Long Way from Heaven

When discussing her new role as programming director for the Utah Queer Film Festival—formerly "Damn These Heels"—Cat Palmer expresses a self-deprecating sense of her own limitations. "I'll be honest with you: I am not young," Palmer says. "I think I'm the 'cool mom,' but I'm not. I wanted to have a diverse audience this year, and have [the festival] appeal to a lot of people; it was important to me to have a diverse team on many levels."

Still, Palmer is the first non-male-identifying programming director in the festival's history, and diversity in the programming was a crucial goal for the artist/photographer (and occasional City Weekly editorial contributor), who had already been part of the festival's programming team for six years. This year was going to be a time of transition anyway, with a rebrand designed in part to clarify the festival's mission. "We get submissions from everywhere," Palmer says. "[Damn These Heels] may be precious to our hearts, but when filmmakers from another country are searching for festivals, they don't know what it means."

The mission remains fundamentally the same, though, even if Palmer wanted to use her role to expand the sense of what a queer film festival could represent. "You look at queer space across time," Palmer notes, "it has always been a safe space predominantly run by cis white males. For me, ... we had to celebrate all the letters in 'LGBTQ.'"

Throw in a goal to emphasize Utah filmmakers—including a local short films showcase—and the programming team had an even more challenging task than usual combing through hundreds of submissions for just a few feature and short film slots. "And the ones that we don't program are still really terrific films," Palmer adds.

Palmer's contract for the role of programming director was only for the 2024 festival, and she emphasizes that even agreeing to that role took a lot of consideration. "Nothing I do, I do lightly," she says. So for now, she'll focus on making this festival as successful as possible before looking forward.

"They did discuss potentially lengthening [the contract]," Palmer says. "Let's see how it goes, and we'll approach it again later. It's like pregnancy: You can't ask again this soon."

Program Highlights
A Long Way from Heaven: Director David Sant takes a wide-ranging look through the experience of LGBTQ students at Brigham Young University, with a focus on a controversial re-wording/backtracking of the university's Honor Code language involving homosexual relationships, and a subsequent action to light the trademark mountainside "Y" in rainbow colors. Former students convey the challenge of being queer at BYU, while Sant effectively investigates the history of church language on the subject (including some truly horrifying wink-nudge approvals of gay-bashing). Though brief at only 63 minutes, the feature provides a sensitive portrait of those working for change, and those in whose name they do that work.

• Courtesy Photo
• Chasing Chasing Amy

Chasing Chasing Amy (Closing Night Film): Writer/director Kevin Smith's 1997 feature Chasing Amy has been controversial with the gay community for its cis-white-guy POV on a bisexual protagonist, but filmmaker Sav Rodgers makes a strong case against blanket dismissals. Rodgers—who came out as trans during the making of the film—becomes a central character, explaining how watching the film as an adolescent offered visibility for fluid sexuality and gender roles, and the hope of finding love, even as interview subjects relate various ways in which the film remains problematic. The result is a nuanced, compelling case study for why simplistic binaries aren't useful not only for human experience, but also for the art those humans create.

• Courtesy Photo
• The World According to Allee Willis

The World According to Allee Willis: The titular subject might be best known as a Songwriting Hall of Fame tunesmith—credits including Earth, Wind & Fire's "September," The Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance," the Friends theme "I'll Be There for You" and the stage musical of The Color Purple—but Alexis Spraic's documentary paints an even more comprehensive portrait of the quirky Willis as artist and person. Taking advantage of Willis's extensive video self-chronicling, Spraic explores the role of Willis' identity as a deeply closeted lesbian on her workaholism and need for public recognition of her work. It's a poignant character study of an immensely talented creator who was ahead of her time in some respects, and born too soon in others.