2025/09-10-11 Our Story (november)

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Details become the main characters
Our Story

From canonical works to the most experimental creations, and from mainstream entertainment to politically engaged narratives, OUR QUEER STORY invites you to explore the rich history of LGBTQIA+ cinema. It seeks to examine the complex relationship between the queer community and the moving image, which has served as both a space for emancipation and an instrument of discrimination. Accompanied by presentations or short contextual introductions, the OUR STORY events are intended for a broad audience as well as for viewers eager to reclaim their own cinematic memory.

November: OUR STORY: Details become the main characters - Annik Leroy

As part of the "Golden Age" focus dedicated to her work, photographer and filmmaker Annik Leroy presents two films that have left a significant impression on her as part of the Our Story series: Macumba, one of Elfi Mikesch's first fiction features, and the more contemporary Transfariana – Un monstruo grande, a documentary by Joris Lachaise. This program is also an opportunity to rediscover a short but valuable document: a trailer of a few minutes, created by Annik Leroy for the first gay and lesbian film festival in the Netherlands in 1986.

"In 1984, I had already met the feminist film collective Cinemien in Amsterdam and created an exhibition, Vrouwen en de cinema, to celebrate the collective's 10th anniversary. They decided to create the first gay and lesbian film festival in 1986, so I made the trailer for it. At the time, it was shown in all the cinemas in Holland and Amsterdam. I shot it on 16mm color film. In a time-lapse sequence, two young women travel through locations from Brussels to Amsterdam and rush into a cinema to watch re-filmed frames from a sequence in Elfi Mikesch's Macumba and one from Patrice Chéreau's L'Homme blessé, which announce the first gay and lesbian festival in Amsterdam."

— Annik Leroy, 2025