FAIRY TALES Plus

User Bio

The 14th Annual Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival takes place from May 24 - June 2, 2012 at the Plaza Theatre. We're counting down to our May 2 festival launch by releasing one title every day so make sure to check back daily! Our new website launches May 2 at the same time as our program: fairytalesfilmfest.com

Fairy Tales Presentation Society is a not-for-profit, charitable organization located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada that celebrates and showcases queer culture and artists. Through our artistic adventures the society strives to provide a safe and respectful venue for members of all communities to celebrate queer culture.

Through specific outreach endeavours like OUTReels, we provide diversity education to the local community by using filmmaking and other art forms as educational vehicles.

Lastly, Fairy Tales is poising itself to be a production organization as well as a presenting organization. The latest initiative designed to give young media artists a voice is the annual Youth Queer Media Program: youth take part in a workshop and mentor-driven program that assists them in producing, directing, shooting, editing and marketing their own short digital video. The works are premiered at the festival in a gala setting.

Fairy Tales strives to be a social convener, building the Calgary queer community around the arts and in support of artists. Our organization is evolving into a full queer cultural arts hub that showcases filmmakers, visual artists, musicians, actors and dancers with two annual festivals: Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival (spring) and Q the Arts (fall).

Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival: We present an annual festival of independent films made by and/or about the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, two-spirited and queer community. This important annual event reaches a broad range of audience members looking for challenging and innovative films. Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival is the largest GLBTTQ film festival east of Vancouver and west of Toronto.

Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival has three main objectives:
• To bring a rich selection of seldom-seen films to the Calgary and Southern Alberta audience that—given the limited distribution network—audiences may otherwise not have a chance to see.
• To support the work of local, national and international filmmakers.
• To create an atmosphere of respect, inclusivity, tolerance and pride within and outside, of the GLBTTQ community.

Brief History
The Fairy Tales Festival began in 1999, under the umbrella of the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF), and was incorporated January 30, 2004, as the FairyTales Presentation Society. A governance board runs the society with three full-time staff members in Programming, Operations and Outreach, volunteers and contract staff on an as needed basis. Fairy Tales programming has more than doubled since 1999, growing in length significantly and featuring over 70 works of various genres and lengths, visiting filmmakers, artist talks and panels.