Queer Ground: Body/Land + Eyes to See

Opening the festival, this double bill traces queer belonging through landscape, ancestry and archive, bringing together two films that explore the relationships between identity and the natural world.

Narrated by Khoe Elder Dr Yvette Abrahams, Eyes to See is a contemplative meditation on ancestral queerness, Khoe history, and the interconnectedness of nature and identity. Moving through Southern African Indigenous knowledge systems, the film traces queerness as woven into land, language and spirit long before colonial frameworks arrived.

Directed by Siân A. Williams, Body/Land is an experimental documentary rooted in care-led practices of audiovisual archive remix, interviews and collaborative performance. The film tenderly reimagines rare queer home movies by Oscar-nominated animator Paul Berry, held by the North West Film Archive, alongside regional archival footage and five artist portraits exploring trans and queer selfhood in relation to landscape.