Tag Archives: CUFF

Ride, Risk, and Revelation: Jaripeo @ CUFF 2026

Posted on April 2, 2026 by Kevin Allen | Leave a comment

This spring, the Calgary Underground Film Festival returns to Calgary from April 16–26, 2026, bringing some of the most daring and unforgettable independent cinema to the big screen. The Calgary Gay History Project is proud to sponsor one of its standout selections: Jaripeo in its Canadian Premiere on Sunday, April 26, 2026, at 3:30 PM at the Globe Cinema.

Set against the electrifying backdrop of traditional Mexican rodeos, Jaripeo pulls viewers into a world of adrenaline, spectacle, and raw physicality. But this is no ordinary documentary. Beneath the dust and danger lies a powerful, deeply human story about identity, vulnerability, and the hidden complexities of masculinity. Directed by Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, the film offers a rare and intimate glimpse into lives that challenge expectations. In a setting often defined by toughness and bravado, Jaripeo uncovers moments of tenderness, longing, and quiet resistance.

“Dreamlike and frank, Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig’s JARIPEO is a clear-eyed survey of the queer culture that exists within Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos.” —RogerEbert.com

What makes Jaripeo so exciting is its ability to reveal queerness in a place many wouldn’t think to look. It expands the boundaries of queer storytelling, reminding us that 2SLGBTQ+ experiences exist everywhere—including in traditions often seen as rigid or exclusionary.

Expand your understanding of where queer histories live. Join us at CUFF and experience Jaripeo on the big screen!

{KA}

Kokomo City @ CUFF

Posted on April 13, 2023 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

We salute our friends at the Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF) for their ongoing commitment to queer content. Celebrating their 20th anniversary—the festival runs April 20-30, 2023—CUFF is presenting the Canadian Premier of Kokomo City.

Directed by two-time Grammy nominee D. Smith, Kokomo City presents the stories of four Black transgender sex workers in New York and Georgia.

Shot in striking black and white, the boldness of the facts of these women’s lives and the earthquaking frankness they share complicate this enterprise, colliding the everyday with cutting social commentary and the excavation of long-dormant truths. Accessible for any audience, unfiltered, unabashed, and unapologetic, Smith and her subjects smash the trendy standard for authenticity, offering a refreshing rawness and vulnerability unconcerned with purity and politeness.

D. Smith is a two-time Grammy-nominated songwriter-producer who produced and is featured on “Shoot Me Down” from Lil Wayne’s 8x platinum album Tha Carter III and wrote and produced the No. 1 Billboard dance single “Love Yourself” by Billy Porter. She made history as the first trans woman cast on a primetime unscripted TV show. This is Smith’s directorial feature film debut.

“As a Black and trans filmmaker, Smith refreshingly creates the space for [her subjects] to be provocative, raw and daringly glamorous in her taboo-breaking work filmed in gleaming black-and-white and edited with a fiery spirit.” – Harper’s Bazaar

“The principal participants … are an electric bunch, and the diversity of their testimonies propels this worthwhile project into refreshing, uninhibited territory.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Kokomo City screens twice: April 26 at 7 PM and April 29 at 1:30 PM. See you at the festival!

{KA}

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Posted in Gay history, Press Release

Tagged bisexual, CUFF, D. Smith, gay, Kokomo City, lesbian, queer, transgender

Keyboard Fantasies @CUFF

Posted on April 22, 2021 by Kevin Allen | 1 comment

The 18th Annual Calgary Underground Film Festival opens tomorrow. Movie-lovers will be able to stream the bulk of films over ten days from April 23rd-May 2nd followed by three days of drive-ins from June 3rd-5th, 2021. CUFF is featuring a queer history documentary that Calgary Gay History fans might want to note: Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story.

This film, this artist, this music, this story: all rare gems…see this film.”
—Film Threat

Keyboard Fantasies is about Glenn Copeland, a black transgender musician, who emerges from years of isolation to find a dedicated and enthusiastic audience. Attending McGill University in the 1960s as one of the only black students, and one of the only gay students, Beverly Glenn-Copeland was a gentle trailblazer out of sheer necessity.

Later, in 1986, Glenn-Copeland was sci-fi obsessed and living in isolation in Huntsville, Ontario. Glenn wrote and self-released “Keyboard Fantasies.” The album was recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio; the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realized far before its time. Three decades on, the musician—now Glenn Copeland—began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered. Courtesy of a rare-record collector in Japan, Glenn’s music finally finds its audience in the 21st Century. Debut feature film director, Posy Dixon, one of these fans, developed a close friendship with Glenn over Skype. The film is a love letter to the album and the artist.

Keyboard Fantasies won an Audience Favourite Award at HotDocs 2020 and will be streamed on-demand as part of CUFF from April 23rd-May 2nd (Alberta audiences only).