The Massimadi Festival opens its 18th edition on Thursday, October 15, with a free night at Theatre Plaza on St-Hubert: a screening, six live acts and a reception, from 6 to 10 PM.
The performers are Dee Joyce, DJ Tokyo Mamii, Ohemaa, Big Sissy, RèN Darah and Athena Lucie Assamba. The film is an excerpt of My Gender Is Black, Terry Blade’s feature on gender identity, race and emancipation, shown as a Canadian premiere.
Massimadi, the Afro LGBTQ+ film and arts festival run by the Massimadi Foundation since 2009, continues to November 8 at venues across Montreal. This year’s theme is Mémoires vives (Living Memories). The programme counts more than 40 films in seven thematic blocks, with sections on chosen family, Indigenous and Two-Spirit resilience, Black and Queer histories, and Afro-Queer communities in the Antilles and the Guianas.
Several films screen for the first time anywhere, including À minuit les enfants s’éteignent and PLENUM. Canadian premieres include About Face, Fish & Chips, Irmã, Morning Echo, River Mamma and Un été bleu.
Outside the cinema, the group exhibition Le/The Sanctum opens October 22 at the Maison de la culture de Cote-des-Neiges. On Sunday, October 25, the closing programme, Celebrating Our Voices, brings drag, dance, comedy and poetry, followed by a drag party at DD’s Club from 8 to 11 PM. An online programme runs October 26 to November 8, streaming to viewers in remote parts of Quebec and Canada and to Haiti, Cote d’Ivoire, France, Belgium and the United States.
Opening night is free with online booking. General admission is $8, a day pass with panels $12, and an all-access in-person passport $45, plus taxes.
