With the film series Queer Rhapsody, there’s no competition – just community.

Organized by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the series is showcasing over 50 queer-centered feature films, documentaries and short films through Sunday. In addition to being hosted at UCLA’s Hammer Museum, the screenings will be held throughout Los Angeles at the Los Feliz Theater, the Egyptian Theater, the Eagle Theatre at Vidiots and the Broad. Moi Santos, one of the senior programmers for Queer Rhapsody, said the film series came from a desire to create space for the LGBTQ+ community to make art and celebrate their shared experiences together.

“We were very clear about this not being a festival, but rather a film series,” Santos said. “We wanted to uplift and showcase the work and move away from a spirit of competition toward a spirit of collaboration.”

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UCLA Film & Television Archive director May Hong HaDuong also emphasized the significance of watching these queer stories among a shared community and the difference in experience it presents for each viewer. As a queer woman of color, HaDuong said film series and festivals were some of the few spaces she could see LGBTQ+ imagery during the ’90s and 2000s, and she still believes having access to these spaces comes with tremendous value today.

“Even though you can turn on your phone or turn on the television and see something queer, the process of seeing something communal and… (having) community is truly, to me, a regenerative experience,” HaDuong said. “Queer Rhapsody being a space where people will not necessarily need to experience their identity in isolation, but around others, is really important.”

When curating the lineup of films, HaDuong said she worked with the series’ creative team – Santos, Martine McDonald, Natalie Jasmine Harris and Daniel Crooke – to ensure there was a variety of distinctive and intimate stories that were given the spotlight.

HaDuong said that Thursday’s screening at the Broad will focus on short films that highlight queer Black joy, while on Friday, there is a series that will look exclusively at memory titled “Queering Memory: Gathering Light Past, Present and Future.” Other screenings also center on the topics of intergenerationality, queer sanctuaries, change and resistance, she said.

“Everyone is so dedicated to thinking about how to reach as many folks as possible,” HaDuong said. “One of the things that the team really saw were the themes across the films that we thought would connect to folks.”

With the large number of submissions Queer Rhapsody received, Santos said the creative team had to carefully craft the thematic meaning they wanted to cultivate when selecting the final lineup. She said this meant bringing their own lived experiences to the process while also prioritizing underrepresented voices within the queer community.

While prioritizing queer artists and audiences was essential in the process, Santos added there was also an underlying goal of generating acceptance and inclusivity from audience members outside of the community.

“What we’ve seen throughout time is that films…really play a significant role in fostering empathy and compassion and understanding, and we’re at a point where division and divisiveness is really heightened,” she said. “What we wanted to ensure was, first and foremost, that we were uplifting and centering queer and trans storytellers, and thereby stories, but also introducing them to a wider array of audiences.”

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“The Queen of My Dreams,” a comedy-drama film written and directed by Fawzia Mirza, will be playing at the Egyptian Theater on Sunday as the final screening of the series. Mirza said the film contains semi auto-biographical elements as it follows a queer Muslim woman and her complicated relationship with her mother.

Mirza said telling this story, which she originally developed in 2012 as a short film and later into a stage play, has been in the works for over a decade and has since functioned as an outlet for her to reflect on her life and journey as a queer artist. Additionally, when it came to joining Queer Rhapsody’s selection, she said she was drawn to the film series’ emphasis on LGBTQ+ art, underrepresented stories and the queer community itself.

“It felt like a no-brainer to bring the film to LA via this screening series, Mirza said. “I’m not making a movie just for me, I’m making it for us, and so I care about the audience and I want us to feel something. I feel like that is part of what Queer Rhapsody is about.”

Ultimately, the lineup of films aims to foster a sense of growth and connection among those who attend Queer Rhapsody, HaDuong said. Whether that be reflecting on other communities or internally, she said this series is an opportunity to see both oneself and others through film.

“What we see on screen can change who we are as individuals and change how we see other people,” HaDuong said. “I really hope that Queer Rhapsody is a place that an audience member can go to see a little bit of themselves and a little bit of other folks at the same time.”

Email Vibhakar at [email protected] or tweet @mayavibhakar.