On our 26 November 2007 edition of Subversity, a KUCI public affairs program, we chatted with John Badalu, the founder of the all-free Q! Film Festival, a queer film festival that started in Jakarta and has spread to other towns in the Indonesian achipelago. Badalu discusses why he believes in keeping his festival free of charge and community-based, and how he has managed to keep the state censors at bay.
Badalu was recently on the UC Irvine campus where he met with students and also curated a queer Southeast Asian film shorts program. Badalu is both an independent producer working with some of East Asia's leading filmmakers as well as the director of the Q! Film Festival. The Jakarta-based Q! Film Festival weathered attacks early in its history from fundamentalist religious groups to emerge as the only film festival of its kind in Indonesia with venues in Jakarta, Jogjakarta, and Bali. It is the largest queer festival in Asia. Badalu has served as a juror for the Berlin and Bangkok Film Festivals and as a producer for five independent films.
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