“My appeal to you is to include OIA as your preferred charity. There are many causes competing for our compassion and money – but there is no one who will take care of LGBTIQ people if not you.”
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It’s been 20 years! Our cover says it all: how much OIA has done, with the help of sponsors and filmmakers – Thank You!
Asinamali – hence the new format programme, but there’s lots more info at www.oia.co.za – especially about the South African and Danish guests. OIA’s in trouble (this may be the last Fest for a while), the country’s in trouble, Police and thieves in the street, scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition (Lee Scratch Perry), the abuse of women, the targeting of black lesbians, what is the government doing with our tax money? NGOs, that do their work, are foundering for lack of funding. So, who’s going to fix it? We must. Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights (Bob Marley).
And, as we’re quoting others who’ve said it better, this is what OIA is really about, in the words of Lana Wachowski, Director: Bound, The Matrix trilogy, Cloud Atlas:
I didn’t want this to be about my coming out [..] fulfilling the cathartic arc of rejection to acceptance, without ever interrogating the pathology of a society that refuses to acknowledge the spectrum of gender in the exact same blind way they refuse to see a spectrum of race or sexuality. [..] fear that seeks to obliterate any evidence that would prove that the world is different from the way they want to see it, from the way they want to believe it to be. Invisibility is indivisible from visibility. [..] this is not simply a philosophical conundrum, it can be the difference between life and death. [..] there are some things we do for ourselves but there are some things we do for others. [..] If I can be that person for someone else, then the sacrifice of my private civic life may have value [..] so that this world that we imagine in this room, might be used to gain access to other rooms, to other worlds, previously unimaginable.
Watch the whole speech on YouTube: