Q! Film Festival as cultural activism: strategic cinephilia and the expansion of a queer counterpublic

This article examines the gay and lesbian Q! Film Festival in Indonesia as a form of cultural activism. I build on Michael Warner’s work to situate the Q! Film Festival as a counterpublic, but argue that QFF’s strategy and tactic, in de Certeau’s terms, demand that we think beyond the oppositional position as a salient feature of a counterpublic. QFF deployed what I call “strategic cinephilia” to assert itself as a legitimate unit in the urban middle-class public culture, expanding its public address and thus destabilizing the notion of oppositionality. I also demonstrate that the recent emergence of religious conservatism has forced QFF to reconfigure its position and find new tactics to negotiate with the confining spaces.