Montreal’s Queer Cinema Club
Cultivating Community Through Cinema
This feature is part of Forget The Box’s MTL Event Series.
“I like movies, and I’m queer, and I want to do this,” says Jeremie Romain, the founder of Montreal’s very own Queer Cinema Club. Combining his love for making people discover movies and his desire to establish a recurring project where a community could be built, Jeremie launched QCCMTL in May 2024, giving Montreal queers and film lovers the chance to experience a piece of queer film history in theatres once a month.
In 2022, Jeremie’s friend Peter Knegt began hosting a monthly queer cinema series, known as the Queer Cinema Club, at Toronto’s Paradise Theatre. Wanting to create something similar in Montreal, Jeremie reached out to Peter and asked if he had permission to replicate his concept. Peter, who had wanted to start other branches of his organization across Canada, was fully supportive of Jeremie’s vision, including the use of the Queer Cinema Club name.
Xavier Dolan at QCCMTL by Evan Hughes
Jeremie proposed his idea to Cinema Moderne, a snug, independent theatre located in Mile End. The team at the theatre was very receptive of the plan for QCCMTL, and granted Jeremie full creative freedom to bring his vision to life. With a venue secured, Jeremie began hosting monthly editions of QCCMTL. The club took off much faster than anticipated, and Jeremie was invited to be on the jury for the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma’s Prix Fierté Montréal just three months after inaugurating QCCMTL. Additionally, the club’s seventh film, Mysterious Skin (2004), was introduced by famed Montreal director and actor Xavier Dolan, who considers the film to be one of his favourites.
Due to the limited size of Cinema Moderne, each film screened twice a night, with almost every single one selling out. All of the films are programmed by Jeremie, who tries to diversify the selection to include a range of documentaries, black and white films, Quebecois films, international films, transgender films, lesbian films, and anything else that he considers to be a milestone in film history that people should see. The programming is not exclusive to films with explicitly queer characters, opening it up to cult classics and early representations of “gender fuckery” on screen. Jeremie likes to introduce each film beforehand with little anecdotes about the production and his reasons for selecting them, adding a personal aspect to the presentation.
Collage by Jeremie Romain
Every screening is complete with a custom poster designed by an artist selected by Jeremie, available for purchase after the film. Working with many artists in his career in public relations and having lots of artist friends, Jeremie taps into his network for each film and tries to pair artists, based on their individual styles, with the artistic vision he has for specific films. For QCCMTL’s presentation of Mysterious Skin (2004) last November, Jeremie brought on Keith Goulette for the poster, who was commissioned by film distributor NEON to design the official poster for Oscar-winning Anora (2024). Other than the artists producing the posters, all of the operations, including programming, poster sales, and coordinating with artists, are done by Jeremie. He recently created a Letterboxd HQ account for QCCMTL, which allows them to upload articles, something he’d love to have people contribute to in the future.
After concluding the club’s Cinema Moderne run in September with Victim (1961), a pioneering film in British queer cinema, QCCMTL will make its way to Cinema du Parc on October 30 with horror-comedy cult classic Pink Flamingos (1972). To Jeremie, this move feels like a “natural progression,” as even the smallest theatre at Parc has more than double the capacity of the theatre at Moderne. Next up in November is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fox and His Friends (1975), which follows the misadventures of a working-class gay man who wins the lottery and falls in love with an upper-class man. In December, which marks AIDS Awareness Month, QCCMTL will be presenting BPM (Beats per Minute) (2017), a story of ACT UP Paris activists in the early 1990s combating indifference to the AIDS crisis.
Aside from giving audiences the opportunity to view queer cinema gems in a welcoming environment, Jeremie strives to build community and create different events attached to the club that go beyond the monthly screenings. For this reason, he’s very open to collaborating with other organizations in Montreal, and loves it when people reach out to him with ideas for working together. He currently has a sponsorship and visibility partnership with image+nation, a local film festival about to enter its 38th edition. Jeremie also recently teamed up with Fierté de Québec, bringing QCCMTL to QC with a special presentation of Paris is Burning (1990), which is also his favourite queer film, for Quebec City’s Pride weekend.
Jeremie Romain by Evan Hughes
Something Jeremie hopes to accomplish with the relocation to a larger space is the addition of formal post-screening discussions, giving attendees the opportunity to discuss the films with like-minded people. In addition to the cafe area added during Parc’s recent renovation, he’s open to hosting events at local venues, allowing people to mingle more with fellow attendees. Since Parc is under the same administration as the nearby Cinéma du Musée, which has a stage, the move also presents the possibility of having performance components added to the screenings. Beyond community-building and film history education, Jeremie hopes that the existence of QCCMTL will encourage people to start that project they’ve been thinking about, because “you’ll never regret trying something out, even if it doesn’t work out.” If you feel that something is missing, his advice is to break free from feeling like an imposter and bridge the gap yourself.
With an intriguing selection of films and the potential for exciting expansions in the future, whether you’re interested in film history or you love queer cinema, you should keep your eye on QCCMTL.
More information about Queer Cinema Club Montreal can be found on their Instagram.
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