Yearly and almost obligatorily, liberal and inclusive culture publications in Nigeria and Africa, dedicate a large chunk of their coverage during June, Pride Month, to spotlighting positive queer narratives. Writers send profile, listicles and interviews’ pitches to editors who gracefully commission them. These published essays, music and film listicles and video interviews propels the monumental […]
3 weeks ago
Yearly and almost obligatorily, liberal and inclusive culture publications in Nigeria and Africa, dedicate a large chunk of their coverage during June, Pride Month, to spotlighting positive queer narratives. Writers send profile, listicles and interviews’ pitches to editors who gracefully commission them. These published essays, music and film listicles and video interviews propels the monumental rise of positive queer media in Africa. But, it leaves two questions in its wake: the commodification of Pride Month and the issue of access to queer African cinema. Should the celebration around queerness be isolated to just June when it’s celebrated worldwide ? Judging that Pride Month’s celebration is anchored on a revolutionary basis, how can queer spaces separate commercial instincts? Lastly, as culture publications, how do we curate conversation around queerness and other social issues outside of the socially-approved time and moment?
On the question of access to queer media. Mohammed Camara’s Dakan has been recognized as the first feature-length African film that centers African queerness. Entangled in the story of two men who must come to recognize their attraction towards each other whilst dealing with the complexities of their African family, culture, society and religion. This radical film which almost led to the death of its director occupies a god-like position when discussing African queer media. But, despite its towering presence in queer representation, how accessible is the film to queer Africans, curators and film enthusiasts? Outside Camara’s work, there’s Wanuri Kahiu’s Rafiki which will be leaving Netflix this month. Rafiki is considerably accessible when compared to Dakan. But, its being on a streaming platform which economically disenfranchised Africans can’t afford, gives the film an out-of-reach status.
But, to address the two issues: access to queer media and conversation and the non-commodification of queer spaces, the Lagos-based collectives Monangambee Collective, a film collective, and artist collective and community hub, hFACTOR is positioning itself as a third and alternative space for watching queer films, holding conversations and fostering community. According to the Monangambee Collective’s website, the history of what is now called the Lagos Queer Film Festival started in 2021 with Queer Celluloid, a program of queer shorts curated by Monangambee and hosted at hFACTOR. The success of the hFACTOR Pride Festival and encouraging community were motivating factors to create a “fully fledged queer film festival.” This idea birthed, in 2022 and 2023, the Vol.1 & 2 of the Lagos Pride Film Festival and now, in 2025, the Lagos Queer Film Festival. In these years, the festival has successfully screened over twenty films ranging from Nigerian, non-Nigerian, Africans in the diaspora and black filmmakers films. The screenings also accommodate post-screening conversations and interrogations with the directors of programmed films.
Speaking with one of the festival curators Chrystel Oloukoi, a member of the Monangambee Collective, they gave a concise but expansive reflection on the festival’s history, film education and community building intentions and creation of a barrier-free space in Lagos. As they told Culture Custodian, Monangambee, as a collective, is interested in programming and screening historical cinema and guerilla films and, importantly, building a community where films aren’t just seen as consumable products but as media elements and tools that assemble individual and collective thoughts. This intention has guided Monangambee to curate radical, revolutionary, films from the global South, films from the diaspora to Lagos audiences.
For Dolapo Hannah Osunsina, one of the curators of hFACTOR, the intention is to advance the notions of queer safety through programming at the hFACTOR space. As a space curator, she has been leasing and offering space to queer organisers, and also producing a Pride festival when in 2021 Monangambee and hFACTOR screened Ìfé and other queer titles. As a space known for queer safety having bridged and connected queer communities over the years and Monangambee’s professional and curatorial skills, the partnership felt aligned. “Working together was one way to legitimize the festival. The programming was also shaped by our vision: the Official Selection is how we give visibility to our stories and bring everyone together, and the Official Features helps us diversify our palette and stay connected to the global queer narrative,” Osunsina explained. “After the first programming that had a large number of people coming and recognizing that a lot of us in Monangambee and hFACTOR are queer. We decided to continue this programming in an official way,” Oloukoi added.
The jointly-curated festival has been in operation since 2022. In 2024, the death of Nigerian trangender model and LGBTQIA+ activist, Fola Francis and other logistical challenges made it impossible to hold. As Oloukoi explains to Culture Custodian, the festival was renamed to Lagos Queer Film Festival as opposed to Lagos Pride Film Festival in a bid to disentangle it from the annual Pride Month. The nominal decision is important for political and revolutionary reasons. As a collective, they noticed that a lot of queer-focused events happen during Pride Month and because the intention is to continually screen films outside of Pride Month that nominal disentanglement becomes important. Globally, Pride Month celebration has taken a neoliberal approach and shape where identity, in this sense queerness, has become distanced from the radical and revolutionary thinking and impulse that birthed Pride Month. “Pride has become this very commercialized and sanitized event and, as a festival, we wanted to disentangle the festival from that commercialization but center queerness as a radical and revolutionary identity.”
Across Africa, there are state-sanctioned laws that criminalise queerness and palpable tolerance for homophobic attacks on queer Africans. This legislative act has made production and distribution of queer films legally impossible. The resulting effect of this is that there are limited African films and spaces dedicated to queer media. Queer Africans have had to rely on Western queer films that don’t factor in the cultural, historical, social and political framework of African societies. Thus, the question of production and assessing of queer films is an ongoing issue. Kayode Timileyin Olaide, the director of Omooge Kampus, one of the festival selected films, is grateful for the existence of the festival as it affords him, as a queer filmmaker, an ability to screen and distribute their films outside of mainstream and unaccepting film festivals. The director recognized how financially drawing filmmaking is. But, due to security and safety issues, queer filmmakers incur additional costs when factoring in security concerns. This financial challenge and mainstream film festivals unaccepting of queer films as the filmmaker and queer right activists affects the accessibility of films. “To address this, we need more funding opportunities for artists. This financial security will motivate queer filmmakers to place films on free-to-watch platforms like YouTube. Queer-owned streaming platforms can be created too. But, the challenge this will face is limited films due to limited production funding.”
Oloukoi presented a political and decolonialized approach to the accessibility question. They consider the inaccessibility of queer African films, experimental and avant-garde African films to African audiences as the indication of the continuation of colonial domination. They don’t believe there’s a colonial and post colonial period. Rather, what we are culturally and politically experiencing is the afterlives of colonialism. In their response, they analyze how the right of access and distribution to African films which they described as cultural heritage have been monopolised by European cultural institutions and centers like the Goethe Institute, Alliance Francaise and the British Council. “The inaccessibility question and hostage-like posture of African films is similar to that of African cultural and art artifacts locked and displayed in European and Western museums. It’s the same issue of colonial extraction that’s ongoing in the present,” they argued. Contemporary African filmmakers, in their thinking, have a responsibility to Africans in this period of colonial extraction. “I think filmmakers need to have a clear sense of their distribution strategy ensuring that their films screen on the continent. The people whose images are being captured and sold at international film festivals and space deserve a chance to watch the film during its lifespan,” they concluded.
Osunsina’s work as a community organiser/builder, and space manager made her enter the conversation with a peculiar perspective. She realised that spaces are where everything happens, where worlds are built and where communities are hosted and sustained. As she highlighted, if we can identify and occupy spaces grounded in our values, then we can create the freedom to explore, to question, and to have conversations that matter to us. “And if we can go a step further; to have those spaces endorsed, institutionalised, and protected- then we’re not just talking about safety, we’re sustaining it. We’re making it possible for the dialogue to continue and flourish,” she expressed.
Yearly, the festival has witnessed an increasing number and texture of films submitted. As festival organizers, this informs her that conversation around queerness and identity is expanding, deepening, and diversifying. “We’re seeing more of ourselves on screen. And now with the submission of international and intergenerational queer films and influences, there’s a kind of global validation that’s happening. It reminds us that we are part of something bigger; that our stories are part of a global queer community.”
There’s a huge gap as to what constitutes queerness within African and Western framing. As Olaide will explain, it’s a lengthy conversation that has been barely critically discussed. Unmindful of this, they believe that queerness, in the African context, should be seen and framed from the political angle of decolonizing it from Western description of queerness. This will take considerable work especially when one considers that, in our social lives as Nigerians and Africans, we are still colonized. “A consistent artistic anarchy against colonial systems will help decolonize these colonial thoughts and daily existence. Artists, thinkers and filmmakers will use their works to reflect and show the world what it means to be African.”
Queer spaces, during and after Pride Month, are important for representation and holding of difficult things. And this queer film festival and selected films have been influential in creating a space for queer audiences to embrace their humanity, watch themselves on screen and, importantly, nurture conversations. For Olaide, queer spaces, unmindful of how it’s defined, are important because they’re the little communal spaces where queer people can commune unmindful of whether they’re filmmakers or not. For Oloukoi and by extension the Monangambee Collective, the intent is to create a third and alternative space that isn’t Westernized. The dream is to build a free and accommodating space and community that sees film not as a media of consumption but as a tool and media for transformation and action. This is why we are screening radical films and programming filmmakers who are also willing to push the audience to have an active, political and cultural engagement with the films they are watching.
Importantly, they are trying to make this space free of class tension and markers. This means that the collective wants to screen outside on the Mainland and host public screenings. “Logistical, financial and technical challenges have been making it impossible to experiment with these ideas. But, we don’t want to have an access barrier in our spaces.”
For Osunsina who describes the festival as “family time” because of its communal nature, queer spaces are important. It breeds connection and opportunity exchange. “Whether it’s through collaborations, events, new friendships… so much of our growth and actualisation is owed to the communities and the people who recognise us, and create platforms for us. So yes, these spaces are important, but beyond that, what matters now is learning and sharing how we can keep them safe.”
