Every Memorial Day weekend, sapphic filmmakers from across the country — and even the world — gather in the western Kentucky city of Paducah for the Cinema Systers Film Festival.
The Cinema Systers Film Festival is considered to be the only all-lesbian film festival in the United States, and as such has remained a powerfully carved out space for queer women in the arts. Many describe it as not only a film festival, but as a cultural gathering and declaration that lesbian voices belong and deserve to be heard loudly. The festival features works in all genres, including horror, comedy, romance, and so much more. This year, it ran May 23-25.
The festival received its start in 2016, founded by Paducah native Laura Petrie after the closing of a previous festival she hosted, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. Petrie decided that not only did she want to venture into film, but also to establish something new in her own hometown, of which she has fond memories.
“I initially thought about showing films in a barn on my farm,” Petrie told Queer Kentucky. “When we saw how many women wanted to come, we knew we needed to move it downtown.”
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Paducah is a city in western Kentucky along the Ohio River. The city is known for its artistic culture, namely in quilting, as it is home to the National Quilt Museum. The city draws in artists from around the world and is also recognized as a creative city by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
When people think of rural Kentucky, pro-LGBTQ+ acceptance rarely comes to mind. However, Paducah stands out, as the city passed a fairness ordinance in 2018 that prevents discrimination towards LGBTQ+ people in employment, housing, and public accommodations.
“There are thousands of film festivals in the U.S., and even quite a few LGBTQ+ ones,” Petrie said. “But we’re the only one that showcases exclusively lesbian-produced films. That matters. We celebrate the feminine point of view here.”
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