One hundred and fifteen people attended the Australian premiere of Goodbye Mother on February 24 – a community screening Advance Diversity Services held with Queer Screen as part of the 28th Mardi Gras Film Festival (MGFF21).
‘”It was a good roll-up,” said ADS CEO Antoinette Chow. “And the film, which tells the tender coming out story of Van, was a soft entry point through which to raise awareness in the CALD community about LGBTIQA+ issues.”
The subsidised screening of Goodbye Mother (directed by Trịnh Đình Lê Minh) at Event Cinema Hurstville was in Vietnamese with English subtitles. The film won the Reeling Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival 2020 Best Narrative Feature Film and the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival 2020 Audience Award.
A short version of ADS’s video Pride in My Faith, which offers candid testimony from three CALD LGBTIQA+ people of faith about how they bring their sexual diversity, faith and culture together, was shown prior to the feature.
Show bags handed to cinemagoers contained a link to the full version of Pride in My Faith, information about ADS’s inclusive services and the latest Multicultural LGBT Support Directory.
Antoinette Chow and Cheryl Kavanagh, Co-Chair of Queer Screen, also spoke on the night – emphasising the benefits and success of the ADS-Queer Screen partnership.