Q Cinema is Fort Worth’s historic LGBTQ+ film festival, celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2026. Produced by Trinity Pride Fort Worth, the festival presents a curated, non-competitive program of exceptional LGBTQ+ cinema while creating meaningful connections between filmmakers, audiences, and community.
We welcome conversations with filmmakers, distributors, sales agents, and publicists interested in bringing outstanding LGBTQ+ stories to North Texas.
Festival Snapshot
Founded
1996
Festival Dates
November 13-15, 2026
Produced by
Trinity Pride Fort Worth
Primary Venue
Amphibian Stage
Format
Curated, Non-Competitive
Programming
Features, Documentaries, Retrospectives, Shorts
Programming Philosophy
Q Cinema is guided by the belief that great programming is built through thoughtful curation.
For our pilot year, we are exploring a primarily curated lineup that brings acclaimed LGBTQ+ films from the international festival circuit to Fort Worth while creating opportunities for emerging voices and Texas filmmakers.
Rather than presenting awards, Q Cinema is designed as a non-competitive festival where each selected film is recognized as an essential part of a carefully curated program. Our goal is to
encourage discovery, foster conversation, and celebrate the richness of queer storytelling across generations.
Why Fort Worth?
Fort Worth is home to one of the fastest growing art communities in Texas and a vibrant LGBTQ+ community eager to experience bold, thoughtful storytelling. Yet opportunities to engage with internationally acclaimed LGBTQ+ cinema remain limited compared to many major metropolitan areas.
Q Cinema exists to help bridge that gap.
We believe the power of cinema lies in its ability to foster empathy, spark conversation, and strengthen community. By bringing exceptional LGBTQ+ films from the international festival circuit to Fort Worth, we create opportunities for audiences to discover new voices, engage with filmmakers, and experience stories that might otherwise never reach our city.
We believe every community deserves access to exceptional LGBTQ+ cinema, and every storyteller deserves an audience ready to engage with their work.
Our Audience
Q Cinema is produced by Trinity Pride Fort Worth, whose year-round programming culminates in the largest Pride celebration in Fort Worth. In 2026, Trinity Pride Fest welcomed more than 12,500 attendees, demonstrating strength and enthusiasm of the LGBTQ+ community and its allies across North Texas.
Our audience is diverse, engaged, and deeply connected to the arts. Attendees have a median age of 33, with the largest audience segment between the ages of 25-34, reflecting a younger, culturally active demographic while maintaining strong participation across all adult age groups.
Festival attendees represent a broad cross-section of the community, with household incomes centered between $50,000-$1000,000 and educational attainment exceeding statewide averages. Nearly 36% hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, underscoring an audience that actively seeks meaningful cultural experiences.
While the vast majority of attendees come from Texas, Trinity Pride Fest also welcomed visitors from across the United States, including California, Florida, Oklahoma, Maryland, Tennessee, Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and beyond.
Most importantly, Q Cinema serves an audience that is genuinely invested in LGBTQ+ storytelling. Our goal is not simply to screen films, but to create conversations by bringing filmmakers and audiences together in an intimate setting where stories continue long after the credits roll.
Our Venue: Amphibian Stage
Q Cinema is proud to partner with Amphibian Stage, one of North Texas’ most respected nonprofit arts organizations and a nationally recognized incubator for innovative storytelling.
For more than twenty-five years, Amphibian has produced daring new works, regional premieres, and world premieres that challenge audiences and expand perspectives. Their mission – to create art that inspires new ideas, opens new doors, and deepens our understanding of the world – closely mirrors the vision guiding Q Cinema’s return.
Located in the heart of Fort Worth’s Near Southside, Amphibian offers an intimate black box theatre where filmmakers and audiences can genuinely connect. Rather than disappearing into a multiplex, each screening becomes a shared experience, creating opportunities for conversation, artist engagement, and community building.
Like Q Cinema, Amphibian believes storytelling is a catalyst for empathy, curiosity and meaningful dialogue. Together, we hope to create a festival where exceptional LGBTQ+ cinema is experienced not simply as entertainment, but as an invitation to connect with one another and the broader cultural life of Fort Worth.
Industry Services
Although 2026 marks Q Cinema’s return, our goal is to provide filmmakers and distributors with a thoughtful, professional, and highly personal festival experience.
We’re currently developing our inaugural industry hospitality program, which is expected to include:
Audience Conversations
Whenever possible, we will host post-screening Q&As, filmmaker conversations, and community discussions that deepen engagement with each film and create meaningful dialogue between artists and audiences.
Community Connections
Trinity Pride Fort Worth maintains strong relationships across the city’s arts, civic, and business communities. Q Cinema provides filmmakers with opportunities to engage not only with audiences, but with artists, nonprofit leaders, sponsors, and community partners invested in the future of queer storytelling.
Filmmaker Hospitality
Visiting filmmakers will be paired with volunteers and board members to ensure a welcoming experience throughout the festival weekend, from arrival to departure.
Through Trinity Pride Fort Worth’s existing partnerships with hotels, restaurants, and neighborhood businesses, Q Cinema is committed to providing a welcoming experience for visiting filmmakers and industry guests. For preferred hotel accommodations to recommendations throughout Fort Worth’s Near Southside, our goal is to make every guest feel at home while experiencing one of Texas’ most vibrant cultural districts.
Media & Marketing
Q Cinema benefits from Trinity Pride Fort Worth’s established relationships with local and regional media partners, arts organizations, and community influencers. Participating films will be promoted through coordinated festival marketing, including social media, email campaigns, website features, and earned media opportunities designed to connect filmmakers with audiences across North Texas.
Technical Presentation
Q Cinema is committed to presenting every selected film with the highest level of professionalism and care. Working alongside experienced venue and technical partners, we will ensure that each film is exhibited according to distributor specifications while providing audiences with an exceptional viewing experience.
Q Cinema Programming Advisory Circle
Roger Calderon
Festival Director, Q Cinema
Roger Calderon attended his first Q Cinema screening more than two decades ago. Today, as Festival Director, he’s honored to help lead the festival into its next chapter. Roger also serves as President of Trinity Pride Fort Worth and is Manager of Membership & Corporate Giving for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, where he works to strengthen community through the arts. He believes great film festivals do more than showcase exceptional cinema—they create spaces for conversation, connection, and discovery. His vision for Q Cinema is to bring acclaimed queer films from around the world to Fort Worth while celebrating the city’s vibrant creative community.
Destiny Lilly
Industry Programming Advisor
Destiny Lilly, CSA is a four-time Emmy nominee for casting ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. Film credits include the Oscar-nominated musical feature film THE COLOR PURPLE. Broadway: A STRANGE LOOP, PURLIE VICTORIOUS, GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, CLYDE’S. National tour: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Off-Broadway: MCC Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, The Shed, New York Theater Workshop, Colt Coeur, WP Theater, Classic Stage Company, Ars Nova, The New Group, PAC NYC, 2ST, The Vineyard, National Black Theatre, City Center: Encores!. Destiny received the 2026 Trailblazer Award from Black Women on Broadway, and she currently serves as the President of Casting Society (CSA).
Todd Camp
Founding Curator & Legacy Advisor
Todd Camp’s journalism career spans more than two decades, including 18 years at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His writing was first recognized when he received a Katy Award for his newspaper column “Confessions of a Gay Eagle Scout.” Outside of his journalistic endeavors, Camp has written and illustrated three graphic novels and seven long-running comic strips. In 1998, he co-founded Q Cinema, Fort Worth’s Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival, for which he served as Artistic Director for 14 years. In 2020, he founded YesterQueer, Tarrant County’s LGBTQ+ History Project, and serves as its Executive Director. He’s currently working on two concurrent books about his more than 180-year-old Fort Worth neighborhood, Chase Court, as well as the Tarrant County LGBTQA+ community.
Justin Jay Jones
Documentary Advisor
With 15 years of experience in the entertainment industry, Justin has worked on projects for Netflix, HBO, Apple, Animal Planet, and more. He now looks to focus on his own projects and tell meaningful and impactful stories that highlight local community issues and causes that get overlooked by the entertainment industry at large.
Jason Brown
Short Film & Emerging Voices Advisor
Jason grew up with a love for film, being introduced to Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Spielberg at a young age. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in film and video, he worked as an editor and videographer in the advertising industry before moving to Los Angeles, where he did background acting and worked behind the scenes of short films and music videos. In 2015 he moved to Fort Worth along with his partner Rob, and currently serves as Assistant Director of Finance at The Crescent Hotel in the Cultural District. Find him on Letterboxd - @jasondbrown
Our Commitment: A Festival Built Around Relationships
Our success will not be measured simply by attendance, but by the relationships formed throughout the weekend.
We believe the best festivals create lasting connections between filmmakers, distributors, audiences, and the communities they serve. Whether introducing a new voice, presenting an internationally acclaimed film, or celebrating a landmark work of queer cinema, Q Cinema is committed to providing every participating film with the attention, care, and enthusiasm it deserves.
As programming and industry events continue to take shape, our focus remains the same: creating an exceptional experience for both filmmakers and audiences.
Contact
We welcome inquiries from filmmakers, distributors, publicists, sales agents, sponsors, media, and community partners. Whether you’re interested in screening a film, learning more about the festival, or exploring a partnership, we’d love to hear from you.
For programming inquiries, industry partnerships, filmmaker outreach, and sponsorships:
Roger Calderon Festival Director, Q Cinema President, Trinity Pride Fort Worth roger@trinitypridefw.org
For general festival inquiries, volunteering, tickets/passes: qcinema@trinitypridefw.org
