The annual New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival announced Tuesday that it will provide Arizonans with free virtual access to a selection of this year’s featured films in response to the cancellation of a queer film festival in Phoenix.
Last month, the organizers of the Desperado LGBTQ+ Film Festival announced that they canceled the event “in direct response” to President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at publicly funded institutions.
A student organization at Paradise Valley Community College, which receives federal funds, hosted the festival for the last 16 years in Phoenix.
“As a publicly funded institution, we must comply with these orders,” the festival’s organizers said in a statement on its website last month. “Failure to do so would jeopardize the district’s federal funding, including student financial aid and grants that support over 300 positions across our campuses. The loss of such funding would create a ripple effect, significantly affecting students, faculty, staff, the community, and the educational services we provide.”
David Hatkoff, executive director of NewFest, which hosts the New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival — the largest such festival in the U.S. — said hearing about Desperado’s cancellation was “a gut punch,” because it was one of the first instances where he saw the effects of one of the Trump administration’s executive orders in his sector.
“It felt scary, it felt enraging, and I felt sad for the folks in Arizona who were anticipating being able to engage with this festival and being able to to experience these queer stories,” Hatkoff said. “We know firsthand how impactful these stories are, and have been, and, in some ways, now more than ever, as these efforts are in place to try to silence queer voices.”
He said that NewFest worked alongside the organizers of Desperado to create the Arizona Queer Film Access Initiative, which will allow those watching from Arizona free virtual access to a selection of the New York City festival’s 130 films for the duration of the festival, which will run from Oct. 9 to Oct. 21.
“It felt like a calling, in some ways, to step up,” Hatkoff said.
The films Arizonans will have free access to will include all of the festival’s roughly 100 short films, which Hatkoff said run the gamut of genres, including animated, horror and comedy.
People from other states who want to watch the films will still be able to pay for a virtual pass, which Hatkoff said has been available since the start of the pandemic.
Dale Heuser, the co-coordinator of Desperado, said the festival’s organizers are grateful for the opportunity presented by NewFest.
“We are adapting to new challenges, but our vision remains the same and we look forward to gathering again in 2026 to celebrate queer film, build community, and support LGBTQ+ artists and audiences,” Heuser said in a statement.
Hatkoff said the Trump administration has increasingly targeted the LGBTQ community in “an effort to erase us out of existence,” and NewFest is trying to do its part to help “stem the tide.”
“The antidote to that is telling our stories loudly and proudly,” he said. “So the loss of this relatively small festival in Phoenix is something we should be paying attention to, because when people lose access to these stories, they stop being able to see themselves. That, in tandem with cuts in suicide hotline funding and things like that — this is a crisis.”
NewFest will announce the full programming lineup for its 37th festival on Sept. 10.