Queer Screen’s 30th Mardi Gras Film Festival will screen at eight venues across Sydney including Event Cinemas (George Street), Dendy Cinema (Newtown), and Ritz Cinemas (Randwick), as well as other locations still to be announced.

The late filmmaker Stephen Cummings, one of the founders of Queer Screen, will be honoured with a retrospective gala of his nine short films that have been digitised, restored, and remastered by National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) and Simon Hunt, Stephen’s estate executor.

This will include the award-winning Resonance, Elevation, and Le Corps Image.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Stephen’s key creatives and collaborators, moderated by NFSA Curator Nick Henderson, and a party to celebrate his life and career.

Late drag queen Doris Fish will be revered with a special screening of Phillip R. Ford’s Vegas In Space, created over a decade by Fish as a homage to B-grade science fiction movies through an all-drag musical odyssey.

This will be preceded by live performances, while Ford, co-stars Miss X and Silvana Nova, and musical director Timmy Spence will be in attendance for a Q&A moderated by Jay Katz, who will also attend the after-party.

Other program highlights include Craig Boreham’s Lonesome, a frank and sometimes confronting film about the solitary cowboy Casey who dives headfirst into a grungy world of lust and love on the streets of Sydney.

There is also Jacquie Lawrence’s Gateways Grind, which dives into the history of London’s longest-running lesbian club. Open from the 1930s, this charming documentary, delightfully narrated by Sandi Toksvig, is a journey through the scandals and stories from those who frequented the establishment, and those who grew up within its walls.

It will be joined in the documentary contingent by Juliana Curi’s Uýra: The Rising Forest, an inspiring documentary about self-expression and education through art in defiance of Brazil’s repressive political regime by the Indigenous non-binary performance artist Uýra. Resisting their marginalisation, Uýra travels across the Amazon to conduct workshops, educating locals around environmental preservation and promoting LGBTIQ+ rights with creative modes of expression.

Also From Brazil, Gabriel Martins’ Mars One is a story of family, love, and hope following the everyday challenges of a tight-knit family of working-class dreamers. Law student Nina is in love, but is she ready to reveal she has a girlfriend when her family’s lives are already so complicated? This rich and multi-faceted film is more than a coming-out story, it is an immersive drama about embracing people for who they are.

Elsewhere, Matt Carter’s In From The Side explores an illicit affair between two partnered members of a South London gay rugby club, while Sarah Watts and Mark Slutsky’s You Can Live Forever follows queer teenager Jaime as she is reluctantly sent to live with her Jehovah’s Witness aunt and uncle after her father’s death and encounters Marike, a devout follower of the faith.

Their undeniable bond forces them to confront their own ideas about community, belief, and love.

Tickets to the first released films are on sale now at queerscreen.org.au, with the full program released January 11.