A decade ago, Gwen Haworth did what she (formerly he) once thought would be impossible.

“It was 10 years ago that I came out [as a trans person], and one of the first things I ended up doing was going to the Vancouver Queer Film Festival to see a program of shorts about trans folk, and there was a panel with gender activists on it,” she reminisces at a Kitsilano coffee shop.

After drawing inspiration from the festival, Haworth has come full circle. Not only has she made a documentary about her gender transition (She’s a Boy I Knew), she was last year’s artist in residence at the VQFF. This year, she was commissioned by Out on Screen, the organization that runs the festival (on August 12 to 22), to make a short to be shown at its latest edition.

It’s this cycle of giving and receiving, of the festival serving as a social resource and having its supporters contribute to it, that encapsulates the best of what the VQFF and OOS are all about.

Yet with gay-bashings and interracial tensions in the news, plus reduced budgets having an impact on organizations and programs, it’s been a challenging time for the entire community. Out on Screen was one of many organizations affected by provincial arts-funding cuts. But when the going gets tough, the community gets going.

“Our community and our members and our sponsors have really rallied behind us,” OOS executive director Drew Dennis says over iced tea in Gastown. “So we’ve been fortunate in that we’ve been able to weather the funding cuts because we have that strong sense of community support behind us. So the bottom line for us is our film budget hasn’t had to suffer.”

Now in its 22nd year, the VQFF is one of the longest-running film festivals in the city, and the second-largest.

“Actually, we have grown, believe it or not,” OOS director of programming Amber Dawn chimes in. She notes that the festival boasts 51 film programs, up from 49 last year, and an increase to 90 films from 80. Content spans sexuality and gender spectrums and everything from the local to the international, with selections from a dozen countries.

The classic coming-out story is retold in the picturesque opening film. Undertow (Contracorriente) is about a closeted married man whose affair with a visiting artist in a Peruvian coastal town takes a perilous turn after gossip, a birth, and a death up the stakes. Other selections entwine gay narratives with broader issues. One example is the gorgeous Off World, which follows a Filipino Canadian adoptee who, in search of his roots, travels to a Philippine slum. As he immerses himself in the local culture, he discovers his flamboyant queer brother and learns that another family member is still alive. “The main issue being addressed there,” Amber Dawn says, “is not necessarily the coming-out story or the homophobia story but global poverty.” (Director Mateo Guez will attend the August 15 screening.)

Amber Dawn also cites Argentina’s The Fish Child (El Niño Pez), about an affluent girl who falls for her family’s maid: “Their major issue isn’t homophobia. It’s that they’re from really diverse, distant class backgrounds and they’re struggling to jump that class divide to be together.”

Another intriguing selection is The Taqwacores, about the growth of a fictitious Islamic American punk scene, which addresses queerness tangentially. “There’s only one out character in a landscape of Muslim youth who are all sort of going headlong against different issues,” Amber Dawn explains. “The experience of queerness and being the other is”¦also about creating alternative communities to the mainstream and finding one’s place in a complex world.”

But what do you do when you feel like an outsider among fellow LGBT people? The Butch Factor features interviewees who love football or construction work and have struggled to find their place among gay men interested in fashion or female pop stars.

“Not being a gay man myself,” Dennis says, “as a gay man, the images that you often see are of the sissy or the effeminate man”¦you probably don’t get to see many opportunities where you see masculine [images].”

The flip side, gay men being bullied and attacked for being effeminate, is also explored in the film—and elsewhere in the festival. Amber Dawn explains that the Australian documentary Holding Hands, about a gay couple who were assaulted after leaving a bar, was chosen for its parallels between Sydney and Vancouver in terms of LGBT freedoms and hate crimes. The brutal mugging left one of the men severely injured, both physically and emotionally, while the need to be both a caregiver and the sole breadwinner took a dire toll on his partner.

“What I loved about this film is you do see them get very involved in the antiviolence, human-rights movement,” Amber Dawn says. “But you also get very close to them.”¦You also see posttraumatic stress and how real that is. And the media doesn’t always decide to highlight posttraumatic stress. You see these gay men battle with intimacy in their relationship [after the attack].”¦It’s a long road to actually heal from a hate crime.”

A post-film discussion moderated by Xtra! managing editor Robin Perelle will feature Vancouver police inspector Mario Giardini, Qmunity executive director Jennifer Breakspear, lawyer barbara findlay, and activist Jordan Smith, who was attacked while holding hands with his boyfriend on Davie Street in September 2008.

In spite of current troubles, several works put the growth and gains of local LGBT populations into historical perspective. For instance, have you heard of Passadaglia Books, a queer bookstore that preceded Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium? And do you know how Hamburger Mary’s got its start? Vancouver’s first gay and lesbian television series, Gayblevision, which started in the early ’80s, provides a fascinating time capsule of the burgeoning local community.

What’s more, several local filmmakers, including Debora O and Byron Chief Moon, were commissioned to make five-minute shorts for the Queer History Project: Riffs on the Theme of Activism. Comedian David C. Jones’s “Laughing Behind Enemy Lines” looks at drag queen and gay male comics from the ’70s to the ’90s using humour as a form of activism. Meanwhile, artists Joe Average and jamie griffiths made a documentary “looking at his [Joe’s] body as a canvas for art and activism”, Amber Dawn explains. Haworth made “A Film for W.G.”, a documentary inspired by a gender activist and filmmaker who taught Haworth about gender diversity.

Haworth says it’s important to have multiple filmmakers represent a community, “otherwise, we’re susceptible to creating other new stereotypes. We don’t want to make communities based on homogeny.”¦What I’ve found”¦is how important it is to not tolerate but actually accept and embrace diversity of experience.”

Although there are Hollywood films like The Kids Are All Right and A Single Man that feature gay characters, Dennis, Amber Dawn, and Haworth emphasize the importance of films made by LGBT community members.

“Films made by allies are important but sometimes the nuances are a little off, so I think it’s always important to also hear firsthand from the people involved,” Haworth says. “So with the rise of the Internet and more and more consumer-grade equipment, folks from more marginalized communities have access to making their own media and then telling their stories, and I think that allows for stories that are more empathetic rather than sympathetic.”

Getting self-defined images into circulation can have a ripple effect. “By doing this, what we’re doing is informing those around us,” she says. “And by doing that, I think that will also shift how mainstream media portrays us.”

After all, greater authenticity, diversity, and understanding will only benefit everyone—both inside and outside the LGBT communities.