Leigh Davids to be honoured at QFFF
TRANSGENDER activist and sex worker Waleed Leigh Davids will be one of the queer feminist and trans activists honoured at the second annual Queer Feminist Film Festival (QFFF).
The free event hosted by rights advocacy organisations including Triangle Project, African Gender Institute, Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAR), Aids Health Foundation, FreeGender, GenderDynamix and independent activists takes place at the Isivivana Centre in Khayelitsha today.
Over two days, there will be film screenings, panel discussions involving activists and creatives and acknowledgement of work done by activists.
Triangle Project director Elsbeth Engelbrecht said Davids touched many lives and her loss had impacted members of the transgender and sex worker communities across the country.
“We lost Leigh early this year and she was an advocate for transgender people and sex workers and worked closely with SWEAT, Gender DynamiX and GALA (Gay and Lesbian Archive).
“Leigh spoke of how poor transgender people turned to sex work to survive, and now as advocacy groups we need to move beyond politics by finding ways to exact change in the future,” said Engelbrecht.
Davids passed away two weeks before her 40th birthday in February and was buried near her home in Blikkiesdorp informal settlement.
Engelbrecht said the festival was a much-needed platform for equal rights as it was a safe place to reflect, educate and discuss issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community.
She said films such as the critically acclaimed documentary Free CeCe, about CeCe McDonald dealing with the culture of violence on transfeminine people of colour, would be screened.
Mcdonald, a trans woman, was incarcerated in a men’s prison in Minnesota after being brutally attacked.
Engelbrecht said her story mirrored that of Jade September, a transgender prisoner at the Helderstroom Maximum Correctional Centre in Caledon, who turned to the Equality Court to compel the prison authorities to allow her to dress as a woman, even though she is in a male prison.
The festival can be followed on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.