Chairperson's Welcome.

Tom Creed

Image. A man with short brown hair and glasses, wearing a blue plaid shirt. He is smiling and extending his arms expressively as if conducting or directing, with a grand piano in the background.

On behalf of the board of GAZE, I'm fiercely proud and buzzing with excitement to introduce you to this year's festival programme.

We invite artists, audiences, friends and sup- porters to join us for five days and nights of bright lights and adventures in the dark. This is an exciting year of growth and development for Ireland's LGBTQIA film festival. Our visionary Festival Director Greg Thorpe continues to seek out the best Irish and international queer cinema to thrill, challenge and provoke you. We are delighted to welcome our new Festival Manager Sam Ahern as well as an expanded team of brilliant and dynamic festival-makers: it's an honour to be working with them all and you can look forward to getting to know them during the festival. We issued an open call for new board members last year, and received an overwhelming response, which reminded us how important GAZE is to our commu- nity. We've been joined by eight new board members who bring a diverse range of arts, film industry, education, financial, legal and media experience: it's a great pleasure to be working with them all and I know GAZE is in strong hands for the years to come.

Our long-standing partnership with lead sponsor Accenture goes from strength to strength. They have become great friends and extraordinary colleagues: we are hugely grateful for their increased support this year and excited to be partnering together in new ways and around the country. At the beating heart of GAZE is a commitment to finding new audiences for the best new Irish film, and sup- porting a new generation of LGBTQIA film-mak- ing talent. We are delighted to welcome Screen Ireland and National Talent Academies as major new supporters for 2024, enabling a dynamic expansion of our artist and audience development activities. We are grateful for the Arts Council's continued support. This year, they have made a particular commitment to making GAZE more accessible by enabling a relaxed screening of our Irish Shorts. This screening will feature live Irish Sign Language (ISL) interpretation, open captions and a relaxed environment for festival-goers. We are also implementing other initiatives to increase access for our audiences such as easy-read and large text documents. We are also delighted to develop and grow our partnership with Press Up and The Dean, who provide great hospitality for us and our festival guests. There are many other sponsors, funders and partners who ensure we can continue to support new artists, reach new audiences, and connect with the LGBTQIA community in all its diversity. I want to thank our long-standing Festival Friends as well as everyone who will become a Friend this year for the first time: your dedication as supporters and audiences is a crucial part of who we are.

This year we remember and pay tribute to Edmund Lynch, a great friend of the festival and a trailblazing Irish LGBTQIA pioneer. We miss him and we will celebrate his life and achieve- ments with a screening of his film A Different Country during the festival. Huge thanks and best wishes to the whole festival team including Greg, Sam, James, Samuel, Jack, Patrick, Mayra, Conleth and Jenny, as well as all our festival volunteers, and the brilliant staff of our partner venues Irish Film Institute and Light House Cinema. And a huge thanks to the filmmakers and audiences: you're the reason we keep doing this, and we hope you find much to enjoy and inspire in this year's festival.

Let's get ready to GAZE.