SHEPHERDSTOWN — Over the weekend, the Appalachian Queer Film Festival came to Shepherd University, celebrating its 10th anniversary and its first time visiting the Eastern Panhandle.

Founded in 2014, the festival has traveled to towns and cities throughout West Virginia, showing films made by queer and Appalachian filmmakers of a wide variety of genres, lengths and themes. It took a short hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic but returned in 2023, traveling to Huntington.

This year, the two-day festival featured 31 short films and two features.

“As our name suggests, we really put a lot of emphasis on both the Appalachian and the queer part of it,” said T.J. West III, a member of the festival’s planning committee. “There might be some assumptions about that we’re either one or the other, but we really want to provide an outlet for Appalachian queer filmmakers and trans filmmakers of all varieties to sort of showcase their work.”

West said a festival like this one is especially important in a place like Appalachia to let LGBTQ people from the region see themselves represented on the big screen.

“I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that we live in a rather hostile climate for the queer community these days, even more so for our trans siblings,” West added. “I think that it’s really important that we sort of showcase their work, that we bring together these creatives and also give a sort of communal space to experience queer joy.”

The festival featured films like “Wildman,” a nine-minute short film centering around Amy, a trans woman who must reconnect with her estranged father after he claims to have shot Bigfoot in his backyard, as well as films like “After the Flood,” a 24-minute documentary about how climate disasters affected Kentuckians of color.

According to West, when the festival looks for films, it tries to find ones with a connection with Appalachia. One example is “Striking with Pride,” an hour-long documentary about striking coal miners in the United Kingdom and the coalition they formed with the local queer community.

“At first glance, it doesn’t seem like it’s relevant to Appalachia, but coal mining is such an important part of our heritage,” West said. “We thought, ‘Wow, this would really echo with people who live here.'”

West said the best part of the festival for him is hearing responses from the audience.

“One of the things that has been really exciting during this particular festival is a lot of audience members have spoken about how empowering seeing these stories told is,” West said. “I think that right there is why we do what we do.”