DOTYK

Annual international queer festival.

Fiction Documentary Animation Free

About

DOTYK (bel. touch) – noncommercial cultural and educational organization that in its work deals mostly with matters of identity and self-determination, raises the problems of homophobia, transphobia, sexism and other forms of xenophobia in the Belarusian society.

DOTYK opens a discussion using not the language of academia, but the language of art – the universal human language. We believe that art shows us real stories and doesn’t reduce them to mere statistical data. It reflects the complexity and diversity of the world and the variability that exists everywhere.

Mission. We aspire to overcome the manifestations of discrimination, support and promote the principles of equality regardless of the sexual and gender identity by the means of education and culture in the Belarusian context.

Activities. DOTYK started as a film festival but quickly extended its boundaries. Today our team realizes various art and cultural projects, organizes the queer culture festival DOTYK and many exhibition projects, systematically engages in educational activities. At the end of 2016 we opened a community center, meant to render assistance to the victims of discrimination on the basis of their gender identity and sexual orientation and the victims’ relatives.

Our activities are aimed at the Belarusian offline space, that’s why one of our priorities is to create safe spaces for meetings, discussions and exchange of opinions. We would like to unite the people who have similar experience of not being accepted by our society, who feel lonely and invisible in the cultural, social and political spheres, fill in the gaps created by the exclusion of LGBT people and other discriminated groups from the world art and history.

Principles and values

The values of the DOTYK team are based on the principle of nondiscrimination in a broader sense. We try to spread the knowledge that the marginalization of any group in inhuman in its essence and that our differences don’t prevent us from the possibility to coexist in the atmosphere of mutual respect and acceptance. DOTYK opposes xenophobia, chauvinism, racism, sexism, homo- and trans- and biphobia, militarism, colonialism and other forms of social devaluation.

Rules