Launched in 2013 as a faculty project at one of Oregon's state universities, the annual event officially became the TAG! Queer Shorts Festival in 2020. Beginning with the 2021 season we are an officially sponsored program of The Hollywood Theatre, one of Portland's most-loved cinema organizations.

The festival is organized each year by JAT and SILV, two queer Latinx-identifying creators and community builders who see TAG! as a vehicle for bringing the stories of intersectional queer and trans experience to the screen and facilitating discussion around topics of importance to QTBIPOC and broader LGBTQIA+ communities. We offer fee waivers and other incentives to QTBIPOC directors to help get quality work in front of an audience. We also provide support for new queer and trans directors of all backgrounds who are experiencing financial hardship or face political supression.

Your donations made through The Hollywood Theatre are tax deductible and are used to support festival programming and individual filmmakers through stipends for Q&A sessions, offsetting fee waivers, and similar activities. We thank you for helping us make filmmaking more accessible to a wider range of voices!

Oh, the name? Is it about graffiti? A childhood game that's suspiciously similar to Smear the Queer? The scratchy fabric square sewn to your collar? It's all of that and less, it's a celebration of absurdism and a way to keep ourselves geographically independent!