Peter Knegt

Peter Knegt is a Canadian writer, producer, and filmmaker. He has received two Canadian Screen Awards for producing the documentary series Canada's a Drag and the interactive project Super Queeroes.[1] His CBC Arts column Queeries received the 2019 Digital Publishing Award for best digital column in Canada.[2]

Knegt began his career as a film journalist, working at IndieWire from 2006 to 2015, with other writing appearing in Variety, Salon, and Film Quarterly. His essay "My Gay Art-Porn Debut," on his experience acting in Travis Mathews’s I Want Your Love (2012), first appeared on Salon and was later anthologized in Best Gay Stories 2013.[3] In 2013, he was the recipient of a Queer/Art/Mentorship fellowship and named among "11 Amazing Young Queer Artists You Should Know" by The Advocate.[4][5]

In July 2011, Knegt founded a 4-day film festival in Picton, Ontario.[6] In an interview with Knegt, the Toronto Star described it the "newest stop on the festival circuit."[7]

Knegt’s first short film, “Good Morning” (2014), which he co-directed with Stephen Dunn, wrote and acted in, has been screened at film festivals including BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival and Toronto's Inside Out LGBTQ Film Festival.[8][9] Knegt's later short films include "Are You There Joy? It's Me, Jennifer" (2016), "A Bed Day" (2017), and "Plus One" (2017), which screened at film festivals in San Francisco, Austin, and Provincetown.[10][11][12] He also co-produced The Death Doula, directed by Amanda Parris and Lucius Dechausay.

In addition to his work on film, Knegt is a writer on LGBTQ culture and history. His first book, a history of queer rights in Canada, was published in 2011.[13] In a cover story on Knegt, Xtra! writer Matthew Hays described the book as "a fantastic primer on one of our country's key civil rights struggles," and that it was "so smart, succinct and reader-friendly, it's kind of shocking no one thought of writing one like it earlier."[14]

In 2016, Knegt joined CBC Arts, where he writes the weekly LGBTQ-culture column Queeries. He has also served as a writer on The Filmmakers, co-host on the digital talk show State of the Arts with Amanda Parris, and producer on projects including Canada's a Drag (2018–present), Super Queeroes (2019), and CBC Arts Presents Queer Pride Inside: A Buddies in Bad Times Cabaret (2020).