Sanctuary Cinema & CABQ presents Hummingbirds & High Desert Playback
Where and when
Location
Radical Queer Joy as resistance.
@ FUSION
In partnership with High Desert Playback and the City of Albuquerque
Hummingbirds 70 mins entire film
By Estefanía Contreras & Silvia Del Carmen Castaños
Silvia and Beba tell their own coming-of-age story, transforming their hometown on the Texas-Mexico border into a wonderland of creative expression and activist hijinks. Filmed collaboratively over the final summer of their fleeting youth, their cinematic self-portrait celebrates the power of friendship and joy as tools of survival and resistance.
Who I Am Not 105 mins just 20 min excerpt
By Tünde Skovrán & Skovran Tunde
A taboo-breaking story about two South African intersex people trying to find out what or who determines which gender they should consider themselves to be.
Panelists: High Desert Playback
Schedule:
5:30 Dinner
6:15 pm Screening
7:30 Panel/performance
About Sanctuary Cinema
Founded in 2025 by shiloh burton and Luis Peña-Alvarez, Sanctuary Cinema (SC) is a New Mexico–based nonfiction film and community dialogue project dedicated to creating brave spaces for belonging, reflection, and transformative justice through documentary film. Anchored in narrative sovereignty, SC screens stories told by those most impacted, honoring lived experience as essential knowledge and rejecting passive spectatorship by fostering audience engagement, collective storytelling, and civic action.
The free, monthly series activates accessible public venues across Albuquerque, pairing POV/PBS films with facilitated panels, local filmmakers, cultural workers, nonprofit partners, and audience participation. By bridging artistic, civic, and community worlds, Sanctuary Cinema builds trust, strengthens relationships, and provides pathways for meaningful local engagement, using documentary film as a catalyst for collective care, collaboration, and community-led change.
About High Desert Playback Theater
Founded in 2023 by Lynn Johnson and Allison Kenny, High Desert Playback is a New Mexico–based theater collective dedicated to social change through storytelling, community dialogue, and collective healing. Rooted in Playback Theatre, the multiracial, queer- and trans-centered ensemble transforms real-life stories into live performance, creating participatory spaces where lived experience becomes a catalyst for connection, reflection, and liberation. Building on years of collaborative work in Oakland, California—including the co-founding of Oakland Freedom Theater—the company brings an equity-centered approach to community engagement across New Mexico.
Through performances, workshops, and facilitated dialogue, High Desert Playback centers the voices of those historically marginalized, erased, or excluded, using theater as a tool to deepen empathy, strengthen belonging, and inspire civic and cultural transformation. By inviting participants to witness and share stories across difference, the ensemble cultivates spaces grounded in compassion, accountability, and the belief that collective storytelling can help reimagine more just and connected communities.
About FUSION
FUSION, home to the FUSION Theatre Company, is a center for arts and culture in Downtown Albuquerque. Our multi-venue, 35,000 square foot campus hosts live music, dance, comedy, theater, and myriad of special events. With three stages and both indoor and outdoor event spaces, FUSION is New Mexico’s home for creative and cultural exploration.
An anchor of the Downtown Albuquerque Arts & Cultural District, the FUSION campus includes The Cell, 708, and The Meadow.
Building on our dedication to community partnership, in 2016 FUSION began an economic development project that provides co-operative office, meeting, culinary, rehearsal, and performance spaces. As a partner organization for the Urban Enhancement Trust Fund Programs’ Resiliency Residency program, FUSION serves as fiscal sponsor and host for 18 resident artists. FUSION also serves as fiscal sponsor to a variety of fledgling community organizations, sharing resources to nurture the growth of healthy arts and culture in Albuquerque.