Q Cinema, a local non-profit organization that supports gay and lesbian films, has decided to continue its monthly movie-showings after attending this year’s Vancouver Queer Film Festival and seeing the movie “Undertow,” the group’s founder said.

Alumnus Todd Camp, the artistic director of Q Cinema, said the organization originally planned on taking a break for the rest of the year after its involvement in the Rainbow Lounge raid in June 2009.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Rainbow Lounge incident occurred when the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission raided the Fort Worth gay bar where the officers allegedly used excessive force and hospitalized one man.

Q Cinema got involved in the events surrounding the Rainbow Lounge raid because Camp was celebrating his birthday at the bar with the organizations’ staff the night the raid occurred.

After the incident, Camp said that the group was worn out because they were constantly giving interviews to the media while trying to continue monthly movie showing, gay bingo and their annual film festival. They made the decision to take a break, recover and rebrand Q Cinema.

However, the staff’s plans changed after attending the Vancouver Queer Film Festival where, after seeing some of the films, they decided it was necessary to bring back a shorter version of its monthly film series, Camp said.

According to the Q Review, Q Cinema’s newsletter, one of the films that helped change the mind of Q Cinema was the Peruvian movie, “Undertow.”

Camp said the movie was about a married man, Miguel, who cheats on his wife with another man. The movie tells Miguel’s story as he struggles with whether to tell about his affair or keep it a secret.

“It touched on a lot of hot button issues that we are still grappling with here, particularly in a Latino-heavy North Texas area,” Camp said. “We decided to put the film out as part of our contribution to Hispanic Heritage Month.”

The film will be shown on Sept. 29 at the Rose Marine Theater, the home of the Latin Arts Association and the heart of the Fort Worth Latino community, Camp said.

Camp said he hoped to reach out beyond Q Cinema’s base audience with the showing of “Undertow.”

“Our goal is to show stories that are well told, they just have to be about our community,” Camp said. “Anybody who appreciates a story well told can get something out of the films that we show.”

Juan Martinez, senior international communications major and president of Gay-Straight Alliance, said people will get a great insight on what the Fort Worth community has to offer and get a special insight to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning community by going to see “Undertow.”

The organization started at the university in 1998 as a film discussion group with the help of the Tarrant County Lesbian Gay Alliance. The members showed films that had not been on DVD and discussed the films’ place in indie-film and gay history.

Q Cinema expanded in 1999 when the president of TCLGA suggested to Camp that he put on a film festival, Camp said. The film festival has been held for the past 13 years and is four days long.

Q Cinema has a lot of upcoming and new events in 2011 that they are excited about, Camp said.

The most recent Q Cinema project is the LGBTQ History Project, for which the group will donate a lot of its archives, such as DVDs, VHS tapes, magazines and books, so that people can use and learn from the material.

Camp said that Q Cinema was also working on their film festival for next year and continuing work on their fall film series.