2019 Feminist Border Arts Film Festival Program

4th Annual

FEMINIST BORDER ARTS FILM FESTIVAL

20 19

images from Récit de Soi, directed by Géraldine Charpentier

About the festival Welcome to the 4th annual Feminist Border Arts Film Festival. We are grateful to be sharing with our community the numerous voices in U.S. and international short film that this festival represents.

This year we received over 2200 submissions and, as has been the trend with FBAFF, we keep growing.

Beyond the number of submissions we receive, FBAFF has expanded, over the course of four years, from a single 90-minute screening to include a video art exhibition, five screening programs, and a showcase that features invited filmmakers speaking to the NMSU/Las Cruces community about their work.

FBAFF has also grown through the recognition it receives from filmmakers throughout the world. Films including our “Official Selection of FBAFF” laurel have been featured in international film festivals. Films we selected in FBAFF18, such as Rosa Beiroa’s “In Our Skin” and Guen Murroni’s “Fee” were both screened at Cannes Film Festival bearing our laurel.

In addition to this exciting news, this year the generous sponsorship of New Mexico Humanities Council, Devasthali Family Foundation, NMSU College of Arts & Sciences, and Southwest and Border Cultures Institute have allowed FBAFF to bring filmmakers as well as create these programs and other festival media. In 2019 we also collaborated with current and former students in the selection process, developing press kit materials, social media campaigns, and more. As FBAFF continues to grow, collaboration and support from the campus, local community, and state keeps us moving forward. We are deeply grateful for our partnerships with the Creative Media Institute and University Art Gallery at NMSU, and look forward to the directions FBAFF will grow in 2020.

Film is more than entertainment. It is art. It is a laboratory of ideas. It is politics. It is representation. It is commerce and business. It is a complex apparatus where we reflect, dream, are challenged, or awaken from a slumber. Film is communitymaking. It shows us a reflection of what exists, who feels it most sharply, and offers the space to gather courage and step forward.

M. Catherine Jonet & Laura Anh Williams FBAFF Co-Directors New Mexico State University

Friday, March 8 VIDEO ART EXHIBIT 10:00am - 5:00 pm

FILMMAKER SHOWCASE 6:00pm - 9:00 pm

Williams Annex 107 Free Refreshments CMI Digital Media The ate r Milton 171 Dessert Reception follows

Saturday, March 9 PROGRAM 1 10:00am - 12:00 pm

PROGRAM 2 12:00 - 2:00 pm

PROGRAM 3 2:00 - 4:00 pm

PROGRAM 4 4:00 - 6:00 pm

RECEPTION 6:00 - 6:30 pm

PROGRAM 5 6:30 - 9:00 pm

TIES THAT BIND: Family & Other Connections MASCULINE/FEMININE: Gndrs @ the Intersections QUEERLY CINEMA: LGBTQ+ Filmscapes CROSSINGS: Of Borders & Film Free Refreshments Milton Hall 185 J FINALE Award Finalists Screening & Audience Voting

These films have not yet been rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. We have made some content notes, but please use your own discretion.

Video Art Exhibition Experimental, Performance, Digital 10:00AM - 5:00 PM FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2019 D.W. WILLIAMS ANNEX 107

First Feature directed by Bentley Brown

Friday, March 8

Video Art Exhibition D.W. Williams Annex rm. 107 10:00am-5:00pm Program Length: Approximately 3h:00min Program will repeat throughout the day (Films Listed in Alphabetical Order) ALL FALLS DOW N USA/English CONTENT NOTE: Image of a Nude Baby, Images of Dead Animals

A digital hell-loop centering around the idea of the transgender antagonist coming to terms with the ideas of home, anxiety, intimacy, our inevitable death, longing, and the conversation between obsolete and current technologies.

Experimental/ /Mixed Media

Director: oberon strong

and her namesake’s migration. The loss and recovery of her greatgrandmother’s Hebrew name allows the consideration of a doubling of identity, and the choices available to those who experience intergenerational assimilation. Jewish themes and traditions are present throughout the piece as an offering to my ancestors’ resilience, and as a key to understanding patterns and conventions in claiming identity.

Experimental Documentary/Performance Elements

Director: Emily Packer COLONIES Egypt

Experimental/Essay Film

Director: Mena El Shazly THE DESIRE OF MERMAIDS USA/English

Plunge deep below the surface of the water to encounter women in the process of a transformation.

Women turn to the pressure of the water to find reprieve from the expectation to be something other than what they are.

Animation/Mixed Media/Live Action

AS SW EET USA/English

A poetic investigation of the filmmaker’s middle name,

aesthetically examined. Using sugaring as a weapon, the body is a war terrain that is controlled and continues to as-/resist change.

Sugaring is an ancient Egyptian method of depilatory made out of water, sugar, and lemon juice.

Different densities of hair and the effect of sugaring on the surfaces are conceptually and

Director: Hannah Hamalian

EMERGENCE Haiti, Canada/French CONTENT NOTE: Discussion of sexual violence against a girl/woman

offers a metaphor for our collective predicament.

FIRST FEATURE Saudi Arabia/Arabic

Essay Film

Director: Alexandria Searls EXPŌNĒRE/EXPOSURE Portugal/English

Katiana emerges. Her life is her story and her story is one of survival.

Experimental/Expressionistic Documentary/Essay Film

Directors: Clarissa Rebouças & Julie Bernier THE ETIQUETTE OF MASSACRES USA/English CONTENT NOTE: Frank discussion of public trauma due to gun violence and mass shootings in U.S.

“Expōnēre/Exposure” is to live in a system. Exposure to vibrations. Exposure to vibrating particles. We expose our atmosphere to increased emissions, and it thins and thickens in all the wrong ways, exposing us in turn. We peel back systems and expose. It connotes something missing, a lack of protection. It alludes to a burning a radiation, a fire. A structure crumbles. A structure returns.

Experimental/Sound-guided, Ecocinema

Director: Maile Costa Colbert

Shot through a lens of our past (the filmmakers first video camera from childhood) yet focusing on the future of filmmaking. “First Feature” introduces us to the challenges faced by a team of mostly women working on the set of their first feature film in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The narration, contributed by members of the crew, asks questions of confidence, belonging, and of the future of cinema in a country where it is only a budding industry.

Experimental Documentary

Director: Bentley Brown FROMATT Germany, Switzerland/German

FACE VALUE Mass shootings in the United States have become so common that they impact the way we live, the way we see ourselves, and the way we experience grief, almost on a daily basis. We forget some and not others. We grieve more and less at different times. We adapt to the onslaughts. But what adaptations allow us to keep our souls? Filmmaker Alexandria Searls documents her reactions to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. A painted bridge

Russia, Georgia/English

The market place of desire starts with this face. Further reflections on money and skin.

Video Art/Essay Film

Director: Alena Koroleva

Contrary to the organic forms of the nature human beings mostly create constructed geometry. This is being symbolized in “Fromatt” primarily through pixilation of nude performers in the raw nature of the Swiss Alps.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Filip Dippel

HABITUAL USA

IRAQ BANS FARMING SUMMER CROPS AS WATER CRISIS GROWS DIRE

MOM UNDRESSED Germany/English CONTENT NOTE: Nudity

USA, Iraq This animated vignette explores the doldrums of office labor by using rotoscope footage of the filmmaker to illustrate the monotony of administrative work in frame-by-frame detail.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Hallie Bahn HER VOICE Belgium/English

An enigmatic stream of consciousness that resists conventional narrative expectations, “Her Voice” echoes the #MeToo era.

Somewhere between the desperate Boop-Oop-aDoop’s of a vintage Betty Boop and the film experiments of Maya Deren.

“Her Voice” reflects a woman's subjectivity and her sometimes problematic relation to the external world.

Experimental/Essay Film/Performance Elements

Director: Silvia Defrance

During the summer of 2018 the Iraqi Government banned farmers from planting certain cereal crops due to water shortages. Resources once taken for granted such as fertile soil and clean water are becoming increasingly commodified. It's common to look to the historical region of Mesopotamia as the origin of modern civilization. If we look east for origins, shouldn’t we also look in that same direction for the future?

Experimental Documentary

Director: Emma PiperBurket METAMORPHOSIS Greece, Germany/Modern Greek

By rewriting the myth into historical reality, it ceases to function as a myth: it becomes history.

Experimental/Essay Film

Director: Aspa Siokou

Meet a Jewish artist, living in Berlin, who redefines the relationship with her mom through nudity.

Documentary

Directors: Romina Schade & Jana Stalle NO SON BALAS Mexico/Spanish

The overlapping of images allows viewers to make connections between the Mexican Revolution, state repression against the Mexican people in 1968 in the Tlatelolco massacre of students and civilians by military and police, and the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students in 2014.

Digital Art/Experimental Documentary

Director: M. Dianela Torres

OSTARBEITER Ukraine, USA/English

REPLICA

TENSITY

Canada/English

Poland/English

Family photos and cultural artifacts, archival footage, and field video collected since 1939 stitch together a story of trauma and its generational impacts.

A woman is turned into a mannequin. “Replica” expresses a woman’s anxiety of representation caused by the way the media and society objectify and commodify her.

Mixed Media/Essay Film

Experimental/Essay Film

Director: Lukia Costello RAZZLE-DAZZLE DISCO Canada/English

Director: Han Pham SOMA & LIL Denmark/English

An experimental artistic documentary about dance and contemporary theater.

The story is led by Helena Ganjalyan—actress, dancer, and choreographer.

The dance based on the figure of Ophelia from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" raises issues such as independence, autonomy, freedom, the right to determine oneself, and express physicality.

Documentary

A handmade Super 8mm film based on the director’s mother’s nail technician career and the nail salon industry’s affect on Vietnamese immigrants. The film was made using nail polish painted directly on Super 8mm film using nail art techniques assisted by the director’s mother, then digitally scanned in 4k and transferred back to film.

Animation/Mixed Media/Experimental

A music documentary on the art of improvisation, Soma & Lil follows a cello improvisation duo based in Denmark as they rethink and deconstruct the traditional written music for cello.

Documentary

Director: Sylvia Nicolaides & Nicolas Iordanou SPEAKER Iran/ Azerbaijani

Director: Anh Dao

Director: Konrad Kultys Dancer: Helena Ganjalyan VD01.6 Spain

“VD01" Video-dance project is the search for knowledge and a practice of art without the possibility of conclusion.

Experimental/Performance/ Dance

Director: Kepa Landa Dancer: Marta Bota A public bath and an intercom announcement.

Slice of life/slice of art.

Experimental/ Live Action

Director: Behnam Asadolahi

FILMMAKER SHOWCASE 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2019 CMI DIGITAL THEATER MILTON 171

FILMMAKER SHOWCASE Welcome remarks by NMSU President JOHN FLOROS TRINA MICHELLE ROBINSON

The Call

Trina Michelle Robinson is interested in exploring memory through video, archival materials and text. Her video essay The Call has been exhibited in galleries and film festivals throughout the country. She has also told the story of exploring her ancestry on The Moth Mainstage at theaters in New York, Portland, OR and Westport, CT. NICOLE ANTEBI

100 Partially Obscured Views of the Border of El Paso and Juárez

Nicole Antebi makes things that move, loop, and sometimes hold. She is currently at work on a forthcoming film about the border landscapes of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez and the river with two names that connect them.

MARIA ALTAMIRANO

Soñadora (Dreamer)

Maria Altamirano is a Peruvian-American writer, director and producer, whose work has been featured at festivals such as Cannes, SXSW and Slamdance. She completed NYU’s MBA/MFA program, a conjunction of Stern School of Business and Tisch School of the Arts, where she was selected Producer of the Year in 2017. She recently produced her first feature film Son of Monarchs, currently in post-production.

DARINE HOTAIT I Say Dust Darine Hotait is an Arab American writer, film director and the founder of the incubator project Cinephilia Productions in New York. Her award-winning films can be seen at international film festivals, on SundanceTV, BBC, AMC Networks and more. She is the recipient of NYSCA Award, NYFA IAP Fellowship, AFAC and Cimetta Grant.

Discussion moderated by AIMÉE SCHAEFER

Dessert Reception immediately follows in Milton Hall 185J

Program 1 Ties that Bind: Family & Other Connections 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2019 CMI DIGITAL THEATER MILTON 171

Investigating relationships and connections between family, location, environment, and social forces that tear individuals apart. This program depicts the vulnerabilities that emerge through the connections we have with one another.

Wagon 21 directed by Gustavo Pera

10:00-12:00 Ties that bind: Family & Other connections

Program Length: Approximately 1h:45min (Films Are Listed Here in Alphabetical Order)

AMAL

FRIED TARO

LPPIE aka SHEFFA

Morocco, USA/Arabic, English, French Content Note: Violence

Taiwan/Chinese

Egypt/Arabic

A little girl wants to try grandma’s fried taro, but anger and a misdeed complicate everything.

A young boy called Sheffa lives with his mother who directs him to sell drugs to keep them afloat. However, all is not as it seems.

A young matriarch living in Brooklyn with her younger siblings tries to keep her family and her life together.

Narrative Short

Directed: Taha Aziz THE CRACK: AN ORIGIN MYTH

Animation

Director: An-Wu Li

Narrative Short

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY Spain, Indonesia

NATURALEZA MUERTA

Exploring the topography of human bodies that evoke landscapes.

The transition to rot, from solids to particles.

Live Action

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Omneya Okasha

Argentina/Spanish

USA/English

An origin myth explains that everything was born from a crack in her wall. A girl meets the crack in a dream and asks it what she's always wanted to know.

Director: Anna Estellés

Director: Valentina Rocío

LIFE IS NOT A JOURNEY

NO REAL DISTANCE USA/English

Australia/English

Live Action/Mixed Media

Director: Soraya Perry Alan Watts speech that ponders the meaning of life.

Animation

Director: Oliver Marsden

A culture that thrives on drama and conflict imposes ideologies onto the animals and the environment around us.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Tiffany Deater

ÒSÙN’S ÒPÁRÁ: W HEN EVERYTHING IS BORN

SOFA_R

VOLE

Taiwan Loss is a process of endless missing.

Lebanon/French

Animation

Director: Yu-An Jao SPACE Stop-motion animation tells the story of the Orixá of the sweet waters, the goddess of fertility that makes everything grow and fertilize in the strength of Axé.

USA/English

Narrative Short

Director: Cynthia Tannous W AGON21

Mixed Media

Brazil/Portuguese

Director: Pâmela Peregrino ROSA Mexico/Spanish

Yasmin uses photography to grapple with absence. But, do photographs ease the pain of loneliness?

A young man journeys to what lies beyond our world.

Narrative Short

Director: Jason Gonzalez

TALE OF TW O MOTHERS USA/English A stroke forever changes Rosa’s and her daughters’ lives.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Larissa Rojas SALAM

USA/ Arabic, English

A female Lyft driver navigates the night shift in New York City while waiting to hear news from her family in Syria.

Narrative Short

Director: Claire Fowler

When she bought a discarded German family photo album from 1938, she did not expect to make art with it. But upon bringing a child into Trump's America, she began to notice uncanny parallels, and set out to recreate the original snapshots with her own son.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Sam Vladimirsky

Maura is a Black woman, a mother of 7 children, and a recyclable material collector in one of the largest cities in Latin America. While she works hard to maintain herself, she has to deal with prejudice, invisibility, and the ignorance of those who do not recognize the value and important role of the recyclable material collector.

Documentary

Director: Gustavo Pera

Program 2 Masculine/Feminine: GNDRS @ the Intersections 12:00 - 2:00 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2019 CMI DIGITAL THEATER MILTON 171

Journeys of gendered identity are complex. The films of Masculine/ Feminine push against gender stereotypes. From a tooth growing inside a woman’s body to an action figure in a dollhouse, the program will allow you to reimagine the intersecting dimensions of gender.

Dollhouse directed by Ezgi Temel

12:00-2:00 Masculine/Feminine: Gndrs @ the Intersections

Program Length: Approximately 1h:45min (Films Are Listed Here in Alphabetical Order)

24-HOUR W ORKDAY

DINOSAUR

FIRST KISS

USA/ Chinese, English, Spanish

France/French

U.K./English CONTENT NOTE: Sexual Assault

24-hour workday exposes the long hours and wage theft that working people currently face. In New York, many home attendants are forced to work 24-hour shifts taking care of seriously-ill patients, with only half of the pay.

These workers come together and unite with patients to mount a challenge against this state-sponsored sweatshop.

In a park, a tiny girl inflates a huge balloon. A boy watches her and is about to burst this balloon while the little girl’s mother tries to dissuade him.

Narrative Short

Director: Pierre Dugowson DOLLHOUSE Turkey/Turkish

One night at the beach. A reflection on the complex trauma of being a teenage girl.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Ali Aschman THE GREY AREA U.K./English CONTENT NOTE: Sexual Assault

Documentary

Director: Zishun Ning A DIFFERENT CATEGORY U.K./English

A family goes shopping to buy a Batman toy for their son, but the boy has different ideas.

Narrative Short Director: Ezgi Temel EMARRI Three young women reflect on the loss of 'voice' and the struggle between competing desires for autonomy and connection.

Mixed Media/Documentary

Director: LinnĂŠa Haviland

Spain/Basque

Emarri: not only a sport.

EMARRI is a feminist construction; a lifestyle.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Ander Alvarez

An animated exploration of manipulated consent.

Drawing from personal experiences the filmmaker uses animation and voiceover to process her sexual assault and pose questions, about what led to the events of that night and to interrogate the idea of a grey area of consent.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Katie Clark

LAS DEL DIENTE Spain, U.S.A./Spanish

THE NAMELESS BODY Mexico Content Note: Nudity, Sexual Situations

UNSEEN Nambia, Germany/ Afrikaans, English, French, German, Swedish

Animation/Mixed Media

MACHOS Mexico/Spanish

A young woman starts her morning routine searching for her day’s outfit. In the mirror, she faces parts of herself that at times, she struggles to forget.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Jimena Medina Utilizing testimonies and personal discoveries, “Machos” explores the contrasts that exist in masculinity and how machismo resists new ways of living.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: César Chiquito Chávez MY FATHER Australia/English Content Note: Suicide & Mental Health Issues

A PALE HORSE NAMED MEXICO Mexico/Spanish

The Mexican Institute of Death helps souls passing through to the other side.

When Alma’s body is identified, she can finally schedule a date with Death herself, but what occurs is not what anyone expected.

Director: Daniela Cuapio

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Yanina Salerno

A conversation to which most everyone can relate, but rarely feel open enough to talk about.

Animation/Mixed Media/Documentary

Director: Neige Moongo W ICKED GIRL

Narrative Short

This documentary centers on Daniela C, who lost her father to suicide when she was 14 years old. This film examines the effects of suicide on a young person and how these are carried into adulthood.

Animation

Director: Juli Tudisco

Bodies are weird. “Las del diente” celebrates anomalies in the reproductive system.

Director: Ana Pérez López

happy, free girls singing and building a boat, care-free and full of wonderment, ignoring the pressures of society.

SIRENS Hungary Content Note: Brief nudity

Turkey/Turkish Content Note: Explores a child processing the trauma from sexual abuse

An 8 year-old Turkish girl with an overflowing imagination is keen on nature and animals.

As she mends from injuries in a hospital, she looks back on the recent summer she spent with her grandparents in their village, but dark and terrifying memories emerge for her and, little by little, begin to make sense.

Animation

Director: Ayce Karta A sad bride-to-be sits thinking about her looming wedding. She observes

Program 3 Queerly Cinema: LGBTQ+ Filmscapes 2:00 - 4:00 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2019 CMI DIGITAL THEATER MILTON 171

What do hyenas, drag queens, and superheroes have in common? Find out in Queerly Cinema: LGBTQ+ Filmscapes. Ranging from short documentaries to film essays, these films highlight and explore queer bodies, identities, and realities. Â Category is: subversive existence.

Suicidrag directed by Andrea Perez Su & Arturo Campos Nieto

2:00 - 4: 00 Queerly Cinema: LGBTQ+ Filmscapes

Program Length: Approximately 1h:50min (Films Are Listed Here in Alphabetical Order)

125/HR U.K./English Content Note: Frank discussion of sex acts

This short documentary explores the everyday life of a young man from Poland working as a prostitute in London.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: James Mileham BRTHR Portugal, Spain/Galician, Portuguese Content Note: Brief Nudity

“Brthr” is about the search for identity and selfacceptance, narrated with honesty, familial issues, and complex affections that only siblings can offer.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Inma Veiga

CARLITO LEAVES FOREVER

DID YOU KNOW ?

USA/English

Peru

A short poetic film following Carlito, a young man living in a village at the heart of the Amazonian jungle, who makes the unthinkable decision to leave in order to be closer to another.

Narrative Short

Director: Quentin Lazzarotto

An exploration in shared sites of queerness and sexuality between the spotted hyena and the filmmaker.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Lynn Kim GODDESS/DEVI India/Hindi, English Film Courtesy: KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival

DAY AT THE TEXTILE FACTORY USA/Chinese

A 13-year-old Chinese American girl accompanies her mom for the day at the textile factory where the woman works. There, the young girl develops an unexpected crush on a 30year-old female textile factory worker, Weiwei.

Narrative Short/Live Action

Director: Mei Liu

A spirited teenager coming to terms with her sexual identity is discovered pursuing her attraction for the household maid in her mother’s home in New Delhi.

She must decide who she really is in a classist and homophobic society.

Narrative Short/Live Action

Director: Karishma Dube

GYEOL France

SELMA AFTER THE RAIN Brazil/Portuguese

routine until the lever is pulled and adventure begins.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Rebecca Bloecher A grey ball rolls on a rail, dives into pink liquid, orbits around flowers. What seems normal quickly reveals a universe that follows a different law of physics.

Live-Action

Director: Jin Angdoo INVERSE Mexico/Spanish

Selma, a trans woman who built her life away from the family, gets a call to go to her elderly mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's and needs treatment. Lost in confused memories, the two remember forgotten pains and desires, and revisit lost guilt and affection.

Narrative Short

Director: Loli Menezes SUICIDRAG A surreal jaunt into drag, gender, clothes, performance, and love.

Live Action/Documentary, Essay Film

Director: Aarón Álvarez OF ORIGINS, PART 1: HANNAH Germany, USA/English

Mexico/Spanish

Animation/Mixed Media/Documentary

Director: Irit Reinheimer

France/English

A queer odyssey of Afrofuturism and social justice, “WOMXN” features super hero Jane Dark (Jeanne D'Arc, i.e. Joan of Arc) a young person who lives in the allegorical Noir-Et-Cher (that is, contemporary Paris).

Whenever police harasses her community, she becomes WOMXN. WOMXN is the nightmare of you-know-who and it’s go time.

Live Action/Mixed Media

The Mexican drag queen collective, Suicidrag, takes to the streets and nightclubs of Mexico City to raise awareness about gender stereotypes imposed by consumer society.

Documentary/Essay Film

Hannah describes a love rooted in it's own time and place, neither apocalyptic nor nostalgic. The film uses archival footage, home movies, and rotoscoping to orient the viewer in a queer bond forged across time.

W OMXN

Directors: Andrea Perez Su & Arturo Campos Nieto TOO TAME! Germany

Seven protagonists are trapped in clichés and daily

Directors: Eden Tinto Collins & Adrien Gystere Peskine

Program 4 Crossings: Of Borders & Film 4:00 - 6:00 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2019 CMI DIGITAL THEATER MILTON 171

Encompassing a range of film genre, from animation to live-action narrative, Crossings reflects on migration, political and metaphysical boundaries, refugees from state violence, and the human responses to survival, as both the will to live as well as a challenge to oppressive structures.

Hazy Lines directed by Evdokiya Mazhurina

4:00 - 6:00pm Crossings: Of Borders & Film

Program Length: Approximately 1h:35min (Films Are Listed Here in Alphabetical Order)

ABEO

CROSSED

Canada/Spanish Content Note: Violence, Racially-Motivated/AntiImmigrant Murder

USA/English, Spanish

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Noor Khan HAZY LINES Canada

This mixed media animated short depicts the journey of Nadia and Lupe, two immigrants who risk their lives to cross the Arizona desert in search for a better life.

Liz Magallanes is a Dreamer.

Thrust in a tangle of immigration laws and new presidential policies, she tries to make sense of her life while also working to make change.

Animation/Mixed Media

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Brenda Lopez

Director: Arnila Guha

THE CHILDREN OF CONCRETE

DEAR ENGLAND

An interrogation of borders.

Live-Action

Director: Evdokiya Mazhurina HOLD Venezuela/Spanish

U.K./English

France/French

Am I French or Chinese? In a world of competing discourses set to explain difference and nationality, I wonder through, trying to see more clearly. What is Frenchness? What is France, my France?

Dear England, I want to break up. A film about being an immigrant in post-Brexit UK. Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Marta Lemos EAST: A RELATIONSHIP Canada/English, Arabic

A ten year old girl refuses to say goodbye to her older brother, who leaves in order to seek opportunities that will allow him to financially support her upbringing.

Narrative Short/Live Action

Director: MarĂ­a Laura Reina I WAS THERE TOO

Animation/Documentary

Sweden/Swedish

Director: Jonathan Phanhsay-Chamson An immigrant reflects on the crisis of having been robbed of a homeland while also settling and being complicit in the destruction of the home of indigenous peoples.

A protest banner rolled out at a rural train station is a snapshot of a different time.

I'm struck by how outlandish their political struggle seems today and also by how little I do, especially when our times demand personal action more then ever.

MI AMERICA

SIN TITULO

USA/Spanish

Mexico, USA/English

A young man torn by recent family news spends a night out with his group of friends before facing an all too familiar problem.

She works in a maquiladora in a northern Mexican border town. She remembers her papa’s stories and her mama’s hopes for a better life, all while wandering through a dream from which she cannot awake.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Astrid Askberger JOY USA/English

Narrative Short

Director: Marvin Diaz “Joy” juxtaposes the distresses of being an immigrant woman in America, against the façade of courteousness one feels obliged to present.

PAULA’S ETERNITY Venezuela/Spanish Content Note: Depiction of Violence Against an Animal

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Jose Silva SORGE 87 Germany/German, Vietnamese

Narrative Short

Director: Lorena Lourenco MARGARITA OF THE RIVER USA/Spanish Content Note: Brief Nudity

A 5-year-old girl and her family are environmental migrants facing a fierce drought. While her mother prepares for their journey, Liana has an unexpected encounter that will change the destiny of all.

Narrative Short

Director: Dayana Gauthier An animated documentary showcasing moments in the life of a woman from Honduras who immigrated to the United States in order to support her family back home.

Animation/Mixed Media/Documentary

Director: Pilar GarciaFernandezsesma

SHIPW RECKED Brazil/Portuguese

A shipwrecked woman discharges her memories in the sea.

Essay Film

Director: Juh Almeida

Clattering sewing machines, and memories. In 1987, the Saxon city of Werdau needed workers for its textile industry.

The jobs were advertised in Vietnam, as was usual in the GDR (East Germany) at the time. Many came – some stayed. Delicate fabric prints tell of this economically still prosperous period just before German reunification. A Vietnamese and a German couple cheerfully remember initial difficulties and cultural misunderstandings.

Animation/Mixed Media/Documentary

Director: Thanh Nguyen Phuong

Program 5 FINALE: Awards Finalists & Audience Voting 6:30 - 9:00 PM SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2019 CMI DIGITAL THEATER MILTON 171

Selected from 2204 submissions, these 12 short films present the most innovative and best of this year's Feminist Border Arts Film Festival.

Ashmina directed by Dekel Berenson

6:30 - 9:00 Award Finalists

Program Length: Approximately 1h:55min There will also be a 10 minute intermission.

(Films Are Listed Here in Alphabetical Order)

AL GHORBA Canada/Arabic, English

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Fernanda Galindo

Australia/Chinese

USA/English CONTENT NOTE: Film explores the psychological processing of sexual/abuse trauma by a child

A young pianist is forced to confront her plans about motherhood after she and her new husband visit his family’s remote island community.

GYRL paints a portrait of a pre-teen African American girl struggling with an abusive father.

Narrative Short

DRUM W AVE Through a series of dreams, a Syrian woman living far from home tries to deal with being unsettled and displaced from her war-torn country.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Alia Hijaab ASHMINA Nepal/Nepali, English

A young woman is torn between family obligations and the life she wants to lead.

GYRL

Narrative Short

Director: Natalie Erika James

Director: Anaiis Cisco ONESELF STORY Belgium/French

FUEGO EN EL SÓTANO/ FIRE IN THE BASEMENT Mexico/Spanish

Narrative Short

Director: Dekel Berenson BAJO EL AGUA Mexico/Spanish

After 8 years, I returned to the desert to meet again with my father and I discovered that he told stories of worlds gone under water.

Elisa, Leo, and Ramos are students at Mexico City University. They grapple with student protests and army retaliation during the Mexican student movement of 1968 Narrative Short

Director: Eva Vázquez de Reoyo

Lou tells their story, the way they feel about gender. Girl or boy, he/she, chose not to choose, for now.

Animation/Documentary

Director: Géraldine Charpentier

PATCHW ORK

SW ÊDÎ

Spain/Spanish

Sweden/Swedish

“Patchwork” is the story of Loly, a woman who needs a new liver because hers is broken.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Dora Martí PIRAÑA India/ English, Gujarati, Hindi

A woman trying to buy menstrual pads is surveilled by a clerk who won’t leave her alone.

Narrative Short

Director: Sosi Chamoun YELLOW STARRED COURTYARDS Hungary/English *Preview Screening*

This short film merges readings of testimonies from the past with observational images of the present taken inside former Yellow Starred Buildings, blurring the line between where history ends and the present day begins.

Their haunting historical accounts are read by people from Iran, Brazil, Indonesia, Georgia, and Ghana as a way to unite voices of the present with those of the past.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Christina Agatha Zachariades W ATERMARKS

The journey of waste, where it comes from and where exactly it goes after it’s tossed in the bin. Humans have implemented ways to get rid of waste and yet every piece of plastic ever created still exists in some form or the other. It lives within us, by us, and all around us affecting the planet, human communities, and all life on earth.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Nainisha Dedhia

USA/English In 1944, the 7th district of Budapest was transformed into a Jewish ghetto. It was a walled-off district where Jews were forced out of their homes and crammed into Yellow Starred Buildings before being deported to concentration camps and forced labor camps. By the time the ghetto was liberated on January 16, 1945 - nearly 50% of the city's Jewish population had died during the Holocaust. When the surviving victims returned, the staff of the Hungarian Jewish relief organization, National Committee for Attending Deportees (DEGOB), recorded the personal stories of approximately 5000 Hungarian Holocaust survivors in 1945-1946.

A portrait of Richmond, Virginia: a place where Confederate monuments obscure the deep trauma of slavery along the James River – a painful history that remains largely unrecorded.

As a narrator offers to guide us through contemporary landscapes, impressions of this buried sin rise to the surface through handdeveloped 16mm film and unconventional sound design, questioning how the past is recorded or suppressed.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Sara Suarez

online showcase MARCH 11-MAY 15, 2019 genders.nmsu.edu/film-festival

Récit de Soi directed by Géraldine Charpentier

Online Showcase Program Length: Approximately 1h:06min (Films Are Listed Here in Alphabetical Order) BATTERY REMAINING USA

A young woman is faced with confronting the duality within herself.

How much life remains in your battery?

Animation

Director: Yige Yang BREAKING THE SHACKLES

Animation

Director: Chantal Johnston DID YOU KNOW ?

USA/English

Documentary

Director: Aftab Abbasi DICHOTOMY Canada

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Noor Khan ENTRETANTOS/ AMONG MANY Brazil/Portuguese

Pakistan/Urdu

Coach Younas Qambrani was running a small boxing club for boys in Lyari, an area infamous for its unrest and gang warfare in Karachi. One day a girl asks him to teach her boxing so that she can “protect myself, and be independent.” That girl convinced coach Qambrani to train her with her will and dedication. In a matter of a few years many talented female boxers have emerged from the humble gym and now eye the world stage.

realized that her responsibility as a settler was critical, since there was no return home for herself and her community.

EAST is a letter to her South Asian community to try to part from the past, and look at our current lives, where we need to learn to share the land.

An exploration in shared sites of queerness and sexuality between the spotted hyena and myself.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Lynn Kim EAST: A RELATIONSHIP Canada/English, Arabic

A body that speaks, that shouts, that scratches on the asphalt is its manifesto Experimental/Performance Art

Director: Sue Durden FIRST KISS USA

An immigrant reflects on the crisis of having been robbed of a homeland, while also settling and being complicit in the destruction of the home of Indigenous peoples.

Imagery of graveyards depicts the loss of family members. While burying them in the ground, she

Two guys’ first date.

Animation

Director: Yong Jun Sui

GIRLFRIENDS Chile/Spanish

by Muslim caretakers, a fit that's more natural than people in their communities might assume.

Documentary

Director: Ana Gonzalez

After an unfortunate event at a party, two friends decide to take action on the matter.

Narrative Short Director: Camila Rodó Carvallo HYPNAGOGIC REGRESSION USA

Simulating flashbacks of specific traumas from the filmmaker’s past.

NATURALEZA MUERTA

Animation

Director: ChenZhong Liu THE MUSLIMS PRESERVING KOLKATA’S LAST JEWISH SYNAGOGUES Spain, India/English, Hebrew, Hindi The last Jewish synagogues in Kolkata, India are maintained

Documentary

Director: Natalie Harris TALE OF TW O MOTHERS USA/English

Argentina/Spanish (no subs)

The transition to rot, from solids to particles.

Animation/Mixed Media

Director: Valentina Rocío #PRAYFOR USA/ English, Spanish

Experimental/ Video Art Director: Katina Bitsicas THE MIND OF AN ARTIST: DON MCCULLIN UK/English Legendary photographer Don McCullin's talks about his work as a war photographer.

enlightenment, and cultural connectivity.

Life and death. They are all in the hashtags.

Dance/Digital Art Film

Director: Aeryn Williams

SANKOFA: THE STORY OF OSHUN USA/English

On the brink of a new project, Niambe and Thandiwe of OSHUN use music as a tool for social change, spiritual

When Jamie Diamond bought a discarded German family photo album from 1938, she did not expect to make art with it. But upon bringing a child into Trump's America, she began to notice uncanny parallels, and set out to recreate the original snapshots with her own son, collapsing space and time, merging pixels with the grain.

Documentary/Essay Film

Director: Sam Vladimirsky W HITE NOISE USA

Concentration. Interruption.

White noise.

Narrative Short

Director: Lee Bader

FBAFF 2019 The 4th annual Feminist Border Arts Film Festival is sponsored by NMSU Gender & Sexuality Studies/Interdisciplinary Studies, Creative Media Institute, and University Art Gallery.

This year's programming was supported by funding provided by the New Mexico Humanities Council, Devasthali Family Foundation, Community Foundation of Southern New Mexico, NMSU College of Arts & Sciences, and Southwest and Border Cultures Institute.

We would like to thank the following individuals, without whom this festival would not have been possible: Ricky Araiza Cynthia Bejarano Raphael Benero Lucille Casas Jorge Hernandez Camacho Kat Chudy Maggie Day Ammu & Rama Devasthali Kefaya Diab Luis Gutierrez Manal Hamzeh Anne Hubbell Shiane Jacocks Amy Lanasa Allison Layfield

Isaiah McIntyre James Maupin Elisa Montoya Rob Pickett K. Michelle Quisenberry Charles Rodriguez Marisa Sage Aimée Schaefer Julia Smith Cheyenne Valdespino Lamaia Vaughn Terra Winter Patti Wojahn Jasmine Woodul & Students of WS 407/507: Gender & Graphic Narrative

GENDERS.NMSU.EDU/FILM-FESTIVAL