5th Annual
FEMINIST BORDER ARTS FILM FESTIVAL
image from Bear With Me, directed by Daphna Awadish
20 20
Schedule at-a-Glance All events will take place in the Sandy Zane and Ned Bennett Collection Study Room in Devasthali Hall on the campus of New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico
Thursday, March 5 10:00 AM
SPECIAL SCREENING Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman Mickalene Thomas
11:00 AM-5:00PM 5:00 PM
FBAFF PROGRAM 1 SPECIAL SCREENING The Mother Project Tierney Gearon
Friday, March 6 10:00 AM
SPECIAL SCREENING Artist and Mother KCET and Sylvia Frances Films co-production
11:00 AM-5:00PM 5:00 PM
FBAFF PROGRAM 2 SPECIAL SCREENING A Girl Like Her Ann Fessler
Thursday, March 5 10:00am Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman: A Portrait of My Mother Mickalene Thomas A documentary portrait of the artist’s mother, who has served as her muse for the past decade. Interspersed with excerpts from a conversation between the artist and her mother—former fashion model Sandra Bush—are archival film clips, snapshots, and scenes of her mother in her hospital bed as she suffers the effects of the kidney disease that took her life shortly after the film was completed. The mother-daughter bond and its significance for each woman’s sense of self is shown to be rich ground for Thomas’s creativity.
FBAFF PROGRAM 1
MOTHERS/OTHERS
11:00am - 5:00 pm
5:00pm The Mother Project Tierney Gearon
Filmmakers follow this exceptional artist over the course of three years as she assembles her most daring and emotionally complex body of work to date: a series on her manic-depressive schizophrenic mother, who resides in Grey Gardens squalor in the frozen suburbs of upstate New York. The mixture of art and family can almost be too close for comfort, but like much of Gearon’s photographs there is a subversive beauty that emerges from the incongruity between ordinary moments and madness.
These films have not yet been rated by the Motion Picture Association of America. Discover more about Labor: Motherhood & Art in 2020 by visiting uam.nmsu.edu/labor-motherhood-art-in-2020/
Friday, March 6 10:00am Artist and Mother KCET and Sylvia Frances Films co-production
A Profile of four California artists who make motherhood a part of their art: Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Andrea Chung, Rebecca Campbell and Tanya Aguiñiga. There's a persisting assumption in contemporary art circles that you can't be a good artist and good mother both. But these artists are working to shatter this cliché, juggling demands of career and family and finding inspiring ways to explore the maternal in their art.
FBAFF PROGRAM 2 11:00am - 5:00 pm
RESURFACING: Five Years of FBAFF
5:00pm A Girl Like Her Ann Fessler
A Girl Like Her reveals the hidden history of over a million and a half women who became pregnant in the US in the 1950s and ‘60s when “nice girls” didn’t get pregnant. It was a time when women were routinely expelled from high schools and colleges and forced to leave jobs as teachers and nurses before their indiscretion was visible to others. They were banished to maternity homes or homes of relatives where they could give birth, surrender their babies for adoption, and start over with a clean slate. In Fessler’s film, the voices of more than fifty women weave together to recount their experiences of dating, pregnancy, family reaction, banishment, and the long-term impact of surrender and silence on their lives.
These films have not yet been rated by the Motion Picture Association of America.
MOTHERS/ OTHERS
Thursday, March 5
Mothers/Others 11:00am-5:00pm Program Length: Approximately 2h:30min Program will repeat throughout the day (Films Listed in Alphabetical Order) 184 Cups of Tea Director: Lauren Hunter Animation Australia
Bear with Me Director: Daphna Awadish Animation/Documentary Netherlands
A girl loses the support of her father over an older boyfriend and feels cultural pressure on an important life decision. As her routine emphasizes how isolating life has become, a cup of tea from mum becomes more than a source of comfort. Baby Maybe Director: Labkhand Olfatmanesh Experimental Live Action Short USA
Worry. Eagerness. Excitement. Concern. Parenthood is a lot of responsibility.
An animated documentary on immigrants who left their home and crossed borders for love. Big Boy Director: Jonathan PhanhsayChamson Animation/Experimental France
He’s a big boy and he’s learning.
Blister Director: Nasim Ghanizadeh Experimental Iran
Public. Private. Is a woman’s life always on display? The Day Marina Abramović Dies Director: Razvan Tun and Nikita Debinski Experimental Romania
Searching. Remembering. Losing. Finding life. Finding nature. Dear Mother Director: Matthew Kaundart Essay Film/Documentary USA
Kayla Tange was adopted by an American family and brought to the United States as an infant in 1983. In 2011, Kayla made arrangements to meet her birth mother. After traveling to Korea, she was devastated to learn that her birth mother had changed her mind and refused to meet with her. Kayla hopes this visual letter will help
bring her some sort of peace if not the chance to finally meet the mother she’s never known. Échale Sávila Director: Caitlin Díaz Essay Film/Documentary USA
Échale Sávila is a film that promotes inter-generational healing through the relationships with the band members’ mothers as they speak on themes of Mexican-American identity, resilience, and healing. Fabiola Reyna (guitarist), Brisa Gonzalez (singer), y Papi Fimbres (drums) reunite with their mothers in their current location of Portland, Oregon to honor the histories of their lives and those who came before them. Through this film, Sávila seeks to answer questions such as: How do we break this cycle of repeated suffering? How do we honor and acknowledge the trauma of our history and use it to heal and empower our future? Girls Grow Up Drawing Horses Director: Joanie Wind Experimental USA
Society’s capitalist and consumerist views of women amount to little more than their views of horses: their value is found not in their humanity, but in their appearance, their labor,
and how each may be exploited. These relationships and parallels occur to the narrator as she considers her grandma’s life as well as her own. Layers of animated colors, textures, and found footage explore these observations, the idea of healing family trauma, and the metaphorical significance of horses as well as women’s gender roles. The House of Rosa Director: Camila Flores Fernández Documentary Peru
Collecting spellings, poems, questions and songs this animated poem portraits rejection, rupture, reflection and love. The Immigrants Director: Maggie Kamal Experimental Short Egypt/USA
Around the world, 68.5 million people have been forcibly displaced. That’s the most since World War II. Kalunga Line Director: Ami Kenzo Experimental Short Canada/Democratic Republic of the Congo
In 1982, Rosa Dueñas opened at her house the first women’s refuge in Peru and Latin America. This documentary tells the story of the shelter in Rosa’s own words, her fight to keep it functioning despite the lack of State support and the attacks she received. The imaginary woman Laura Tatiana Benavides Animation/Experimental Columbia/Estonia
“You will be yourself that other woman you have never seen”
Kalunga Line is a biomythography, a term first coined by Audre Lorde to describe her 1982 book Zami : A New Spelling of My Name, that explores trauma, healing, and the manner in which the cross section between history, biography, and myth informs one’s process of identity formation.
Little L.A. Director: Fernanda H. Garcia Besné Documentary Mexico
rough conditions, but it blossoms anyway. It sinks below the water only to resurface again the next morning, beautiful and strong. Marietou Director: Luis Collazo & Ryan Joseph Documentary USA
Dreamers are children who emigrated with their parents to the US. This documentary portrays the people who have been deported or repatriated and are creating a community in Mexico City called “Little L.A.” Lotus Director: Valentina Gaia Lops Essay Film Ireland
A short documentary on Marietou Ndaw who in less than a year has been able to reach out to over 100,000 people on her YouTube cooking channel. Marietou has become a nexus for different peoples to come together, cook, and feel “home” in contemporary African diaspora. Mom Undressed Director: Romina Schade and Jana Stallein Essay Film/Documentary Germany
2018 has been the worst year of her life. Loss, grief, and the awakening of old ghosts have taken the best of her and now she is trying to navigate through life in search of some peace. Lotus is the name of her therapy room and also one of the most powerful flowers in nature. The lotus flower grows through dirty pond waters, mud, and extremely
Meet a Jewish artist, living in Berlin, who redefines the relationship with her mom through nudity.
My Mother’s Table Director: Hsuan Yu Pan Documentary U.S.A.
Kurdish refugees, a mother and her daughter, introduce their hometown, Aleppo, Syria, through their passion for cooking and sharing their food. Pieta Director: Ira Bilobrodska Experimental Short Ukraine
A mother. A son. An embrace.
Saturday with the Schuberts Director: Elaine Chu Documentary USA
Saturday with single mom Nicole Schubert. Schubert is the sole caretaker of her teenage son and her 89 year old mother. Send Her Back Director: Humad Nisar & Nika Senica Stylized Documentary/Performance Piece Germany/Solvenia
The Porous Body Director: Sofia El Khyari Animation U.K./Morroco/France
A meditative poetic trip inside the skin.
On July 15, 2019, attendees at a Donald Trump rally directed a chant of “Send her back! Send her back!” at Somalia-born U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar. Taking that date and chant as its cue, this piece playfully journeys to the hometown of the First Lady of America in Slovenia to seek out the reactions of everyday
Slovenes after the U.S. President announces “Send Her Back.” A Separation Director: Mateo Vargas Essay Film Mexico/USA
A personal mourning of the pain of forced family separations in Trump’s America. She Dyes Her Hair Pink Director: Viv Li Essay Film/Documentary China/Portugal
Following a young Portuguese girl dying her hair, the director remembers her own libertine youth. A dialogue beyond time, space, and culture unfolds the truth of being a young woman. Sorry Mom Director: Allia Louiza Belamri Documentary Algeria
Amine, a young Algerian tattoo artist, loves his life although tattooing is frowned upon where he lives. Even with their struggles over his chosen profession, his disapproving yet loving mother gives him the knowledge to defend himself.
To Melt/ To Crystallize Director: Hollie Miller Experimental/Essay Film Finland
Cnceptualized, shot, and performed by Miller during her residency at the Serlachius Museum in Finland, the film explores her desire to ingest the sugar-coated landscape through her body only for it to overpower her in a symbiotic relationship. Too Long Here Director: Emily Packer Essay Film/Experimental USA/Mexico
On August 18, 1971, First Lady Pat Nixon declared a stretch of land along the US-Mexico border a “Friendship Park,” willing two countries toward a common future. Decades later, this spirited inauguration hangs above the meeting place like a specter, charged by the border’s harsh realities. Too Long Here ponders the implications of an empty promise.
RESURFACING: FIVE YEARS OF FBAFF
Friday, March 6
Resurfacing: Five Years of FBAFF 11:00am-5:00pm
Program Length: Approximately 2h:30min Program will repeat throughout the day (Films Listed in Alphabetical Order) Al Ghorba *FBAFF 2019* Director: Alia Hijaab Animation/Mixed Media Canada
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. The Bus Trip (Bussresan) *FBAFF 2017* Director: Sarah Gampel Animation/Mixed Media Sweden/Israel/Palestine
Sarah is invited to show her film in Israel as part of a film festival bus
trip. She is hoping for political discussions and friendship, except the conversation stops each time she brings up the occupation of Palestine. So instead, Sarah talks to her dead dad over a noisy phone line. Carolina *FBAFF 2018* Director: Lilih Curi Documentary Brazil
Carolina Teixeira, a dance artist & Disability Studies scholar, seeks “to reimagine not only the social but also the artistic implications that disability might have for dance.” Her goal is “to move ideologically beyond the inclusive model that allows everyone to dance and emphasize the importance of artistic voice and creative autonomy.”
The Etiquette of American Massacres *FBAFF 2019* Director: Alexandria Searls Essay Film USA
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? Searls documents her reactions to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre Fuego en el Sótano (Fire in the Basement) *FBAFF 2019* Director: Eva Vázquez de Reoyo Live Action/Essay Film Mexico
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. Grandma Loleng (Lola Loleng) *FBAFF 2017* Director: Che Tagyamon Animation Philippines
A young woman attempts to reacquaint herself with Grandma Loleng who suffers from dementia. Together, they explore Grandma Loleng’s landscape of memories, only to unearth her innermost secrets and wartime experiences during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines when she was forced into sexual slavery. Lola Loleng is about memory and forgetting, both in the context of the personal and of the national consciousness. A Hairy Tale *FBAFF 2016* Director: Shivangi Mittal Live Action India
A father takes his little girl to get her first haircut at his local barbershop.
Heat Death *FBAFF 2018* Director: Ellie Larkin Animation/Stop Motion U.K.
sons who move to a new neighborhood, and because of the killings and assaults on Black lives, she is determined to keep her family safe.
An experimental stop-motion short about climate change deniers and the consequences of listening to them.
Oneself Story (Recit de SoiI) *FBAFF 2019* Director: Géraldine Charpentier Animation/Documentary Belgium
Malá (The Little One) *FBAFF 2018* Director: Diana Cam Van Nguyen Animation Czech Republic
A Vietnamese girl questions the notion of home as she grows up in a European town. New Neighbors *FBAFF 2017* Director: E.G. Bailey Live Action U.S.A.
How far will a Mother go to protect her children? New Neighbors is a story about a mother and her two
Lou tells their story, the way they feel about gender. Girl or boy, he/she, chose not to choose, for now. Patchwork *FBAFF 2019* Director: Dora Martí Animation/Mixed Media Spain
Loly needs a new liver because hers is broken.
The Pianist of Yarmouk *FBAFF 2018* Director: Vikram Ahluwalia Documentary/Mixed Media U.K./Germany
Classically trained Palestinian musician contemplates the refugee’s treacherous journey to Europe Reclamation *FBAFF 2018* Director: Viveka Frost Essay Film Venezuela, Germany, U.S.A
A visual and philosophical rumination on indigenous identity.
So Far from Kabul *FBAFF 2020—US/Regional Premiere* Director: Joel Cartaxo Anjos Documentary France
Marina Gulbahari, a very famous actress in Afghanistan, received several death threats in her country after being photographed at an international film festival without her head covered. Since 2015, she has lived as a refugee in France, where she has given birth to a girl. Without knowing what her future will be, how can she rebuild herself and start a new life in France?
FBAFF at 5 Years As I write these words it remains both astonishing to me and very immediate that the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival is now in its fifth year. On the one hand, time has passed so quickly and, on the other, I and my co-director, Dr. Laura Anh Williams, feel the weight of the workload, our varying roles and responsibilities, and the continued potential of Feminist Border Arts. For us, Feminist Border Arts is an illustration of the several roles we attempt to manage as academics in the contemporary university. Taken as a whole, Feminist Border Arts is the kind of project that Natalie Loveless describes as “one of those cracks (to paraphrase Leonard Cohen) that lets the light shine in” (8). It is at the forefront of recent approaches to rethinking scholarship, creation, and outreach that are “the logical outcome of interdisciplinary, conceptual, and social justice/activist legacies [. . .]; [. . .] an extension of the pedagogical turn in the arts” (9). First and foremost, Feminist Border Arts is a product of research, research-creation, pedagogy, and—through its exhibition as a festival or public program—dissemination. Its situation as research stems from the knowledge, inquiry, and expertise in literary, visual, film, and cultural studies—in addition to queer and gender studies—employed to continually refine Feminist Border Arts and to formulate its programs. It is research-creation through our design and production of original creative elements for the festival. Work such as developing representative images, composing interstitial music, and developing narratological frameworks to assemble film programs are all elements of the creative production involved in making the festival. And Feminist Border Arts is research-creation through its existence as a conceptual arrangement of approaches, artistic choices, research, ideas. Feminist Border Arts is part of our pedagogy through the ways it and the ideas connected to it become a part of our teaching as well as ushering in the existence of two new courses created by us, Gender & Film Studies and Making Feminist Culture, during the festival’s five year run. Moreover, our work involves academic service and outreach. We seek to be an innovator in embodying the need to make more spaces on campus for feminist, LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and social justice frameworks while also working to form a viewing public composed of heterogeneous audiences. Feminist Border Arts is public humanities scholarship with each festival season producing a new exhibition of curated selections, themes, and materials. As a film festival, Feminist Border Arts has never striven to become a commercial event: it is one that foregrounds the expressive proficiency and politically compelling dynamics of transnational filmmaker-driven art. In its five years, Feminist Border Arts has never charged filmmakers a fee to submit their work. Moreover, we have partnered with existing communityfriendly entities on campus, such as the Creative Media Institute and the University Art Museum, to ensure that we screen films in institutional spaces where no person has to pay a charge to observe the art. Amy Lanasa, Department Head of CMI and Marisa Sage, Director of the University Art Museum have been central for this to occur and we greatly thank them. Some approach the notion of “town and gown” as a mission to locate university-sponsored events in commercial and community venues, which is one worthwhile approach. Thus far, we
have sought to bring community members to campus. Speaking as a first generation academic, I remember the few times my working-class family, none of whom had a high school diploma, ventured onto the campus of the local community college in my rural county. It is my belief that these experiences helped to open the space for me to make it more relatable so I would one day enroll. It is also important that everyone involved in this institution has access to such events without paying a fee because bringing together different audiences form the threads of a public humanities scholarship. But more than utilizing institutional access and resources, we of the Feminist Border Arts are curators of film. Peter Bosma in Film Programming: Curating for Cinemas, Festivals, Archives describes film curators as cultural intermediaries who “perform a delicate balancing act in emphasizing traditions of film art on the one hand and deconstructions of these traditions on the other” (8). Film curation is research question, artistic choice, and the circulation of culture. Curatorial strategies are generally thought of as two-fold. Bosma explains: One the one hand, a film festival curator could focus on films that render an artistic vision and offer a contribution to innovative cinema poetics. An essential characteristic of this view is to favour personal expression, exploring new patterns of temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions. On the other, a film festival curator could also choose to compose programmes of films that are expressing persuasive opinions about social problems [. . .] The essential characteristic of this view is creating awareness, engagement, and to reach out to the audience, to stimulate interaction. (72) As Bosma points out, the possibility for “a large overlap” exists between these curatorial strategies and this describes the liminal space Feminist Border Arts inhabits (72). It is for this reason that we regard the notion of a “feminist border arts” as a bricoleur’s practice that challenges the limits of conventional representation by telling stories from the edge: threshold visions from margins that generate new forms of interpretation, that employ cinematic poetics to reveal underrepresented ways of knowing. In this regard, Feminist Border Arts is an example of what Maura Reilly calls “curatorial activism.” In her text of the same name, she notes how such initiatives are “leveling hierarchies, challenging assumptions, countering erasure, promoting the margins over the center, the minority over the majority, inspiring intelligent debate, disseminating new knowledge, and encouraging strategies of resistance—all of which offer hope and affirmation” (22). Short film is central to this mission for the festival because the medium offers many possibilities for approaches to storytelling that longer and full-length feature films cannot. In fact, Richard Raskin, the scholar who initially theorized short-film storytelling and who is the founding editor of Short Film Studies, notes that “short film tells its stories in ways that differ radically from those of longer cinematic narratives” (29). Raskin points out that short film offers the option of producing visual narratives (1) that do not hinge on conflict between characters; (2) that do not necessitate a transformation of the central character of the film; and (3) that do not need to employ dialogue or voice-over narration to be an effective method of producing story design.
In Raskin’s point of view, short film should be no longer than ten minutes with fifteen minutes maximum, which is a guideline that Feminist Border Arts observes in its film selection. Once that length has been exceeded, a film no longer lines up with short film conventions and instead conforms to the widely employed narrative models of full-length film. Short film as a medium offers the right amount of latitude for creators to exhibit innovation in both storytelling and narrative and these are the elements Feminist Border Arts seeks to cultivate. Moreover, short film offers the opportunity for producing new models of cinematic storytelling that do not require technical expertise or significant budgets to be compelling. For example, Alexandria Searls’s film, “The Etiquette of American Massacres,” which was featured in our fourth festival season in 2019, is very simply produced with non-professional camera work, natural lighting, and low sound quality. The expressive techniques Searls uses, juxtaposed with the preoccupying narrative she builds through voice over, render this film very effective; these work together to enhance the experience and the weight of this film essay. We manifest the values described in this essay because, far too often, fine arts and humanities are gauged by their potential as products of capital or instruments of learning than as productive sites of knowledge and transformation in and of themselves. We seek an art that necessitates the critical-interpretive approach that is foundational to formal preparation in fine arts and humanities. We do this as scholars and artists because we believe the potential of fine arts and humanities is more significant, reflective, and powerful than any “assemblage line” appropriation of them. As I write this, I am reminded of a computer-generated art piece I saw on Twitter attributed to audio electronics designer Scott Jaeger. The piece, which evokes the halted image of a paused VCR screen, calls up for me the impossible situation of fine arts and humanities in the shifting temporalities and fortunes of the contemporary university, while also shining a light on the continual renewal and innovation at work in our disciplines and interdisciplinarily. The image reveals a vulnerable seedling flanked on either side by contradictory machine messages of “Play” and a timestamp, while also simultaneously displaying across its screen the indistinct lines the apparatus produces when designated to pause. The lines running across the screen are visible because it is impossible to completely halt an image produced by a VCR. What appears as a paused screen for viewers is, in fact, a microsecond of moving image, looped and flickering. Despite giving the illusion of rest and stasis, the paused image is quite restive and produced through much effort, even if the human eye is unaware. The top and the bottom of the screen in Jaeger’s image contain two superimposed lines conjuring a combination of the messaging found in motivational posters and the “found” cinematic-influenced art of the social media age: the juxtaposition of filmic image and subtitle. And, in this cross-pollinated moment of seeming suspension, motion, and multiple planes
occurring, the image reads: “If the situation was hopeless, their propaganda would be unnecessary” (italics used here to signify the distortion covering the bottom of the screen). The situation isn’t hopeless… It is for this reason that Feminist Border Arts is a hopeful project. It is for this reason that Feminist Border Arts devotes itself to the audacity of the fine arts and humanities. Feminist Border Arts affirms the role of fine arts and humanities in providing and continuously creating tools to critically engage our own assumptions, reimagine the spaces we inhabit, and buck up the will to keep pushing because the machine lies. It is with joy and propitiousness that Feminist Border Arts observes its fifth year. We have been fortunate to gain the support of our department and program—Interdisciplinary Studies Department and Gender & Sexuality Studies—through personal support, financial contribution, and their participation in inviting friends, local and regional community members, students, alumni, and more. In so many ways, this festival symbolizes many of the values, concerns, research, and teaching interests of the Gender & Sexuality Studies faculty. We must give a special note of thanks to our department head, Dr. Patti Wojahn, whose enthusiasm, support, and belief have helped to make this festival a reality. We have also—during our timeline— received several grants and we thank each organization for supporting our vision of a curated activist art. We are grateful to other colleagues who come out to support us and recommend the festival to their students. We also thank the audiences and their feedback over the years for attending and contributing to the festival. No comment card can outdo the interactions we have had with festival audience members. Your comments and enthusiasm sustain us. And, our deepest thanks goes to the thousands of filmmakers located in more than 100 countries who have found us, sought us out, and entrusted us with the circulation of their films in our programs. M. Catherine Jonet FBAFF Founder and Co-Director Bibliography Bosma, Peter. Film Programming: Curating for Cinemas, Festivals, Archives. Wallflower Press, 2015. Loveless, Natalie. How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for ResearchCreation. Duke University Press, 2019. @noisejockey. “Scott Jaeger of Industrial Music Electronics posted this, and it’s the most oddly inspiring things I’ve seen in a while.” Twitter. 11 Oct. 2019, 11:25 a.m., https://twitter.com/noisejockey/status/1182708906126004224 Raskin, Richard. “On Short Film Storytelling.” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, vol. 4, no. 1, 2014, pp. 29-34. Reilly, Maura. Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating. Thames & Hudson, 2018.
The 5th annual Feminist Border Arts Film Festival is sponsored by NMSU Gender & Sexuality Studies/Interdisciplinary Studies and University Art Gallery. M. Catherine Jonet and Laura Anh Williams are the Co-Directors of FBAFF. We would like to thank the following individuals, without whom this festival would not have been possible:
Minerva Baumann Cynthia Bejarano Manal Hamzeh Jasmine Herrera Amy Lanasa Rashel Lopez James Maupin Elisa Montoya Marisa Sage Patti Wojahn Discover more about Gender & Sexuality Studies at NMSU by visiting genders.nmsu.edu