FEMINIST FEMINIST BORDER BORDER ARTS ARTS FILM FILM FEST FEST
NMSU NMSU Gender Gender & & Sexuality Sexuality Studies Studies in in partnership partnership with with 516 516 ARTS ARTS & & The The Guild Guild Cinema Cinema
RETROSPECTIVE IN FEMINISMS FEMINIST BORDER ARTS FILM FESTIVAL Feminist Border Arts is a university-based humanities & arts project created and produced by Dr. M. Catherine Jonet and Dr. Laura Anh Williams, associate professors in Gender & Sexuality Studies in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at New Mexico State University. Taken as a whole, Feminist Border Arts is the kind of project that artist-scholar Natalie Loveless would describe as research-creation, “a category produced within, with, and for an everadapting university landscape” and beyond (10). Research-creation or practice-based research is “an urgent challenge to the reigning pedagogical and research modalities and outputs in the university today” (10).
In the last five years, Feminist Border Arts has curated and produced five festival seasons of transnational, socially-conscious short film programs through the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival. The festival has also curated video art and short film exhibits through partnerships with the NMSU University Art Museum and Creative Media Institute, and now, 516 ARTS, The Guild Cinema, and FilmIndie.tv. FBAFF also produced a special event called “Pandemic PopUp,” which was accessed by more than 500 online "attendees" during Mother’s Day/ graduation weekend in spring 2020.
While a common perception of short film and digital video art is that they are transitional forms en route to the production of feature-length or more high-profile projects, we contend that these forms are precisely the creative materials that most closely reflect our purpose with the festival. FBAFF is not a film industry event. It is a creation-driven initiative committed to promoting cinema and video art that thinks about/through precarity and liminal experience, which in turn invites audiences to enter a similar process. And, it must be noted, that FBAFF does not seek films that are especially informational or didactic. Rather, it seeks those that generate impact and that invite us to imagine. While our festival often engages in films exploring difficult social issues, it emphasizes films that intertwine experiences of subject and artistic expression—what stories get told and how they’re told. The expressive tools of film and video open doors and create windows that other forms of culture and discourse cannot duplicate. This is also why FBAFF centers works by artists & filmmakers (at all levels of the filmmaking spectrum) as well as close collaborations between videographers and subjects. If cinema, as Roger Ebert once called it, is “a machine that generates empathy,” then it is only right that the geography of idea and story and project is a circle (Ebert). 1
In this regard, Feminist Border Arts offers an example of what Maura Reilly, founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, calls “curatorial activism.” In her book 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). The festival defines “feminist border arts” as a practice that challenges the limits of conventional representation through telling stories from the edge; threshold visions from the margins that create new ways of seeing, that visualize underrepresented ways of knowing. Selected films revive the promise of cinema, the possibility of film to open minds, create new vistas, and challenge dehumanizing forms of representation.
The films selected for this retrospective with 516 ARTS and The Guild Cinema illustrate the wide spectrum of approaches not only to filmmaking and storytelling, but also to the ideas that terms like feminisms conjures. Sara Ahmed notes in Living a Feminist Life, the way she, like many, initially believed feminism only meant “questioning and challenging sexual violence, inequality, and injustice,” and not that it could be philosophical or “ask questions about the nature of reality.” She concludes: “I did not understand that feminism was a way of challenging the universal. [. . .] Feminist theory taught me that the universal is what needs to be exploded” (29).
These universals include longstanding expressive techniques employed in film and video. Following filmmaker/literary theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha’s insistence on resisting the hierarchical power dynamics that film often imposes, we hope this program “speaks near” the many different, sometimes overlapping concerns and tensions evoked by feminisms. Aside from “Speak Near,” these short films were selected from the over 10,000 submissions we’ve received, and from the five years of programming we’ve assembled and archived. The variety of short films in this program reflect not only the range of urgent social crises and experiences we face, but also the capacity for creative media to engage audiences in challenging social injustice and promoting empathy.
M. Catherine Jonet & Laura Anh Williams Las Cruces, New Mexico October 2020
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RETROSPECTIVE IN FEMINISMS REFERENCES Ahmed, Sara. Living a Feminist Life. Duke University Press, 2017.
Balsom, Erika. “‘There is No Such Thing as Documentary’: An Interview with Trinh T. Minh-ha.” Frieze, no. 199, 1 November 2018.
Ebert, Roger. “Video: Roger Ebert on Empathy.” RogerEbert.com, 4 April 2018. Retrieved: https://www.rogerebert.com/empathy/video-roger-ebert-on-empathy
Loveless, Natalie. How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for ResearchCreation. Duke University Press, 2019.
Reilly, Maura. Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating. Thames & Hudson, 2018.
WITH THANKS TO: Suzanne Sbarge, 516 ARTS Executive Director Viola Arduini, 516 ARTS Education and Outreach Coordinator Keif Henley, The Guild Cinema Marisa Sage, NMSU University Art Museum Director & Head Curator Dr. Patti Wojahn, Interdisciplinary Studies Department Head Dr. Laura L. Beadling Amy Lanasa, Creative Media Institute Department Head Feminist Art Coalition FilmIndie.tv
We'd also like to express our gratitude to the many audiences, including NMSU students, faculty and staff, community members, who have attended FBAFF over the years. Finally, our deepest thanks goes to the thousands of filmmakers from more than 130 countries who have found us, sought us out, and entrusted us with the curation and circulation of their films in our programs
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RETROSPECTIVE IN FEMINISMS SPEAK NEAR (PREMIERE) M. Catherine Jonet and Laura Anh Williams, 2020 (US) Live Action/Animation, Experimental Language: English Runtime: 2:38 Artist statement. Research philosophy. Curatorial rationale. “Speak Near” illustrates how Feminist Border Arts—a university-based humanities & arts project merging research-creation and film curation, featuring the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival— interrogates and traverses gaps between academia, artist, public culture, and self. Dr. Jonet and Dr. Williams would like to thank 516 Arts for offering us the opportunity to curate this FBA retrospective and for giving us the “assignment” of making this film.
KALUNGA LINE (FBAFF 2020) Ami Kenzo, 2019 (Canada/Democratic Republic of Congo) Live Action, Experimental Language: English Runtime: 9:33 “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
AL GHORBA (FBAFF 2019) Alia Hijaab, 2018 (Canada) Animation/Mixed Media Language: Arabic & English Runtime: 6:11 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
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RETROSPECTIVE IN FEMINISMS DRUM WAVE (FBAFF 2019) Natalie Erika James, 2018 (Australia ) Live Action Narrative Language: Chinese Runtime: 10:25 A young pianist is forced to confront her fear of motherhood when she marries into a remote island community with bizarre fertility rituals.
PATCHWORK (FBAFF 2019) Maria Manero Muro, 2018 (Spain) Animation Language: Spanish Runtime: 8:24 “Patchwork” is the story of Loly, a person who needs a new liver because hers is broken.
LOSTFOUND (FBAFF 2017) Shakti Bhagchandani, 2016 (US) Live Action Narrative Language: English Runtime: 12:00 In the monotony of her life’s daily routine, a young wife and mother discovers what is missing from her life is standing right in front of her.
BEACH BODY READY (PANDEMIC POPUP!) Céline Ufenast, 2019 (UK) Animation Language: English Runtime: 1:47 Are you beach body ready? Are you beach body ready? Are you..?
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RETROSPECTIVE IN FEMINISMS RECLAMATION (FBAFF 2018) Viveka Frost, 2018 (US) Live Action, Experimental Language: English Runtime: 3:44 A short poetic documentary film about Indigenous identity.
THE ETIQUETTE OF AMERICAN MASSACRES (FBAFF 2019) Alexandria Searls, 2018 (US) Live Action, Experimental Language: English Runtime: 8:44 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 recounts her reactions to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre. A painted bridge offers a metaphor for our collective predicament.
SWÊDÎ (FBAFF 2019) Sosi Chamoun, 2018 (Sweden) Live Action Narrative Language: Turkish, Swedish Runtime: 5:00 A woman trying to buy menstrual pads is surveilled by a clerk who won’t leave her alone.
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RETROSPECTIVE IN FEMINISMS BAJO EL AGUA (FBAFF 2019) Fernanda Galindo, 2018 (Mexico) Live Action/Experimental, Black & White Language: Spanish Runtime: 15:56 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.
RECIT DE SOI (ONSELF STORY) (FBAFF 2019) Géraldine Charpentier, 2018 (Belgium) Animation, Documentary Language: French Runtime: 4:53 Lou tells his story and discusses the way he feels about gender. Girl or boy, he/she chooses not to choose, for now.
ÒSÙN'S ÒPÁRÁ: WHEN EVERYTHING IS BORN (FBAFF 2019) Pâmela Peregrino, 2018 (Brazil) Stop-Motion Animation Language: Portuguese Runtime: 4:16 Stop-motion animation tells the story of the Orixá of the sweet waters, the goddess of fertility that makes everything grow and fertilized in the strength of Axé.
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RETROSPECTIVE IN FEMINISMS SO FAR FROM KABUL (FBAFF 2020) Joel Cartaxo Anjos, 2019 (France) Live Action, Documentary, Experimental Language: Persian Runtime: 10:55 Aghani actress Marina Gulbahari, received 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 anew life in France?
THE POROUS BODY (FBAFF 2020) Sofia El Khyari, 2018 (UK) Live Action/Animation, Experimental Language: French Runtime: 6:15 A meditative poetic trip inside the skin.
SIRENS (FBAFF 2019) Juli Tudisco, 2018 (Hungary) Animation Runtime: 4:00 A sad bride-to-be sits thinking about her looming wedding. She observes a group of girls singing and building a boat, care-free and full of wonderment, ignoring the pressures of society.
FEE (FBAFF 2018) Guen Murroni, 2017 (UK) Live Action Narrative Language: English Runtime: 10:00 Fee is out celebrating with her friends, but a voice from the past keeps plaguing her.
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