Feminist Border Arts Film Festival to screen full-length films, host filmmakers
For eight years, the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival (FBAFF) at New Mexico State University has been a short-film festival. Now, in its ninth year, the festival will also screen feature length films and include a day-long zine fest June 28-29 during International Pride Weekend. Zines are self-made, small circulation publications.
Film screenings are scheduled during both days. This year’s festival selections include 54 short films (15 minutes or shorter) and 15 features. The film and zine fest will host filmmakers, artists and scholars as well as zine-makers from across North America at the University Art Museum for the first time since the 2020 pandemic. The festival is free and open to the public.
Founding co-directors and gender and sexuality studies professors M. Catherine Jonet and Laura Anh Williams started Feminist Border Arts (FBA) as a platform for research, creativity and curation, fostering critical engagement and social awareness. The film festival and zine fest are FBA’s two biggest projects.
“The philosophy of the festival is about using film and media arts to cross boundaries and borders,” Jonet said. “It’s about imagining new social relations and ways of being and to challenge or critique status quo ideas. The imagination is not only about the new, we have to also think of things that we live with every day.”
June 28 is International Pride Day and the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots when the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, was repeatedly targeted for violent raids by police. The crowd fought back and the ensuing riots changed the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
“June is pride month. We haven't had a lot of programming for pride month at NMSU, because it's the summer and a lot of the students are out of classes,” Williams said. “So, I think this provides us a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the occasion with our campus and local and regional communities.”
Spring 2024 graduate and recipient of the Outstanding Senior Award in gender and sexuality studies Alex Fonnest’s short film “Memory,” will be screened as an Official Film Festival Selection. Her film focuses on her relationship with her mother’s death and what it means to her. Fonnest credits the FBAFF, Jonet and Williams with helping her share her story.
“The FBAFF is a safe space for stories and pieces like mine, and that alone makes student involvement important,” Fonnest said. “Not only has participating in the festival taught me about the world of film and the many, unique intersectional voices in film, but it also gave me a space to discover myself and confidently share that discovery in a place where everyone held room for me. The FBAFF holds space for all of us to learn, grow and connect, which is essential to students."
Jonet and Williams have created a concentration in media arts and cultural studies to provide students with opportunities to practice critical methods, engage in socially transformative ideas and contribute to expression and public scholarship.
Jonet and Williams’ students were tasked with reviewing, evaluating and selecting some of the festival’s films. With FBA’s focus on both digital and material work, Williams offers students the option of creating their own zines. She sees zines as an important medium for creating and disseminating critical creative work and counternarratives and has taken students to different zine fests in the region.
“I think it's important for students to see themselves as actively shaping the culture and not just consuming it,” Williams said. “If we want the future of media to look different, this is a really wonderful way to see how that that change might happen. I think it's an important and exciting opportunity for students to see how those sorts of ideas and perspectives can take shape through these film and zine submissions.”
An interdisciplinary festival team of gender and sexuality studies alumni, many of whom are now colleagues at NMSU are supporting the festival along with their UAM partners.
FBAFF 2024 will host several New Mexico premieres, including local LGBTQ+ filmmaker Ryan Rox’s feature debut “Hidden Flora” and the international premiere of the full-length documentary “Kim Carnie Out Loud,” about a Scottish musician who connects with other formerly silent LGBTQ+ people.
The festival also features films currently on international film festival circuits, such as Lizz Winstead’s exploration of reproductive justice advocates, “Who Asked You”; “Missing From Fire Trail Road,” a documentary about the 2020 disappearance of Indigenous woman Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis; and “Analogue Revolution,” filmmaker Marusya Bociurkiw’s feature-length documentary that traces the rise and fall of analogue feminist communications that preceded the “MeToo” era.
In collaboration with the festival, a hands-on workshop with UAM outreach coordinator Eva G. Flynn will focus on making zoetropes from 1 to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 29. First invented in 1867, zoetropes are spinning cylinders used to create animations that are still used today. Visit uam.nmsu.edu for more information about the workshop. For more information about the festival, speakers and a schedule of events, visit https://fba.nmsu.edu/fest-and-expo.html.
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CUTLINE: New Mexico State University’s ninth annual Feminist Border Arts Film Festival and Zine Fest will take place June 28-29 during International Pride Weekend. (Courtesy photo)
