Submissions are now open for the 2023 season of the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival, a short film festival held on the campus of NMSU at the University Art Museum on June 28th, 2023, in honor of the Stonewall Riots.
The Feminist Border Arts Film Festival celebrates the power of cinema as a creative tool to reflect upon urgent social issues and thought-provoking representations of identity and difference. 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, video arts, and new media to open minds, create new vistas, and challenge dehumanizing forms of representation.
The festival emphasizes artistic vision in telling these stories through short film, including live-action narrative, documentary, essay film, video art, experimental film, new media, and animation. FBAFF showcases student, indie, and professional filmmakers, domestic and international. The festival specializes in films 15 minutes and under.
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, video arts, and new media to open minds, create new vistas, and challenge dehumanizing forms of representation.
This year’s festival is dedicated to the memory of visual artist and late NMSU student, Emilia Rueda, and her family. A video she created will be featured. A special category for entries "Borders/Lands” has been created in honor of Emilia and her work. It seeks to highlight socially conscious and creative short film and video from and about this region by filmmakers and video artists from NMSU (students, faculty, & staff), Las Cruces, El Paso, Ciudad Juárez & Chihuahua, and other southwestern U.S. states.
Feminist Borders Arts Film Festival features a special category called "Borders/Lands" for NMSU, Las Cruces, El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, Southwest, & Chihuahua films and filmmakers. New Mexico State University is Located in southern New Mexico—a state that includes nineteen sovereign Pueblo nations and is situated less than 50 miles from the U.S./Mexico border.
This is a special category to highlight socially conscious and creative short film and video, as well as microcinemas, of these areas, including NMSU (students, faculty, & staff), community films and filmmakers in the area, region, within internal borders (like Pueblos) and beyond (U.S./Mexico border).
We are also offering an online practice-based class in Spring 2023 at the 400/500 level, Special Topics: Feminist Border Arts, where learners will select films for the festival, create the zine-like program, interview filmmakers, create visual, etc. While artistic talents are very much appreciated and encouraged, they are not required. The is practice-based queer feminist research through collaboration and building skills.
The final deadline for submissions is April 15, 2023. Creators are not charged a fee to enter a film, but the festival accepts only one film per director. As always, we seek to create through the festival an artistic awakenining and sense of solidarity between feminist, queer, trans, LGBTQIA+, global, and nationa/transnational filmmaking and viewing.
FBAFF is free and open to the public. The 2023 season will be an all day event at the NMSU Art Museum on June 28th, in honor of the Stonewall Riots. Festival programing is curated in conversation with the teaching, outreach, research, & creativity missions of Feminist Border Arts and NMSU's Gender & Sexuality Studies academic program. FBAFF seeks to create aesthetic space that brings community members and university people together through feminist, queer, trans, socially consious, and transnational creative expression.
More information about venue, times, merchandise, and other connected events to come.
Feminist Border Arts Film Festival proudly accepts entries on FilmFreeway:
