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Feminist Border Arts Film Festival

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Feminist Border Arts Film Festival

June 28th, 2023

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 emphasizes artistic vision in telling these stories through short film, including live-action narrative, documentary, essay film & video, 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 will feature a video art piece she created. A special category for entries "Borders/Lands” has been created in honor of Emilia and her work. This category will 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, and other southwestern borderlands states.

We are also offering an online practice-based class in Spring 2023, GNDR 450 M72/550 M73 Special Topics: Feminist Border Arts, where learners will participate in selecting films for the festival, interviewing filmmakers, designing the festival program, and more. While artistic talents are very much appreciated and encouraged, they are not required. The course is practice-based queer feminist research through collaboration and building skills.

To Submit a Film

To enter a short film or to learn more about Feminist Border Arts and the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival, visit fba.nmsu.edu