Femme Film Program

FEMME HIVE: Femme Film Program

11.10.2014, 21:00 @Villa Neukölln
(Entry – €3 without Registration)

INTERNATIONAL SHORTS PROGRAM

IWASATEENAGEGIRL_STILL

Title: I was a Teenage Girl
Filmmaker: Augustine Frizzell
Language: English
Length: 6 min

Description: Emma and Jesse are close friends. One night, after an intense breakup, they have a heartfelt conversation that challenges the boundaries of their friendship in an unexpected way.

Directors Bio: Augustine Frizzell is a filmmaker from Dallas, Texas. Her first short film, “I Was a Teenage Girl” premiered at SXSW 2014 and played as one of 5 opening night shorts at the prestigious Maryland Film Festival. Current film project is feature film “Never Goin’ Back”.

*Special Thanks to Three Dollar Bill Cinema for curitorial support!

Title: Dominatriz del Barrio
Filmmaker: Xandra Ibarra (La Chica Boom)
Language: none (Spanish language soundtrack)
Length: 3 min

Description: Dominatriz del Barrio is a new film recasting one of La Chica Boom’s long-standing “spictacle” performances. The term “spictacle” is a concept she coined to describe her Mexi-sexi minstrel performance work that erotically rearranges Mexican/Chican@ iconography. Dominatrix of the Barrio plays with tourist’s fascination of donkey shows on the El Paso/Juarez border (pre-9/11) and transforms piñatas into sexual objects and the lucha libre mask into bdsm accouterment. Xandra Ibarra, Dominatriz del Barrio, 2014. Directed and Performed by Xandra Ibarra. Camera Leo Chiang. Editing by Leo Chiang and Miguel Ibarra. Music by Lalo Guerrero. (Image above: Xandra Ibarra, Still from Dominatriz del Barrio, 2014)

Directors Bio: Xandra Ibarra (b. 1979, El Paso, Texas) is a performance and video artist living and working in Oakland, California. Recent screenings and performance work include Popa Gallery (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), Mix Film Festival (NYC), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), and Performance Studies International (Stanford), Joe’s Pub (NYC), Galeria de la Raza (SF), and The Burlesque Hall of Fame (LV). Recent awards include the ReGen Artist Fund, Franklin Furnace Archive’s Fund for Performance Art, CA$H Grant from Theater Bay Area, and the YBCAway Fund from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Recent residencies include National Performance Network, CounterPULSE (SF) and Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL). Ibarra’s work has been profiled by In Dance Journal, GLQ Journal, SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, Telemundo, Seattle Gay News, Art Practical, and Curve Magazine. Integrating her prior experience in neo-burlesque, Ibarra erotically reorganizes Mexican/Chican@ iconography to create ‘spictacles,’ spectacles of degeneracy and power that are both against and engaged in the colonial gaze. Ibarra’s performance work calls attention to the fixed images/narratives that have reduced Mexicanidad to a list of hollow symbols. Her work is not about what Mexicanidad is but about the spectacle of mimetic Mexicanidad asa disciplined and controlled existence. Her persona, La Chica Boom, is a performance project that explores sexual/racial representation, queer acts, and compulsory whiteness.

Hustlers-2-1533

Title: Golden Age of Hustlers
Filmmakers: Silas Howard & Erin Greenwell
Featuring: Justin Vivian Bond
Language: English
Length: 4 min.

Description: Featuring Tony award-winning artist and performer Justin Vivian Bond, the song, (written by the legendary transgender chanteuse Bambi Lake), and video aims to give the viewer an insider’s perspective of this important moment within the timeline of queer history.

Directors Bios: Silas Howard’s directing credits include the indie queer feature, “By Hook Or By Crook” (Sundance 2002), Sunset Stories (SXSW 2012) and most recently Sticks & Stones, a documentary based on legendary transgender chanteuse Bambi Lake. Erin Greenwell’s directing credits include “My Best Day” (Sundance 2012) and “Oh Come On” (The Julie Ruin’s debut video). Erin’s next film is about the 1950s butch/femme bar scene.

*Special Thanks to Three Dollar Bill Cinema for curitorial support!

mijke2

Title: Escaping into Common Places, having Gothic Adventures in the Neoclassical and Other Ages. Or: My Life is Framed by You
Concept, Performance: Mijke van der Drift
Concept, Media: Alex Reuter
Language: English
Length: 6 min.

Description: Caught between hypervisibility and erasure, a trans*body is a rare body. Different normativities, embodied and enacted, make it a body in limbo. The trans*body can draw upon diverse embodied patterns, as attitudes, points of view and actions, that are typically reserved for different genders. A trans*body performs politics by morphing those patterns countering gendered assumptions about space, shape, intention, position, and norms. The trans*body can break open these invisible assumptions by rebounding them, by ignoring them, by being unable to comply with them, and by simply refusing them.

Artists Bios: Mijke and Alex met in Amsterdam and have made various projects together. Their work re-thinks movement and stillness. Mijke and Alex have been exploring gender, activism and art.

Still_LaCorrida_Ibarra

Title: La Corrida
Filmmaker: Xandra Ibarra (La Chica Boom)
Language: none (Spanish language soundtrack)
Length: 3 min

Description: La Corrida is a working/experimental clip of a site-specific endurance run/performance on the El Paso/Juarez border. Due to the violence caused by drug cartels, Juarez is one of the world’s most violent cities. Just across the Rio Grade is El Paso, Texas, one of the safest cities in the US. Many neighborhoods on the Juarez border have been abandoned and many have run across the border to find safety. Sites featured in video include: Franklin Mountains, Walls outside of Fort Bliss, the dry river bed of the Rio Grande where the U.S. border fence with Mexico ends. Xandra Ibarra Licensing Agreement with Femme Hive Short Film Descriptions and Credits Artist Biography Xandra Ibarra, La Corrida, 2012. Performance on El Paso/Juarez border. Camera Julian Quiambao. Edited by Julian Quiambao and Miguel Ibarra. Music by Perez Prado and remixed by Xandra Ibarra. (Image above: Xandra Ibarra, Still from La Corrida, 2014)

femmesPromo

Title: Femmes: A Tragedy
Filmmaker: Gina Young
Language: English (with German subtitles)
Length: 10 min.

Description: Gina Young’s Femmes: A Tragedy is a contemporary adaptation of Clare Booth Luce’s 1936 play The Women, reimagined in the queer femme subculture. When a community organizer’s polyamorous girlfriend drops her overnight for a hot bartender, her friends– an activist, an academic and a party promoter– are thrown into girl/girl competition despite their best feminist intentions. Femmes was the winner of the 2014 Jane Chambers Award for Playwriting and was hailed as “slyly riotous and dazzlingly reconceived” by The Hollywood Reporter. The full-length play is available on YouTube. Thanks to Alva Dittrich for the German subtitles!

Directors Bio: Gina Young is a writer, director and performer previously known as one-half of Team Gina, whose video “Butch/Femme” was a crazy viral hit on YouTube. These days, Gina lives in Los Angeles making queer film and theatre projects like Tales of a Fourth Grade Lesbo and Femmes: A Tragedy.

Big thanks to Alva Blockshot for the German subtitles!

FML-Ibarra

Title: Fuck My Life (short film)
Filmmaker: Xandra Ibarra (La Chica Boom) and Rob Fatal
Language: none (English language soundtrack)
Length: 5 min

Description: Named after Ibarra’s full-length performance work, FML, the short, reveals La Chica Boom’s “fucked life” and her transformation into a reviled creature. Xandra Ibarra and Rob Fatal, Fuck My Life, 2012. Written and performed by Xandra Ibarra. Directed, filmed, and edited by Rob Fatal. Production Assistance by Jesus Salas, Javier Hurtado, and Nicole Anderson. Music by La Lupe. (Image above: Xandra Ibarra, Still from Fuck My Life, 2012)

Title: Luftballong (Air Balloon)
Filmmaker: Yenni Lee
Language: Norwegian (English subtitles)
Length: 11 min

Description: Luftballong (Air Balloon) is the story of Julie, a girl who carries around with her box full of memories. As she goes through the memories of her ex, she is facing all the joy and pain all over again. And she’s also slowly starting the process of moving on. This is the story about what you wished you could have. But when you reconstruct the memories, you see that you can never change or have what you wanted.

Directors Bio: Lee (1985) is a film and music video director from Kongsvinger, Norway. Her style portrays dark and melancholic thematics as a poetic form in characters and universes. She is most notably for the short film “Luftballong” (Air Balloon, 2011) which got selected to festivals such as Outfest in Los Angeles, Melbourne Queer Film Festival and Oslo Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. The film “Run Away” with Sandra Kolstad gained viral attention for the explicit use of nudity, showing a big and bloody wound on the artist’s chest. This created domestic debate in media about the use of nudity in film. In 2014 she won the prize for Best Independent European Music Video at ÉCU in Paris. (facebook)

Run Away_still

Title: Run Away
Filmmaker: Yenni Lee
Featuring: Sandra Kolstad
Language: English
Length: 4 min

Description: Sandra wakes up in the middle of abandoned and pale eerie fields, to find herself unconscious about a big and bloody wound on her chest. A screaming affliction that locks her in the state of gloom. Through a clinical and sharp performance, she conveys that she wants to run away. Sandra then takes us on a ride of escapism through nature and water.

FEELINGS_IMAGE

Title: Let’s Pretend We Don’t Have Feelings
Filmmaker: Fivestar
Featuring: GAYmous
Language: English
Length: 5 min

Description: GAYMOUS’s premiere music video, (Let’s Pretend We Don’t Have) FEELINGS shot on location at the San Francisco Armory.

Musicians Bio: “GAYmous is performing to packed houses all over the San Francisco Bay Area. Audiences can’t get enough of their newly coined genre Bay Area Slut Step.” — Curve Magazine

| SHORTS SECTION CURATED BY QUEER REBELS |

Queer Rebels presents FEMME LOVE. From sensuous declarations to electro-Pinay waves to fat femme femme of color ferocity, these shorts declare FEMME LOVE.
About Queer Rebels: Artists KB Boyce and Celeste Chan founded Queer Rebels in 2008.
Their vision: break down doors for queer/trans artists of color, connect generations, and honor our histories with art for the future. Website | Facebook

Celeste Chan by Mia Nakano

Title: ABSENCE: no fats, no femmes, no Asians:
Filmmaker: Celeste Chan
Curated by: Queer Rebels
Language: English
Length: 7 min.

Description: Fiercely honest, ABSENCE is a quest – for community, for visibility, for that queer fat API (Asian Pacific Islander) femme-utopia.

Directors Bio: Celeste Chan is an artist and organizer, schooled by DIY and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. A VONA and Lambda Literary fellow, her writing can be found in As/us journal, Feminist Wire, and Hyphen. Her films have screened in CAAMFest, Digital Desperados, Entzaubert, Frameline, Heels on Wheels, MIX NYC, National Queer Arts Festival, and Vancouver Queer Film Festival, among others. Alongside KB Boyce, she co-directs Queer Rebels, a queer and trans people of color arts project. They have presented and curated in the SF Bay Area, NYC, Seattle, Bloomington, Glasgow, Berlin, and beyond.

Revolve_Still

Title: Revolve
Filmmaker: Indira Allegra
Curated by: Queer Rebels
Language: English
Length: 4 min.

Description: Revolve transforms the jazz standard “All of Me” from a self-effacing ballad, into a sensual declaration of the singer’s strength in relationship to her audience.

Directors Bio: Indira Allegra is a poet and artist exploring intimacy, intertextuality, affect and endurance through performance, video works and handwoven textiles. A former Lambda Literary Fellow and VONA Alum, she was interviewed by BBC Radio 4 in 2013 for Poetry of Gold and Angels, a segment on poetry in the San Francisco Bay Area. Indira’s films, Blue Covers and Weep Willow: The Blues for Lady Day, have screened at festivals such as MIX NYC, Perlen Hannover LGBT Festival, Visible Verse Festival and Fusion. Her textile works have been shown at SOMArts, Worth Ryder and AlterSpace galleries.

Jeepneys_borntorage_pic

Title: We are Mangos
Filmmaker: Anna Luisa Petrisko
Curated by: Queer Rebels
Language: English
Length: 4 min.

Description: “WE ARE MANGOS” ||| ||| ||| BY JEEPNEYS feat. LOW LEAF remix | MASKS BY GRACE ROSARIO PERKINS. Jeepneys and Low Leaf, cosmic parrot sisters of the infinince, forever frolicking upon the nebular fields of the many dimensions we inhabit, intersect heartminds and find a universe of creatures. Together they dance joyfully between the folds of space and time. Low Leaf, an eternally expansive being, Earth’s beloved fairy swung from a crescent moon, beacon of divine ancestoric light force! As she climbs the palm tree of divine destiny she meets Jeepneys on the other side. Jeepneys, the alien bird mestiza, whose laughter creates stars across a void. Eyeing each other through the pyramid of palms, they see that they have been together since before the beginning of time. WE DO NoT PLACE ANY HIERARCHY TO TIME NOR SPACE NOR FLESH. OUR GARDENS LIVE ON METEORS AND MOONS. WE GIVE BIRTH TO UNIVERSES AND THEY GIVE BIRTH TO US. WE ARE ALL MANGOS.

Directors Bio: Anna Luisa Petrisko, also known as her musical and performance alias “Jeepneys,” uses science fiction in her work to broaden our imagination across literal and figurative borders and perform postcolonial critique. Jeepneys is named after the colorful and iconic public transportation vehicles that populate the Philippine islands, originating from discarded U.S. WWII army jeeps. In the spirit of that reinvention, Jeepneys uses Earthly materials to create otherworldy sounds + art, manifesting “electro Pinayism waves” that travel beyond our known borders. She is constantly traveling through space, seeking the wisdom of the cosmos, and exploring the infinite possibilities to heal through art and music.
Anna Luisa has exhibited at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) and MOMA PS1, and was one of the artists commissioned to perform for The Getty’s Pacific Standard Time Presents: LA Modern Architecture. She has toured the Unites States and Europe as a solo performer (Jeepneys) several times. She is also one half of the performance and installation duet, Mother Popcorn, along with artist Adee Roberson, and a member of an all women of color artist group, Black Salt Collective. She resides in Val Verde, CA, where she spends much of her time star-gazing and listening to the songs of the coyotes and owls.

———

Title: Fuck/Talk
Filmmaker: Courtney Trouble
Language: English
Length: 7 min.

Description: Dyke and trans*-identified Hayley Fingersmith and trans*-identified Jacques LeFemme discuss gender, queerness and femme, while showing us just how hot gender fucking can be. In true Queer Porn TV style, genderqueer artist Courtney Trouble produces graphic content specially made for Translations that you won’t want to miss! Contains explicit sexual content.

Directors Bio: Courtney Trouble is a gender queer fat femme living in Oakland, CA. They make porn or whatever.

– Intermission –

FEATURE FILM

ftf_press

Title: FtF: Female to Femme
Filmmakers: Kami Chisholm & Elizabeth Stark
Language: English
Length: 48 min.

Description: FtF: Female to Femme imagines a world in which the journey toward femme was understood to be as radical as journeys to claim and inhabit other queer bodies. Envisioning more than it documents, this documentary celebrates dyke femme identities, combining farce and seduction with analysis and personal history. For years, femmes have forged community and created space for themselves out of edgy performance and authentic parody. FtF recognizes these strategies and builds them into an unforgettable sexy, funny and moving film.

Bursts of queer burlesque amplify the idea of a femme drag. A satire of a femme transition support group uses humor to disarm viewers (as it did its participants), finally stripping away layers of performance to arrive at a raw recognition of femme tactics of self-conceptualization. Interviews feature a host of fabulous femmes, including actress/ writer Guinivere Turner, novelist/activist Jewelle Gomez, poet Meliza Bañales, rock stars Leslie Mah (Tribe8) and Bitch (Bitch & Animal), professors, activists, artists and dancers. The filmmakers ask these brilliant thinkers and performers to use the language of gender transition to talk about femme identity, opening up new possibilities for understanding femininity while reinforcing connections among gender warriors around the world.

A wildly original extravaganza, FtF: Female to Femme presents a saucy, indelible portrait of a people and their politics central to the gender revolution.

Directors Bios:
Kami Chisholm received her B.A. in film production and literature from Loyola Marymount University in 1996 and her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2007. FtF: Female to Femme, Chisholm’s co-directed feature documentary that celebrates femme dyke identities, premiered in June 2006 at Frameline30: The San Francisco International LGBT Festival. Chisholm is also the director of “Street Haunting” (2007), a lyrical short that follows the meanderings of Virginia Woolf in contemporary Los Angeles; “Seven Questions about Desire” (2006), an experimental erotic documentary; and the co-directed “Sigmund Freud: Professional Psychoanalyst” (2005), which imagines one queer day in the life of the infamous Sigmund Freud. In addition, she is the producer and co-editor of “Godspeed” (2007), an HD short about a speed freak bike messenger who passes as a boy. Currently, Chisholm teaches visual culture, feminist/queer/race theory, and sexuality studies at California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University.

Elizabeth Stark is the author of the novel Shy Girl, published (by Farrar, Straus & Giroux) in 1999, in paperback from Seal Press in 2000, and in German from Orlanda Press in 2003. It was a national bestseller on the Lambda Book Report list and at A Different Light, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Ferro-Grumely Award. Elizabeth completed her MFA at Columbia University in 1996. She worked as a reader and editor at The Paris Review, has read, performed and taught in New York City, San Francisco, and points between, and is currently finishing her second novel. Currently, she is a Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz.

Special Thanks to Frameline Distribution
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Due to feedback during the screening of FtF and the fact that it does not actively include Transwomen in the definition of femme/women, we have a few links that add some discourse and constructive critique around the film. We agree that this is an important/critical aspect to be discussed (wishing this discussion could have taken place at the screening), but we hope that these articles will help feed external dialogue. If you have any additional links to add, please send them to us. Thank you!

Unclean, Complicated, and Dirty: The Multiplicity of Femme (Queer & Feminist Film Studies, Spring 2013)

“If a femme falls in the forest…” (BitchMedia)

“FTF” have you really redefined femme? (Fuchsia Focus: a queer critique of the media)

FEMME HIVE: Femme Film Program

11.10.2014, 21:00 @Villa Neukölln (Entry – €3 without Registration)

INTERNATIONAL SHORTS PROGRAM

– Intermission –

FEATURE FILM

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11.10.2014, 21:00 @Villa Neukölln
(Entry – €3 without Registration)