desired! – film lust & queer

desired! – film lust & queer

The idea of putting together a queer feminist programme in the context of a women’s film festival, however matter of course it may seem, does at first throw up a contradiction. This contradiction lies in the clash of the term queer with a platform that itself appears to be exclusive at first glance since it concentrates on films by women, thus taking up a specific position.
The intention is therefore to water down and question categories of gender and of the desires which belong to them at a place that only functions on the basis of these very categories. This becomes meaningful and is wonderfully possible for as long as the festival itself exists in a society that is still predominantly patriarchal, thus making its own existence politically necessary. The concept of giving this women’s film festival a perspective of softening up normative genders and constructs of desire underpins this political relevance and is therefore a tradition that must definitely be continued.
The section programme is headed with an appeal to desire. Desire, what we are looking and wishing for, does not take place solely as the desire of the protagonists, it is at the same time a question of drive.
The beginnings of every gay/lesbian/transgender/queer film programme have always been a desire for visibility as well. It is the desire for new characters, different stories, the desire to see oneself in films, to discover and create processes of identification. It is also a desire for figures that are not pleading to be accepted but who might be broken, radical, discerningly diverse, odd and self-confident.
The issue here is defending visibility, and doing this again and again through films, and creating it anew. It also becomes clear that it is important to be sensitive towards the effects associated with what has already been politically achieved, and with a form of visibility. Namely when cha-racters are transported into well-known narratives to take their place there in the (white) middle class standards and conform and go quiet. Cheryl Dunye describes exactly this in her film made as a collective, The Owls, as the state of a group of lesbians who were once motivated in the past and who now have no more goals to pursue, who no longer even know who they actually want to be, or who they were or are now. It tells a story about lesbians in film history whose desires in early films could only be quenched by death, and for whom an alternative to already known narratives is currently missing.
Possible alternatives to the dilemma of the older wiser lesbians are offered by the many films in the section. These are alternatives that oppose generalisation and look for very personal ways of expression. The section is this year  oncentrating particularly on form. The focus is on animation films as a genre neglected in terms of issues of desire.

_Natascha Frankenberg