desired! – film lust & queer

desired! – film lust & queer

»BUT THESE DAYS HOLDING HANDS IS NO BIG DEAL, RIGHT? THAT`S HOW FAR WE´VE COME. I JUST HOPE IT GETS BETTER.«
TROUBLERS

With every new festival edition we ask ourselves: Where does a queer film programme fit in to a women’s film festival? And the desired! section is always a relevant option here. It has to be said that the other programmes in this festival have some pretty queer moments too. But we’ve grouped together some films here as a form of cinema to be celebrated – as Queer Cinema – which allows for a slightly bigger scope. It has become a programme of personal and collective struggles. A programme that offers retrospective looks back at feminist and lesbian history, but a programme that also poses questions about the approach required today and that provides ideas for utopian destinies. Queer is supposed to be a unifying element, but is not to be understood as simply describing protagonists who do not fit into a heterosexual framework – lesbians, transsexuals* or inter*persons, as gays, queers, however we want to see ourselves or how we don’t want to be seen. The term queer is designed to link the individual programmes with the question of how movies in different genres and categories can defy the demand for normativity.

Rights, such as the right to seek asylum, are currently not something that many people in Europe can take for granted. Instead these rights have to be fought for to prevent them being suppressed further.
Specifically at a time right now where supposed feminist positions are used as a vehicle for racist mindsets, it is important to continue the debate on feminism and to clarify and defend queer-feminist positions as anti-racist perspectives. This position is passionately represented by Christine Delphy, who is portrayed by Florence and Sylvie Tissot in their documentary film I’m Not a Feminist, But …. Delphy’s life story is interwoven with the story of a French women’s movement. Her personal narrative as a lesbian and a feminist sociologist is inseparable from her political work and her theory. For Delphy, the question of personal happiness is less important than that of the need for the anger that motivates her. The film depicts her feminist selfimage and cause as a combination of personal experience, activism and academic work.

All this also comes together in the queer-activist musical Folkbildningsterror, albeit in a completely different genre. Folkbildningsterror is a cinematic retort to many forms of state repression. In the film this retaliation takes the form of a radical, dancing, singing collective which wends its way through the streets as a protest against racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia, but full of anger and revolutionary spirit. Watching this can provide a muchneeded release, like shouting out loud or just by dancing. And maybe it can also prompt us to act, maybe it can soothe or release a desire for change.

The desired! section also features both film programmes curated by Vika Kirchenbauer. We invited her to correlate her own work to other positions and strategies of intervention. Vika Kirchenbauer places us – the viewers who watch the film as consumers – at the centre of her work and makes the moments of perception with their locations, principles and gaze structures, hyper present. She has put together a group of films for the Dortmund | Cologne IWFF that look after the question about the action of film and performance. It’s a programme about retrospective, about looking back at something. The programmes conduct a discussion about how viewpoints are structured in cinema and how filming from just one angle, a › staring ‹ approach that defines subjects as › others ‹, can be steered away from here.
_Natascha Frankenberg