GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies

I teach African America cinema, curatorial politics, and new media history at Emory University. Since founding the Women of Color Film and Video Festival at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1992, I have worked in distribution, programmed at the Mill Valley Film Festival and the Pacific Film Archive, among others, served on numerous festival juries and funding reviews, and consulted on [End Page 607] film/video curriculum development. Recently I have also been working in sound art for installation and performance.

I would argue that scholarly work has less immediate impact on festivals, in relation to audience reception, than writings by critics and programmers—for example, film reviews, program guides, press releases. Despite increased film festival scholarship, its reception outside the academy is unclear. ¹

For me as a scholar, it is depressing to see artists disappear after making a few interesting shorts and to see young or emerging filmmakers create the same conversations on identity that were in circulation three, five, or even ten years ago. This state of affairs is indicative of three things: missing knowledge of queer cinema legacy, lack of documentation, and lack of funding. Are historically innovative queer films and videos, particularly shorts, being screened at media arts programs and organizations, queer or not, that hold regular screening series? When is the last time you saw a screening of the shorts When You Name Me (Scott Beveridge, Canada, 1994) or I Never Danced the Way Girls Were Supposed To (Dawn Suggs, United States, 1992)? ²

Those of us academics concerned with U.S. cinema who have not written about early 1990s U.S. queer film and video artistry have done queer cinema and ourselves a disservice. Such writings are part of the circuitry influencing holdings in university libraries, university-based public screenings, and artist residencies. These holdings support the development of curriculum and of artists studying in university settings. The loss to queer cultural production is apparent in the lessened presence of work by marginalized queer artists: queers of color, transgenders and transsexuals, and those portraying marginalized queer sexuality. After all, critical documentation made a profound difference in the careers of such "marginals" as Cheryl Dunye, Sadie Benning, and Vaginal Davis, albeit within the academy and an arguably rarefied avant-garde art world.

One place where scholars can make an impact is in the classroom. Students should not have to get two or three degrees—in film, ethnic, and gender/sexuality studies—to gain access to a fully representative film history. I like to think that having critically examined the work of earlier filmmakers in a cinematic context, especially those concerned with identity, newer filmmakers would push forward and deepen the cinematic conversation instead of creating another iteration.

Crudely put, from the beginning of the 1990s, there emerged in U.S. festivals two camps in relation to the absence of LGBTQ representation. One prioritized political and thematic content over form, and the other desired at least the meeting of the two if not wholly prioritizing the latter. This change was evident post-1995, specifically after Jeffrey (Christopher Ashley, United States, 1995), a [End Page 608] primarily white gay male audience favorite that paired classic screwball romantic comedy-fantasy structure with AIDS sex politics. By 1998 a third element was evident in the second camp: a concession to audience desire for traditional feature-length narratives, particularly romantic comedies built on classic Hollywood formulas. But these new films were often first-time outings missing the implicit social critique and skilled writing of their predecessors from the studio era like Ruth Gordon and Donald Ogden Stewart. A focus on European and European American gay male–centered narratives reflected the gender realities of access to the means of production, and who was and is primarily perceived as driving the box office. ³

Many festivals moved from the first to the second camp as they evolved from grassroots organizations to more stable institutions able to attract larger grants and sponsors, in a process of professionalization. After fourteen years, my appreciation of content and politics prioritized over slick cinematic production does not eradicate the desire to see aesthetic skills move forward and provide a better telling of the story at hand. I want to see both artists and media activists master the form, because joyful, incendiary experimentation with technical capabilities and aesthetics is integral to the power of the moving image.

While the genre-bending success of Tarnation (Jonathan Caouette, United States, 2004) is inspiring, digital video (DV) is a medium finding its legs. With DV, the line between video and film has been irrevocably blurred, but the formats have distinct technical concerns and advantages. The image quality is sharper than analog, and production is bountiful—but story and craft still matter. Some artists are working to see what they can get from the format—the intimate split screen of Alan Brown's short film O Beautiful (United States, 2003)—while others are wrangling the format to make it pass for film, such as C. Jay Cox in his feature Latter Days (United States, 2003). Nevertheless, it seems too soon to predict the demise of 16 mm.

Many of the best films are shorts. Having recently taught a course on film curating, however, I found that a major challenge was accessing short films/videos, some of which I myself had programmed. Ultimately my choices were not as diverse regarding gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, and genre as I would have liked. Gendered shorts distribution packaging often marginalizes works outside the "girl/boy" binary, and few artists of color, non-U.S. artists, and experimental works are represented, while lesbian collections, presumed to be less marketable, are few when compared with such well-known U.S.-produced VHS and DVD anthologies as Men in Shorts (1995), Boys Life 2 (1999), Boxer Shorts (2002), Boys Life 4: Four Play (2003), and Men's Mix 1: Gay Shorts Collection (2004). [End Page 609]

Given the funding landscape over the past decade, the greatest success for a number of festivals is survival. Numerous festivals have successfully shifted toward corporate sponsorship (Outfest in Los Angeles, for example, is notable for its extensive matching donations program). Corporate funding is an area in which most nonprofit organizations have no official ethical guidelines and need them. The Coalition of Lavender Americans on Smoking and Health (CLASH), recognizing the particular fund-raising challenges faced by queer organizations, has produced a booklet to address this need. ⁴ For experimental festivals the funding situation is more precarious, and even partnering with other media centers may not result in survival. Marketing touring programs has been one way to bring in funds for MIX-NY in the past and for the Bay Area's queer-run MadCat Women's International Film Festival in the present. The proliferation of titles on DVD, the general dumbing down of traditional narrative and comedic work in U.S. commercial cinema, the lack of U.S. distribution for compelling foreign titles, the increased accessibility of DV equipment without parallel accessibility to filmmaking training programs, competition from mainstream festivals, fewer programming experiments by PBS and its affiliates, and dwindling funding—all combine to make a potentially less visually literate audience. This begs new approaches to exhibition, and it would be useful to think specifically about audience development, performance collaborations, and screenings in bars and clubs. I moderated the sparsely attended panel to which Dean Otto (Minneapolis–St. Paul LGBT Festival) referred in the previous Moving Image Review, "Curators Speak Out." ⁵ It is my sense that "the future of queer cinema" has become a question addressing a specialized audience—film professionals and scholars. It primarily engages everyone else as a marketing term. Attaching more personal or community-specific topics to a film program, such as those that programmer Michael Barrett (Out on Screen Festival, Vancouver) spoke of in the same roundtable, will likely result in better attendance at related panels. In addition, the media centers that have initiated monthly screening series are creating a means to cultivate a visually literate audience and, even better, a crop of film and video makers who are cinematically literate regardless of subject or genre.

Queer festivals offer the potential for witnessing a wave of something new and for sharing a unique community experience. For festivals that are to some degree micromanaged by sponsoring institutions, the curtailing of programming freedoms may mean that the edge, where many queer fests have made their marks, is blunted. Here is an instance in which a scholarly work such as Joshua Gamson's study of queer festival dynamics might prove useful. ⁶ In ten years queer festivals [End Page 610] that are regularly evaluating funding and cultural and industry landscapes and revisiting their three- to five-year plans will thrive (as opposed to becoming smaller screening series). The current political climate makes imperative the existence of such festivals outside so-called queer meccas.