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Pandemic Pop Up! A Virtual Film Fest & Online Culture Work Exhibit Welcome to our remote fest & exhibit Feminist Border Arts regularly works with artists across North America and globally to asynchronously and virtually curate its culture exhibits and film programs. In fact, we only recently completed our 5th festival season in early March at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. The realities of pandemic and quarantine quickly motivated us to get back to work. Filmmakers and artists responded and now we have crafted this one weekend, virtual event. Everyone is seeking to reach out, to find new ways of being together. An asynchronous event is one way that offers both connectivity and flexibility at once—two things in high demand now. We chose the dates of this weekend because we want to honor the graduating seniors and everyone at NMSU, mothers of all ages for Mother’s Day, first responders and essential workers, people who have lost their jobs, LGBT+ folks, parents, people struggling through isolation or quarantine, and a number of other reasons. And we honor those who are dealing with the virus as well as any other health issue. We honor those who have passed. We want to support how amazing it is that so many are staying home as much as possible in order to help keep others safe and not overwhelm our fragile medical systems. Creativity offers an outlet to communicate ideas, what we’re thinking and feeling. It’s part of what we’re meant to do, as humans. Our brains have evolved to reward creativity with its pleasure centers. That means creativity is rather important, even if our current system only seems to find its value in its potential for money making. That is one of the reasons we like pairing a film festival with a zine festival because zinemaking is, by definition, low-tech and self-made. Anyone can make one, out of anything. The goal of zine festivals is not to make money, but to share your work, often through giving them away and trading. Likewise, our work with Feminist Border Arts is not to produce a commercial festival, but to construct one where the curation, circulation, and archiving of innovative storytelling, especially in short form, by and about under- and misrepresented groups is foremost. Additionally, Feminist Border Arts works with pieces from many different parts of the globe. This means that our programming participates in the global dissemination of works of the imagination across multiple epistemological frameworks.
