BULLETIN NO. 10

Festival of Lesbian Movies in Mexico City

Several women at the Metropolitan Lesbian Encounter in Mexico City in August said they wanted to make their own fiction movies about lesbians, after seeing videos and meeting lesbian film actress, director and distributor Desi del Valle.

So we hope to see work begin soon on the pre-production of Mexico lesbian films, as a result of an event organized to increase the visibility of lesbians in Mexico - both in the capital and the states.

Telemanita - part of the organizing group Enlace Lésbico - presented its Fourth Festival of Women's Video Visionarte on the three afternoons of the Encounter, held at the San Angel Cultural Center, August 27-29. Videos included lesbian fiction movies from the US, documentaries and video magazine from Mexico, as well as the didactic video It's Elemental. Mexican women enjoyed Desi's film Cruel because it showed a Latin lesbian, a life style not seen usually in celluloid, and several women in the audience expressed their desire to make lesbian fiction themselves - some even have their scripts ready.

Desi del Valle is the Distribution Manager for gay and lesbian film distribution company Frameline, which provided most of the videos shown in the Festival. Frameline is a San Francisco based company that organizes an annual gay and lesbian film festival, that began 23 years ago in a garage for 200 people and has grown to a
10-day event with a public of more than 70,000 people watching 300 films in three different cinemas in San Francisco.

Desi del Valle spoke to the audience after we watched her 20 min. film Cruel and again after Some Prefer Cake, a 95 min. comedy directed by Heidi Arnesen where Desi plays the part of a winsome young lesbian on the verge of her first affair, who wins the heart of bar dyke comedian Kira.

When asked how she made her movie, Desi replied: "you have to have a strong active mentality to make lesbian movies in spite of all the obstacles... it's not only a financial problem, you have to overcome a lot of fears and isolation. I thought there was a public out there for the kind of movie I wanted to make, but I didn't know where. It cost me about 10,000 dollars. I only had three or four, the rest I borrowed and received from whomever I could convince to help me. I decided there was no point waiting around for government subsidies. Besides, making the film was a therapy for me at the time - a $10,000 therapy."

Mirka Negroni of Telemanita asked that if anyone had scripts or plans to make lesbian film in Mexico, to please get in touch with Telemanita for brain storming sessions about how to make this a reality.

Teachers in the audience were very interested in It's Elemental, a documentary about how school kids perceive gays and lesbians, that we reviewed in Video Red Mujer #9.

Two films from Mexico were presented during the festival. Telemanita showed the first program of its video magazine Teta-Teta TV, directed by Alejandra Novoa. Teta-Teta TV (35 min.) is part fiction, part documentary. It shows lesbians participating in the 1997 Feminist Meeting in Chile and in the Gay Pride March in Mexico City that same year, and has fast moving scenes on how to come out of the closet and on safe sex for lesbians.

The other Mexican video in the festival was a documentary about the lesbian movement in Mexico produced by the group El Closet de Sor Juana: Y sigue la marcha andando, a 30 min. video directed by Guadalupe Olvera San Miguel. The documentary shows footage of Gay Pride marches in Mexico, interviews and has some dramatized scenes invoking the figure of the Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Two shorts from the US were Adam, by Andrea Stoops, a short cartoon about the first lesbian experience of a young girl, and Tomboy, by Donna Carter, the story of a young Afro-American girl who rejects dresses and high heels to dedicate herself to what she really wants to do: sport and athletics.

Sleep Come Free Me, a comedy by Laurie Schmidt y Blue Diary by Jenni Olson completed the video festival.

Telemanita also helped organize the sub titling of all the US-made films shown in the festival, and hopes to be able to continue sub titling alternative and experimental movies for their distribution in Latin America.

You can buy or rent films from Frameline, 346 Ninth Street, San Francisco California 94103. Tel (415) 703 8650. Web Page: www.frameline.org

The film Some Prefer Cake is distributed by Up all Nite Productions (jedi@c2i.net) and It's Elemental by Educational Media (wemdh@aol.com). for information about the other videos, you can contact: telemanita@laneta.apc.org

The Fifth Festival of Women's Videos to be organized by Telemanita will be dedicated to women who work with indigenous themes: Artenativa-Una mirada de dignidad indígena to be held in Mexico City in April, 2000.