Imperfectu: International Film and Gender Festival

Through film, art, and gender studies, Imperfectu: International Film and Gender Festival celebrates and examines the diversity of gender identities and expressions, as well as of sexual identities and orientations, while embracing varied and alternative feminisms.

Imperfectu explores the infinite possibilities that sex, gender and sexuality fields offer to us, questioning the primacy of the conventions to which the binary gender system and heteronormativity limit us. Furthermore, this festival gives room to feminist expressions that know how to include these infinite possibilities in their discourses.

PLACE

The festival will take place in Tijuana, Mexico.

A selection of the screened works in Tijuana will also be presented in Berlin, Germany.

VENUES

Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT)

Tijuana University CUT

Berlin venue TBD

DATES

The festival will be held from April 1st to 6th, 2014 (Tijuana, Mexico).

The dates for the Berlin screenings will be announced later.

MEANING

Through the word “imperfectu” we want to give a new value to the concept of imperfection within the gender studies framework. The “-tu” ending avoids the gender morpheme that in Spanish language is used when the noun “imperfection” becomes an adjective. At the same time, this ending makes a reference to the Spanish pronoun “tú” (“you”) in order to create closeness to the individual.

“Imperfectu” is an invented adjective that seeks identification and fraternity between those who somehow transgress the binary system of sex and gender and heteronormativity and, therefore, are seen as outsiders of “normality” and even as “imperfect beings”. Through this festival, what a binary and heteronormative culture reads as “imperfect” is simply read as “non-normative” and, consequently, considered “normal” and celebrated from a second reading that becomes liberal and intelligent.

OBJECTIVES

• 1. To encourage education, analysis and discussion about the relationship that cinema, art and popular culture maintain with gender studies.
• 2. To open a cultural space that creates visibility for all those communities whose tendencies are different from the conventional concepts of sex, gender and sexuality.
• 3. To promote art with a gender focus.
• 4. To celebrate sexual and gender diversity.
• 5. To create identification and fraternity among all those individuals whose tendencies are different from the conventional concepts of sex, gender and sexuality.
• 6. To express alternative feminisms that know how to combine their ideologies and movements and sexual and gender diversity.
• 7. To include. This festival in any way excludes cisgender communities; on the contrary, it seeks the integration of all types of gender and transgender manifestations.
• 8. To fight homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia and transphobia, encouraging acceptance and tolerance of all those individuals whose tendencies are different from the conventional concepts of sex, gender and sexuality. Although all these objectives will have an impact directly on Tijuana society, they will also reach the Baja California and the Mexican societies as well as Spanish speaking and English speaking communities through the festival’s publications.