How a Film Festival Becomes a Rebellion
We can support one another. We can watch a movie together. We can rebel.
It’s going to get easier to use platitudes. The more that anti-trans laws get passed, the more that anti-queer rhetoric becomes normalized again, the more that funding gets cut and pulled from anything related to LGBTQ+ life the easier it will be to celebrate the bare minimum. A lack of overt discrimination might seem worthy of praise. Mere acknowledgment might seem like enough.
But it’s in times of increased persecution when the specifics of our values and actions matter most. It’s understandable in our current moment to feel relief if a beloved cishet celebrity is vaguely pro-trans instead of loudly anti-trans. However, the standard we set for ourselves and our organizations should increase. We must meet this moment without compromise.
The slogan for NewFest this year is The New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival is an Act of Rebellion. I agree with this sentiment — I also don’t think it’s a given for just any festival that showcases queer film. It requires action.
When I first started working as a critic, I was drawn to NewFest for programming choices that felt daring. There was a willingness to include queer work that was pushing boundaries, that was made by artists on the margins. And not just to include this work, but to center it. This has remained true over the years and it remains true this year.
Instead of moving away from trans stories, the festival this year has doubled down. There’s a shorts program focusing on a wide range of trans stories and a whole other shorts program focusing specifically on trans women. Trans filmmakers and characters are also featured in the non-trans specific shorts programs and are well-represented among the features. Together this work showcases the range of our experiences and, more importantly, our expressions of those experiences.
There’s also a refusal this year to succumb to political pressure and an effort to help others who fall victim to it. Even as conservative politicians and media try to isolate queer youth, NewFest continues its program of bringing queer cinema to high school students. In partnership with NYC Department of Education, the Queer Teen Power shorts program screening is open exclusively to students and educators. Current rightwing rhetoric makes this wholesome event feel more fraught than previous years, but that’s exactly why it’s so important that it continues.
NewFest isn’t just continuing the programs they’ve already done, but filling in the gaps for others that couldn’t. Due to threats of funding cuts for any public institution that doesn’t comply with the president’s culture wars, Phoenix’s Desperado LGBTQ+ Film Festival hosted by Paradise Valley Community College had to cease operation this year. In response, NewFest is offering free streaming of the NewFest online program to all Arizonans. “A lot of New Yorkers grew up in some other part of the country feeling isolated, feeling unseen, unloved and invisible,” NewFest executive director David Hatkoff told Gothamist about the initiative. “There are a lot of people who can identify with what it means to not have access to what New Yorkers sometimes take for granted. I just think if we’re not in solidarity with each other now, then what are we doing?”
This move speaks to a larger principle of NewFest: community. In New York City and beyond, NewFest not only showcases queer film but provides a space for queer people to connect and queer artists to thrive. Last year I had the privilege of having my work as a filmmaker shown at the festival and got to experience first-hand the support provided by NewFest. It wasn’t just the screening. The entire week was constructed — from happy hours to Industry + Filmmaker Day — to provide us with new collaborators and new techniques in approaching the often hostile film industry. NewFest isn’t content to just show the work already made. It wants to help us make more work in the future.
It’s not easy to be queer right now. Years of progress have given way to harsh backlash. But NewFest is here to remind us that we can gather together, virtually or in-person, to celebrate our voices. We can support one another. We can watch a movie together. We can rebel.
 | A guest post by
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