The De-Fusion of Good Intentions: Outfest’s Fusion Film Festival

Film festivals matter. They play a significant role in not only bringing together films but also defining and shaping a community.¹ The why, how, and who behind film festival organizing and programming profoundly affect the festival’s atmosphere, determining what films screen, what audiences attend, and how films are presented. But there is little reflection on these subjective practices and their effects, which is why, frankly, queer film festivals drive me batty. It’s not that I don’t see enough representations of nerdy Middle Eastern (oops, Southwest Asian) American femmes committed to radical feminist of color politics who also heart Hello Kitty and Ralph Macchio. Rather, it’s because I get disoriented by the way I am interpellated into the festival’s mission and how I am part of the expectations of that space. And for a queer people of color film festival there are endless competing expectations: Celebrate identity while pushing the boundaries on which that identity is based. Increase visibility by representing the multiplicity of queers of color while breaking down and challenging the very premise on which enduring essentialist racist, sexist, and homophobic stereotypes are based, as well as affirming the power of representation itself as a political tool. Educate audiences about issues facing queer people of color and challenge them with different kinds of work while entertaining them with films that are not too heavy. The festival is often considered a place to build solidarity, an autonomous “safe” space where issues can be engaged with openly. White people are expected to both support and stand up to the responsibility of educating themselves, but at the same time not take up too much space. The festival is also a place for networking, where artist-activist alliances are built and where people can “talk business” about financing, producing, and distributing films. A festival with grassroots commitments is assumed to be a collaborative endeavor among community members that resists commodification and is free and accessible to all people. The festival must be able to operate successfully as a hierarchically structured institution to secure growth and stable resources and funding, as well as remain connected to market-based alliances required for commercial success in the broader gay and lesbian film circuit. Oh, and it should be glamorous. (As one person I interviewed put it: “Why do all people of color events have to be so dingy and run down?”)²

These many (and often, even contradictory) expectations are inextricably linked to the diverging paths of queer people of color making films today. My research investigates the political possibilities of cultural production through grassroots film festival programming, organizing, and exhibiting around multiple axes of identity. I was the director of the fifth annual Fusion Film Festival’s “Ignite the Fuse: Queer People of Color in Film, TV, and Video Conference” (November 30 to December 1, 2007). My work at various film festivals and curatorial practice has required that I engage simultaneously with theories of cultural representation and curation and the nitty-gritty reality of film festival organizing and programming.

This article ties together insights gleaned from directing the “Ignite the Fuse” conference with conversations I had between May and June 2007 with over thirty people involved with Fusion. I explore how the exciting possibility of a queer people of color film festival has (not surprisingly) become encumbered by conflicting and unclear expectations, messy negotiations around questions of representation, a lack of infrastructural support (and personal love), and competing motives that effectively (even if unintentionally) undercut each other in their realization. In fleshing out these interwoven issues, my aim is not to single out Fusion but more broadly to encourage all organizers of festivals based on identity formations (whether along sexuality, racial, gender, political, or social lines) to recognize the heightened stakes of negotiations around representation, identity, organizing and programming practices, and the market.

History

Fusion began in 2004 when Patrick Mangto, from Asian Pacific Islanders for Human Rights, approached then Outfest executive director Stephen Gutwillig about putting on a queer Asian Pacific Islander film festival. Gutwillig had hoped to facilitate collaboration among...