The 2017 Women's Voices Now (WVN) Online Film Festival

Submissions Open: October 17, 2016, 9AM PST

Submissions Close: February 6, 2017, 11:59PM PST

Official Selections Notified: February 10, 2017

Online Film Festival: March 8, 2017- April 5, 2017, 11:59PM PST

Award Winners Notified: April 12, 2017

Contact: wvnff2017@womensvoicesnow.org

$10,000 IN CASH PRIZES

Submit your film here: https://filmfreeway.com/festival/WomensVoicesNow

The 2017 Women's Voices Now (WVN) Online Film Festival is an opportunity for films and filmmakers interested in exposure and advocacy for women’s rights, and teaming up with WVN to have your films seen around the world. Films must be about women’s social, economic, and political issues. Films by women and men are accepted into the festival. This is the fourth WVN Online Film Festival.

Women’s Voices Now seeks to amplify the voices of all women. We believe in the power of free expression to realize the aspirations of women's rights. At WVN, we look for compelling films in the documentary, narrative, and experimental genres that push boundaries and subvert expectations. We are looking for films that are relevant to our global community and which tell unique stories and amplify voices of women from around the world. We judge all film submissions based on relevance of subject matter to our film festival, strength of a film’s storytelling (use of structure and image to communicate a compelling story), and the technical aspects of filmmaking.

All films in any language other than English are encouraged to submit; however, all films must include English language subtitles. There is a $20 submission fee for each film submission. Submissions are incomplete until we receive a high resolution, screening-ready, digital download.

By submitting your film to our festival, you agree to our Rules & Regulations and Licensing Agreement.

For more information on Women’s Voices Now: www.womensvoicesnow.org.

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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.