Film programming politics vis-à-vis festival site politics: The case of the Mezipatra queer film festival

Abstract

This paper belongs to the sub-field of queer geography. It is a spatially sensitive study of queer film festival programming that relates its politics to the affective politics of the site. It focuses on the Mezipatra Queer Film Festival, which is a film festival that takes place in the cities of Prague and Brno, Czech Republic. We differentiate between intentional subject-centred programming politics and de-subjectivated festival site politics. The film programme is created by a single organizing team and is the same for both cities. Still, the programme means different things to each of them. According to programming theories, we distinguish between films of traditional assimilationist, even homonormative, programming, and films of anti-identity queer programming. The different status of the two festival incarnations makes the former more appropriate for Brno, whereas the latter is more appropriate for Prague. Yet, in Brno, the assimilationist identity politics is turned into an autonomous community politics through the festival site. In Prague, the queer politics is turned into a politics of competition among art film festivals. Hence, we go beyond critiques of homonormative cinema as depoliticized and consumerist. The problem is not the difference between “better” queer programming and “worse” traditional programming. The problem lies in discerning site politics as shaping different screenings of the same films, whether they are homonormative or art-house queer films.