This year, we mark ten years of Feminist Border Arts (FBA). What began as a modest short film festival in a single classroom has evolved into a multifaceted platform for media inquiry, creative resistance, and community connection. Over the past decade, FBA has grown to include not only our signature Film Festival but also the Zine Fest, along with various interdisciplinary projects that bridge the humanities and arts. Through these endeavors, we continue to welcome artists, scholars, students, and audiences from across borders and beyond genres.

This year’s festival is dedicated to my mother, Cynthia Sue Jones (1950–2025), whose love of film and quiet acts of support made this work possible. She passed away unexpectedly on May 13 after a series of illnesses and complications that began in early April. My mother taught me to see media not just as escape or entertainment, but as a way of understanding the world and our place in it. When Laura Anh Williams and I moved to New Mexico to begin our academic careers at New Mexico State University, my mother came with us, cashing in her retirement to help float us through those uncertain early months. Long before that, neither of us would have had the ability to pursue PhDs, build careers, or launch this festival without her. Her belief in shared effort, in story, and in mutual support lives on in Feminist Border Arts, and in every part of my creative and academic life.

In 2024, the festival expanded to include both short and feature-length films, a shift that deepened our reach and enriched our programming. The 2025 program reflects that evolution, featuring an extraordinary range of work across animation, documentary, narrative, and experimental forms. These films explore survival, kinship, grief, joy, and transformation. Aligned with Pride, this year’s stories of becoming and connection welcome all: LGBTQ+ audiences, women, men, allies, film lovers, and the simply curious. With 266 submissions from over 35 countries, we continue to witness a deep and ongoing hunger for intersectional, independent, imaginative, and justice-driven storytelling that rethinks the boundaries of language, land, and life.

We also host the Second Annual FBA Zine Fest, an all-day event where independent artists, writers, and makers share printed works that speak to creativity, memory, resistance, and joy. It’s an important accompaniment to the films, and a reminder that storytelling happens across formats and communities. As a media art form, film does not stand alone. Zines affirm that stories take many shapes: on paper, on screen, through image and text—and that media-making is a communal act of expression, critique, and survival. Together, the film and zine festivals reflect our belief in a broader and more accessible media landscape, one where stories move fluidly across form and community.

The addition of the FBA Zine Fest to our festival weekend was not incidental: it was born from a lifetime of commitment to independent publishing and queer feminist media. I have been making, reading, and teaching with zines since I was a young person in the 1980s, and have long understood them as tools of personal expression, cultural critique, and political education. When I joined New Mexico State University as a faculty member in 2008, I brought this practice with me, integrating zines and zine workshops into Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies courses and sharing their possibilities with students and colleagues alike. It was my vision two years ago to expand Feminist Border Arts by launching a dedicated Zine Fest, and I am proud that this idea has taken root. I also introduced Williams to zine making as a practice and to the work of Nicole J. Georges, whose early zine series, Invincible Summer, was a work I both admired and enjoyed. That this medium now holds space alongside film at our festival feels not only fitting, but foundational.

This ten-year journey has been possible because of the many people who have believed in and contributed to this work. I want to thank our sponsors, collaborators, and the dedicated volunteers who have given their time, energy, and care. Deep thanks to the University Art Museum for their ongoing partnership and generosity in hosting the festival. To the filmmakers, artists, zinesters, and students—past and present—who have shared their work with FBA, thank you for trusting us with your stories. You are the heart of this project and the reason it continues to evolve.

We are especially grateful to the New Mexico Humanities Council for awarding us a fully funded grant to support this 10th anniversary festival. Unfortunately, due to federal actions by Elon Musk and the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which led to the cancellation of numerous National Endowment for the Humanities grants, including ours, we were unable to utilize these funds. Despite this setback, we remain deeply appreciative of the NMHC’s recognition of our work and their commitment to the public humanities in New Mexico.

To our audiences: thank you. For ten years, your presence, openness, and care have sustained Feminist Border Arts. Whether you’ve followed us since that first classroom screening, connected online, dropped in from time to time, or are experiencing your first FBA Film and Zine Festival, you help keep this space alive. You make room for creative risk, shared meaning, and the collective energy that keeps independent media, public curation, and inquiry evolving. The arts and humanities change things—but only because people like you show up, engage deeply, and believe in the power of connection.

M. Catherine Jonet, FBA Founding Director

May 23, 2025