Film historian Irwin Swirnoff and Bay Area Now 8 visual artist Marcela Pardo Ariza reunite to host part two of Beyond Bloodlines, an evening of collective exploration into what queer family and kin can be, featuring a compilation of film, visual art, performance, music, interviews, and more.
Kick off the evening with the launch of Swirnoff and Ariza’s zine, Beyond Bloodlines, focused on stories of family, in all of its pain & glory. Guests will then be invited into our galleries for YBCA’s monthly conversation, Artist to Artist, featuring BAN8 artists Jamil Hellu and Nicki Green, each of whose work represents historically othered communities, particularly LGBTQ+. We end the night with a special screening of LGBTQ+ Latinx film shorts followed by a Q&A with members from the 2019 LatinX LGBTQ+ Film Festival committee: Ulises Dueñaz (CSUMB Pride Club President), Jasmine Lottier (Artist and Community Organizer), Sam Gomez (The Epicenter of Monterey Services Manager) and Angélica Gonzalez (Semillas Project Member, Artist and Community Organizer).
Enjoy free gallery admission, specialty cocktails, and DJs Gisele Herrera and Lisbeth Ortega spinning all night long.
The 2019 LatinX LGBTQ+ Film Festival is the 4th annual film festival in Salinas, CA to highlight the incredible experience of being LatinX and LGBTQ+. We feature films, shorts, documentaries and art, along with panels and guest speakers to show the community that we are here, resilient and working for cultural shifts that will celebrate all of our identities & intersectionalities. Join us for this year’s FREE 2-day community event with feature films, panels, food, art and more! Open to the public on April 13th and 14th in Salinas, CA. For information and how to submit art for this year’s gallery or to learn more about how to support this event please connect with us on social media: please email us at latinxfilmfestival1@gmail.com or view our Facebook page and Instagram, @latinxfilmfestival.
Follows the daily struggles faced by, Johanna, a transgender teen who overcomes her mother’s rejection, to find mentors and a family-of-choice who love and support her and enable her to thrive.
Alex, a 9 year old kid, fights bullying and gender stereotypes at school and connects with their mother.
Three Latina immigrant mothers talk about their children’s coming out processes, conveying powerful messages about unconditional love and acceptance of LGBTQ people as part of Latino families.
Marcela Pardo Ariza (b. Bogotá, Colombia) is a visual artist and curator based in San Francisco, CA. Ariza is the recipient of the Tosa Studio Award 2017, a Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award and a finalist for the 2017 San Francisco Artist Award. Ariza received an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in 2016 and she is the Community Engagement Program Associate at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and a current member of the Curatorial Council at Southern Exposure.
In her visual practice, Ariza explores the relationship of representation, kinship and queerness through constructed photographs, color sets and installations. Through staging varied subjects and anthropomorphic objects, Ariza deploys sets as a resource to the possibility of (re)building a story, using them as tools to visualize potential yet attainable narratives fundamental to envisioning present and future prospects.
Nicki Green is a transdisciplinary artist whose sculptures, ritual objects, and various flat works explore history preservation, conceptual ornamentation, and aesthetics of religiosity.
Jamil Hellu is a visual artist based in San Francisco, working primarily with photography and video installations. His work is a hybrid of self-portraiture and queer narrative, expressing connections between people beyond political borders while pushing boundaries to address the construction and multiplicity of cultural identities.
Irwin Swirnoff (b. Phoenix 1977, lives in the Bay Area) teaches in the cinematic arts department at Cal State University, Monterey Bay as well as the Media Studies department of the University of San Francisco.
Using film, photography, creative writing, and his background in zine & d.i.y. culture, he creates intimate work with a queer sensibility, exploring intimacy, longing, loss, desire, physicality, sexuality, and the constant struggle to remain in the here and now. Irwin curates the monthly queer film series my gaze///yr gaze and his radio show Sleeves on Hearts has aired for over twenty years.