The 12th edition of the Bologna based lesbian film festival willl be run online

Some Prefer Cake, the international lesbian film festival created by Luki Massa and Marta Bencich, will be run as usual in September, in a new format. Due to the current sanitary emergency determined by the Covid-19 global pandemic, the cultural association Luki Massa promoting the festival and the communication agency Comunicattive at the artistic direction have decided to launch an online version of the Bologna based lesbian film festival. It will last 8 days and will be available on the independent platform Openddb.it

Virtual, independent, free

We have chosen Openddb because it’s a virtual place of bottom-up cultural distribution. It’s a project involved in promoting and supporting independent cultural productions, not driven by the goal of making profit. As you may know if you have come to know us, Some Prefer Cake is an independent project as well. The festival is self produced, normally via crowdfunding, ticket sales and bar revenues. In 2020, we believe it’s hard to have the same kinds of funds. The social and economic consequences of Covid-19 have increased social inequalities, have exacerbated poverty and have made the condition of many people, especially women, even more precarious. In times like this, culture risks becoming inaccessible, therefore we choose to take political action and make our festival totally free. There won’t be a ticket to pay, everyone will be able to get online and watch our contents without any fare. Making culture takes time and money though: directors, screenwriters, actors, editors and every woman contributing in the making of a movie are workers and their precious work needs to be recognized and supported. For this reason, we believe crowdfunding can be useful and we ask all of those who can and want to contribute to the survival of Some Prefer Cake with any kind of donation directed to the Luki Massa association. It will be possible to donate from the 19th to the 26th of September directly on the platform Openddb. If you’re however willing to donate beforehand or after, you can donate transfering to our IBAN: IT29P0538702406000035269353. Please specify the reason for the transfer as “Erogazione liberale” (charitable donation).

The programme

The final programme will be soon released on this website and on our social media accounts (facebook and instagram). We anticipate that the programme will be more restricted compared to the numerous short and long movies, documentaries and narrative that we normally display. This edition will be symbolic, a fil rouge of continuity that will make the Some Prefer Cake community feel that we are here, though in a different way. We guarantee you will be able to enjoy a few tasty glimpses, waiting to finally go back to the cinema: a narrative movie, two documentaries and ten short movies. A couple of anticipations already: the narrative movie we have chosen is Margen de error by Argentinian director Liliana Paolinelli. Liliana is a dear friend of Some Prefer Cake: in 2014, focusing on Argentinian lesbian films, we displayed two of her lesbian themed movies, Lengua materna and Amar es bendito. We are therefore happy to display her new comedy.

Another great come-back relating the short movies section, is the Italian preview of Nice Chinese Girls Don’t, short documentary by Jennifer Abod, dedicated to lesbian activist Kitty Tsui. Jennifer Abod is an American feminist activist, journalist and documentarist, author of numerous documentaries, amongst which The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen, awarded in 2018 as best documentary by the Some Prefer Cake public. Kitty Tsui is an amazing poet and lesbian Chinese-American activist, to which we have dedicated this year visuals, using a frame of the documentary made by Jennifer for her.

In addition to the movies, we will offer interviews with directors, workshops and book presentations, both online and offline, in collaboration with the Libreria delle donne in Bologna and other feminist associations working with us. Shortly, our events programme will be available, but we anticipate that on the 20th of September at the Giardino Lavinia Fontana of the Centro delle donne, in collaboration with the association Orland and the Human Rights Nights as part of Fucsia Summer Festival 2020, we will participate to the presentation of the graphic biography Feminist Art – Women who have revolutionized art by Valentina Grande and Eva Rossetti (Centauria, 2020).

Lesbian conjuctions: supportive screening groups for Some Prefer Cake

We have to be honest. We don’t believe that online streaming can really substitute what happens at our festival. Some prefer cake is a communitary experience, and it is so important for many women, lesbians, feminists and other subjects because it constitutes a place and time to meet and get together. The experience of lesbian film doesn’t just mean watching a lesbian and feminist themed movie, directed by lesbians in a completely different way compared to traditional canons filtered by the male gaze. It is about watching these movies together, sitting by each other, sighing, laughing, crying and getting emotional together, getting angry together, being moved together and discovering new things together. It means commenting a movie together, sometimes fighting because of dissenting opinions. The experience of the festival relates to our bodies being intensely close during those days, spreading hugs, doing dances, chatting. It was not possible to do this by keeping the distances. And in the meantime, we believe that during this moment it is necessary and vital to take responsibility and take care of our community.

This is why we invite you to do something different: let’s be together through the distance! Let’s organize small screening gatherings of the festival, small groups of comrades, friends, sisters, lovers (and exes, of course) with whom we already share our everyday life, in our homes, courtyards, gardens, cultural association headquarters. Small groups of political and affective “conjunction” through which we recreate the experience of “watching together” in a new self organized way: supportive lesbian screening groups.
We know our connections are different compared to the hetero-patriarcal model of “conjucts”, so let’s put into practice this diversity. At the same time, let’s keep in mind that our behaviours expose ourselves and those we love and we live around. We ask you to make a picture of your lesbian screening group and send it to us, so we can share it with all the other viewers on our social media accounts.
#spc2020