Trans* film festivals: An interview with Eliza Steinbock

Abstract

On a sunny August afternoon in Amsterdam, Marijke de Valck and Skadi Loist of the Film Festival Research Network met cultural analyst, festival programmer, and filmmaker Eliza Steinbock (currently working as a lecturer and researcher at Maastricht University). The discussion ranged from Amsterdam-based transgender film festivals to issues of precarity in activist film festivals and the politics of representation in trans* 1 cinema culture.Loist & de Valck: How did you get involved with the Netherlands Transgender Film Festival (NTGF)?Steinbock: I moved to the Netherlands in December 2002 for my study abroad program, which was the Gender and Sexuality program at the School for International Training. My partner at the time knew Kam Wai Kui, the director of the Netherlands Transgender Film Festival, via another festival in Vancouver. I contacted him to say I'd like to work on trans* representation and particularly around sexuality. He wrote back and stated 'fantastic, but I don't know much about that because there is so little, however, I do know a lot about documentaries and talk shows that have been made in the Netherlands'. We became friends and I volunteered at the next edition of the festival. I worked at the information booth. Kam Wai also programmed a film essay that I made called Pull-in that was about trans* relationships and immigration.Because it is a biannual festival, the next event was not until 2005. During that time I was in England for graduate studies, writing about representations of intimacy and on trans sexuality in feature films. I started to volunteer earlier, and not just during the festival. I was the volunteer coordinator and I roped in a lot of my friends to work at the festival. That year I think we had the best attendance, something like 2,500 people. At that point I knew I wanted to pursue doctoral studies and I was already starting to develop my ideas about what that project EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF MEDIA STUDIES www.necsus-ejms.org

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