Cultivating Queer Feminist Utopias: A Reading of Bety Catfur and Its Screening at Ukrainian Feminist Festival Filma

• In Event: Queer Encounters: Defying Imperial and Racial Violence

Abstract

This paper offers a reading of Bety Catfur (2021), a video produced by the Romani feminist theater Giuvlipen in Romania and directed by Mihaela Drăgan, a Giuvlipen co-founder and a Romani actress and playwright. The paper highlights the importance that this video was screened by the Ukrainian feminist film festival Filma in 2021, introducing it to the audience in Ukraine. Based on the principles of intersectional feminism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, inclusion, and a culture of consent, Filma screened Bety Catfur within the program “Possible Utopias” that focused on the issues of racism and gathered the films by and about Romani people in Romania and the Czech Republic along with indigenous peoples in Buryatia, Paraguay, and Canada. This way, the program bridged distant communities and issues across borders and continents and invited viewers to encounter films and artistic collectives that are often marginalized. This paper offers a reading of Bety Catfur (original title Bety Blana de Pisica) and a cross-border encounter with it promoted by Filma as a form of politics that foregrounds Romani queer subjectivity, considers sexuality and gender as strongly tied with race and ethnicity, and envisions anti-racist queer feminist politics.

Author

• Lesia Pagulich, U of Vienna (Austria)