MIX 2000 - College Touring Program

In 1989, Festival Co-Founders Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman recognized a need for MIX to reach out to younger audiences outside New York City who normally would not have the opportunity to see experimental films and videos by and about lesbian and gay people. Their intention was two-fold and has become the mission of the Collegiate Touring Program since:

To show lesbian and gay youth diverse images of themselves not offered by mainstream media outlets
To educate them on the importance of making these images.

Over the years as we traveled to colleges nationwide, the response has been overwhelmingly positive and has reaffirmed the initial need which Jim and Sarah discovered over ten years ago: that young audiences and artists are hungry for film/video work that expands the possibilities of artistic creation and offers fresh perspectives on lesbian and gay existence. While traditional Hollywood portrayals of lesbian and gay life have developed over the years, they still often originate from heterosexual perspectives. The films and videos that MIX present involve more personal perspectives drawn from actual lived lesbian and gay experience. We recognize that the need for these images outside urban centers is much more acute than in New York.

Since 1988 MIX has traveled to many locations outside the New York City area. Our first college visit were to Johns Hopkins University and Harvard. Our Collegiate Touring Program has included stops in both urban and rural centers, with the focus being on areas that do not have regular access to lesbian and gay film and experimental media. Institutions that have hosted, and in some cases host MIX screenings annually include Bates College in Maine, Antioch College in Ohio, Evergreen State College in Vermont, The University of California at Santa Cruz, Princeton University in New Jersey and Macalester College in Minnesota.

Collegiate Tour screenings generally involve three or four programs of short films, organized thematically. Hosting institutions are invited to select programs from past MIX festival catalogs or to suggest areas of particular interest to them. Our staff then organizes the programs, arranges for all print delivery and works with at least one visiting artist to travel to the campus and introduce their work. By involving the artists directly and bringing them to national audiences, we are able to serve both rural audiences and urban artists who rarely have the opportunity to dialogue with young people who approach their work with fresh perspectives. While our aim is to reach out the young audiences, we find that filmmakers are very eager to join in our presentations and wish that we were able to provide more opportunities for this type of exposure. Screenings always involve an introduction to the work and a question and answer period. They are not organized like lectures however, for our goal is create a more relaxed atmosphere; one where students can enjoy (and possibly relate to) the images and stories presented rather than analyzing the work in a strictly academic sense. Campus groups often publicize the screenings as mini-festivals and coordinate social activities around our visits.