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San Francisco Women's Film Festival April 8-10,2005
With the goal of showcasing films directed or co-directed by women from around the globe and at all levels of experience, the Women's Film Festival will screen approximately 30 short and feature-length films representing a cross section of genres. Additional activities scheduled for the three-day event are lectures, panel discussions, and educational programs led by filmmakers, professors, and other notable figures in the world of film. "This is a must for all film lovers!" says Women's Film Festival Founder Scarlett Shepard, who discovered a need for a female-focused film festival while attending a SFSU film history course that bypassed the contributions of women directors. "We provide a supportive atmosphere to exchange information and ideas and to assist with the networking and showcasing of women's cinema."
The selections have just been announced for the first annual Women's Film Festival, which takes place Friday, April 8, through Sunday, April 10, on the San Francisco State University campus. All films will be screened in the Coppola Theater in SFSU's Fine Arts Building.
Two of the festival's most highly anticipated works are by local filmmakers. Screening Friday night will be Karil Daniels' Voices of Dissent: Activism & American Democracy, an award-winning documentary about the U.S. government's recent attempts to instill patriotism in its citizens while restricting their First Amendment rights. The documentary features such well-known activists as Martin Sheen, Al Franken, Woody Harrelson, and Arianna Huffington. Lise Swenson's Mission Movie, a feature-length drama exploring the impact of the '90s dot-com craze on San Francisco's ethnically mixed and culturally rich Mission District, screens Sunday night. Mission Movie won the Best Picture Award at the 2004 New York International Latino Film Festival and was just recently voted "Best Feature" in Cinequest's Viewer's Voice Contest.
Sponsored by Frameline Distribution and Women's Educational Media, Saturday afternoon's "Lesbian Cinema" program will include Rachel Bolden Kramer's Queer Geography, Preeti Ak Mistry's Junk Box Warrior, Andrea Stoops' Adam, Shari Frilot's Strange & Charmed, and Donna Carter's Tomboy. Other lesbian-themed works being screened will be Hummer by Guinevere Turner, co-screenwriter of Go Fish, American Psycho, and The Ballad of Bettie Page and a writer for Showtime's "The L Word," and Mary Guzman's Mind If I Call You Sir?, an exploration of butch lesbian Latinas and female-to-male transgendered Latinos that debuted at San Francisco's International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in 2004. Debra Chasnoff’s documentary, One Wedding and a Revolution, followed by a discussion about gay and lesbian marriage with the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Screening Sunday afternoon, the "Women in Resistance" program will include Maurice A. Dwyer and Adetoro Makinde's In Time, which recently premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival and will be making its Northern California premiere. In Time is about a Nigerian-American woman caught between her appreciation for her American freedoms and her respect for her African ancestors' beliefs. The program's other works will be Sara Gottesdiener's Rape is a Thing You Can Own, a short documentary that synchs up audio of sexual-assault survivors' testimonies with striking images, and Sara Rahad's Tahara, a short drama about an Egyptian woman deciding whether she should follow cultural tradition by allowing her daughter to be circumcised.
Two San Francisco State professors will participate in a "Professor Presents" program. Opening the festival on Friday night, Graduate Film Studies professor and award-winning filmmaker Greta Snider will host a screening of works by renowned experimental filmmaker Jacqueline Goss. On Saturday afternoon, Assistant Professor Jenny Lau will give a brief talk before a screening of Gwendolyn Foster and Wheeler Dixon's Women Who Made the Movies, which focuses on pioneer women filmmakers ranging from Ida Lupino to Leni Riefenstahl.
The "Student Films" program will feature both feature-length and short films. Trina Lopez's A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco's Lost Cemeteries will screen Saturday night. The film is a revealing look at how San Francisco has systematically eliminated graveyards from its urban landscape over the past century. About a half dozen short films by students will kick off both Saturday's and Sunday's lineups, and features by a couple of local student filmmakers will screen Sunday afternoon.
Neither Milk, Nor Yogurt by Arti Jain is a documentary film about an immigrant woman who in the dusk of her life finds herself questioning her own cultural identity. The film explores the constant refurbishing of cultural and personal identity for an immigrant woman through the telling of the story of Saroj Dave, an Indian immigrant who has lived in the U.S.A for the last forty years. Additional works screening on Sunday include Robyn Dettman's work in progress, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
The SFSU Women's Film Festival is being sponsored by several local organizations and publications, including The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Women’s Center-SFSU Associated Students, Casting Connection, Film Arts Foundation, Frameline Distribution, Propville, Women's Educational Media, Bay Area BusinessWoman News, Peachpit Press, and SFWAR.
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Two of the festival's most highly anticipated works are by local filmmakers. Screening Friday night will be Karil Daniels' Voices of Dissent: Activism & American Democracy, an award-winning documentary about the U.S. government's recent attempts to instill patriotism in its citizens while restricting their First Amendment rights. The documentary features such well-known activists as Martin Sheen, Al Franken, Woody Harrelson, and Arianna Huffington. Lise Swenson's Mission Movie, a feature-length drama exploring the impact of the '90s dot-com craze on San Francisco's ethnically mixed and culturally rich Mission District, screens Sunday night. Mission Movie won the Best Picture Award at the 2004 New York International Latino Film Festival and was just recently voted "Best Feature" in Cinequest's Viewer's Voice Contest.
Sponsored by Frameline Distribution and Women's Educational Media, Saturday afternoon's "Lesbian Cinema" program will include Rachel Bolden Kramer's Queer Geography, Preeti Ak Mistry's Junk Box Warrior, Andrea Stoops' Adam, Shari Frilot's Strange & Charmed, and Donna Carter's Tomboy. Other lesbian-themed works being screened will be Hummer by Guinevere Turner, co-screenwriter of Go Fish, American Psycho, and The Ballad of Bettie Page and a writer for Showtime's "The L Word," and Mary Guzman's Mind If I Call You Sir?, an exploration of butch lesbian Latinas and female-to-male transgendered Latinos that debuted at San Francisco's International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in 2004. Debra Chasnoff’s documentary, One Wedding and a Revolution, followed by a discussion about gay and lesbian marriage with the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Screening Sunday afternoon, the "Women in Resistance" program will include Maurice A. Dwyer and Adetoro Makinde's In Time, which recently premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival and will be making its Northern California premiere. In Time is about a Nigerian-American woman caught between her appreciation for her American freedoms and her respect for her African ancestors' beliefs. The program's other works will be Sara Gottesdiener's Rape is a Thing You Can Own, a short documentary that synchs up audio of sexual-assault survivors' testimonies with striking images, and Sara Rahad's Tahara, a short drama about an Egyptian woman deciding whether she should follow cultural tradition by allowing her daughter to be circumcised.
Two San Francisco State professors will participate in a "Professor Presents" program. Opening the festival on Friday night, Graduate Film Studies professor and award-winning filmmaker Greta Snider will host a screening of works by renowned experimental filmmaker Jacqueline Goss. On Saturday afternoon, Assistant Professor Jenny Lau will give a brief talk before a screening of Gwendolyn Foster and Wheeler Dixon's Women Who Made the Movies, which focuses on pioneer women filmmakers ranging from Ida Lupino to Leni Riefenstahl.
The "Student Films" program will feature both feature-length and short films. Trina Lopez's A Second Final Rest: The History of San Francisco's Lost Cemeteries will screen Saturday night. The film is a revealing look at how San Francisco has systematically eliminated graveyards from its urban landscape over the past century. About a half dozen short films by students will kick off both Saturday's and Sunday's lineups, and features by a couple of local student filmmakers will screen Sunday afternoon.
Neither Milk, Nor Yogurt by Arti Jain is a documentary film about an immigrant woman who in the dusk of her life finds herself questioning her own cultural identity. The film explores the constant refurbishing of cultural and personal identity for an immigrant woman through the telling of the story of Saroj Dave, an Indian immigrant who has lived in the U.S.A for the last forty years. Additional works screening on Sunday include Robyn Dettman's work in progress, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
The SFSU Women's Film Festival is being sponsored by several local organizations and publications, including The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Women’s Center-SFSU Associated Students, Casting Connection, Film Arts Foundation, Frameline Distribution, Propville, Women's Educational Media, Bay Area BusinessWoman News, Peachpit Press, and SFWAR.
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For more information:
http://womensfilmfestival.us/index.html
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