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The San Francisco Women’s Film Festival (SFWFF) will host its fourth annual film festival-celebrating women in all areas of film from April 9 through 13 in select theaters and community centers across the Bay Area. Here is a glimpse of what to expect at this year’s SFWFF:
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SF Women’s Film Festival/Youth media Iniatative received a grant from the LEF Foundation to fund the Youth Media Arts project; a project that fosters the next generation of film directors by proving young women aged 14-19 with opportunities to dive into filmmaking. Four Young Women were selected to participate in this program, which will focus on “going green” locally and globally. Their short films will premiere at all SFWFF screenings and events.
Crossroad Trading Company made these screenings possible.
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Opening Night Documentary and
Activism Shorts Program
We’re thrilled to see the role documentary films have taken in recent years in informing the masses on hot topic issues including global warming and human rights.
Doin it’: Sex, Disability and Video Tape
directed by Salome Chasnoff and Susan Nussbaum.
Meet the Empowered Fe Fes (slang for Female), a group of young women with disabilities, as they hit the streets of Chicago inviting us to a dialogue about the truths behind sex and disability.
Nalini By Day, Nancy by Night directed by Sonali Gulati
Filmmaker Sonali Gulati takes us on a journey into India’s call centers, where telemarketers take on Western names and accents to take calls from US, UK and Australia.
They Call Me Muslim directed by Diana Ferrero.
In popular Western imagination, A Muslim in a veil – or hijab – is a symbol of Islamic oppression. But what does it mean for women’s freedom when a democratic country forbids the wearing of a veil? Filmmaker Diana Ferrero portrays the struggle of two women – one in France and in Iran – to express themselves freely.
Sold in America directed by Chelo Alvarez.
Chelo Alvarez joins us for a work-in-progress screening of her latest film, “Sold in America.” This film explores a modern-day tale of sex slavery from real life stories of women sold in the United States at an early age and their struggle to find freedom. We are very honored to have survivor Maria Suarez in person to share her harrowing experience and talk about what she is doing to help to free those still entrapped.
Sponsored by Global Exchange and SAFEHS
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FILM + ART + PARTY + REVOLUTION
San Francisco Women’s Film Festival invites you to join us at our Official Film + Art + Party! Enjoy films, live music, explore the gallery artwork and mingle with filmmakers. Enjoy short films that explore how film and art transform beyond the medium and become revolutionary. Shorts films to be screened include:
Women + Art = Revolution, a work-in-progress trailer about the visionary artists that shaped the Feminist Art Movement by Lynn Hershman-Leeson
Exposing Homelessness by Kerri Gawryn, shares the story of three formerly homeless women in San Francisco armed with 35mm cameras and challenging stereotypes of homelessness and empowering themselves in the process
We are also very honored that some of the photographs by the women will be available on display.
In Identity (Maria) by Anna Alvarez-Errecalde, we see how Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada transforms everyday people by rendering them into icons in charcoal as urban murals.
See what I’m Saying: The Deaf Entertainers is a work-in-progress documentary trailer that will introduce us into the journey of many deaf artists and performers, including a rock n’ roll band, comedian and modern day Buster Keaton.
Love of Indigo by Sandra Mbanefo Obiago features internationally renowned artist Nike Okundaye who specializes in adire, Yoruba indigo art from Western Nigeria. She attributes her strength and success to her own early life – losing her mother at six and overcoming a polygamous marriage, physical abuse, and poverty.
On this evening, we will honor Emiko Omori, co-director of Power and Passion: The Technology of Orgasm, with a Tribute Award for her many achievements and contributions to independent cinema.
Enjoy live musical performance by duo
Wendy Loomis (Composer/Pianist) and Monica Williams (Flutist/Arranger) of Phoenix Rising.
Co-presented by SFWFF and Women’s Independent Cinema
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Spotlight: Feature-Length Documentary Film
Power and Passion: The Technology of Orgasm directed by Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori.
At the turn of the last century, the electric vibrator became a consumer item at the same time as the toaster, and long before the vacuum cleaner. This is a story of one simple invention, the vibrator, and its relationship to one complex human behavior, the female orgasm. The history of the vibrator and its medical use had virtually vanished until historian Rachel Maines, ran across ads for electric vibrators while researching needlework patterns in the early 20th century women’s magazines. The humorous, revealing, and informative documentary traces the history of the vibrator that evolved along with the women’s movement from medical to mechanical to recreational device.
Enjoy live musical performance by Grace Woods Trio. Their sound feels like a fusion of Tori Amos, Fleetwood Mac and Ella Fitzgerald.
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Children’s Animation Program
Enjoy Animation curated by San Francisco Children’s Film Festival, featuring a variety of animation around the globe for children made by women. Join us for films including Tubby The Yellow Sub as he and his little pal Ducky dive below the bubbles and go on an underwater adventure. They meet a big whale, learn to spell sea turtle, count octopus legs, and a ride alongside a jellyfish. The soundtrack incorporates soothing guitar and the cry of an orca, which just happens to sound like a duck!
Take a stroll down Montrose Avenue directed by Marek Colek and Pat Shewchuk and learn the importance of neighbors and community.
Mr. Flower directed by Jiyeon Han shows us how a small gift can bring on big happiness. These animated shorts will feature all kinds of fun creatures and teach us some valuable life lessons as well. Other short films that entertain and inspire will also be shown.
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LGBTQ Local Filmmakers Program and
special guest Guinevere Turner
In Conversation with Guinevere Turner
Join us for an evening with actress, writer and director Guinevere Turner. Turner emerged on the scene with groundbreaking film “Go Fish,” which she co-wrote and co-produced with Rose Troche. She will sit down with us for an intimate one-on-one interview to chat about her career and latest projects.
Co-sponsored by Center Women Present and
co-presented by Frameline
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Dream Media Film Program
Plus special performance
SFWFF is partnering with Oddball Films to present a screening that explores the themes of a “waking dream state as mediated by external forces and cultural conditioning.” The program showcases ten films from filmmakers across the globe plus a unique live performance of “Little Brassy Velvet” by SFWFF Golden Gate Award Winner Kerry Laitala.
Selected program highlights include:
Ground Zero/Sacred Ground directed by Karen Aqua, which explores the strange cultural juxtaposition inherent in South Central New Mexico, where Native American rock art lies 35 miles from the detonation site of the world’s first atomic bomb.
Imprint directed by Cecilia Araneda is a handcrafted film with many sections processed, colored and contact-printed. The film “explores the journey into a transient connection of two leaving a lingering memory of one,” according to Araneda.
Through These Trackless Waters is director Elizabeth Henry’s exploration of a waking dream where the ecology of the planet connects with the ecology of our minds, and as Kuleshov discovered, all is related.
In addition to the films, internationally renowned filmmaker Kerry Laitala will perform a live three-projector performance piece. Little Brassy Velvet is, in Laitala’s words, “A whimsical, expanded cinema piece that exists somewhere between a light spill and a conjuring act. [It] teases the retinas and immerses them in a sea of squirmy, silvery halides with16mm film loops, 35mm slides and sleight of hand.
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Documentary and Activism Film Program:
Rage Against Ageism!
Look Us in the Eye: The Old Women’s Project directed by Jennifer Abod. Cynthia Rich, Mannie Garza and Janice Keaffaber, founders of the Old Women’s Project in San Diego, rage against ageism with creativity and wit. Jennifer Abod’s “Look Us in the Eye: The Old Women’s Project” offers an engaging look at these outspoken women who give voice to the voiceless. Meet change making trio Rich, Garza and Keaffaber as they build on what they’ve learned from anti-ageism author and activist Barbara MacDonald to make visible the socioeconomic and political issues that touch the lives of old women and our communities.
The Oldest Basketball Team In the World directed by Sharon McGowan. The Retreads are a group of former women basketball players, becoming the first over the ages of 65 to play in the World Masters Games. Their average age is 72. One woman has an artificial hip, and another had two heart attacks. From the first days of training to the last buzzer, this film rocks!
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Documentary and Activism Film Program:
Our World, Our Stories
This film program explores a variety of issues that women and children face around the world. The perseverance of the human spirit that overcomes the injustices of the world is the focus of this program.
Midnight’s Lost Children directed by Alison O’Reilly.
Filmmaker Alison O’Reilly, the director of “Midnight’s Lost Children,” ran across a news article that inspired her to make a documentary exposing the extreme poverty that children in Calcutta face everyday.
Africa’s Daughters directed by Natalie Halpern.
Meet Two Ugandan girls with big dreams challenging their culture, defying the odds in a country where a high school education is generally reserved for boys.
More short films that urge for action will also be shown.
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Spotlight: Feature-Length Narrative Film
Tie a Yellow Ribbon directed by Joy Dietrich.
Jenny Mason, a Korean American adoptee, steams up lattes at a hip Manhattan espresso bar while dreaming of becoming of a photographer. She is very much alone in the big city, cutting off her contact with her mid-western family at the age of 14 after a childhood indiscretion with her older adoptive brother, Joe. When her roommate asks her to move out, Jenny’s fear of abandonment resurfaces. This turn leads her to meet a new roommate, with whom she develops a tender friendship with and discovers a different side of herself. Her adoptive brother, Joe, suddenly appears, stirring up long-suppressed feelings of her past.
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Women Behind the Camera by Alexis Krasilovsky.
Who knew that only 4% of cinematographers on the largest budget American films were women? This documentary based upon Krasilovsky’s book the lives of camerawoman in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Mexico, Russia, Senegal, and other countries in a way never seen before. The film features top American directors of photography and the secret films by camerawoman of Taliban beating Afghani women, to historic footage by China’s first camerawoman of Mao’s travels through the Chinese countryside. From the Playful narrative of a Russian filmmaker who learned the arts from her father, her choice of career told as a love story, to rural India, where subsistence-level women are taught camerawork as a means of empowerment, to the glowing young Senegalese camerawoman willing to climb onto a man’s shoulders – literally- to get her subject, Professor Krasilovsky shows us a world of beauty, courage and technical skill.
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Say Goodbye to Chick Flicks
Don’t miss SFWFF’s Horror, Suspense and Sci-Fi Short Film Program
SFWFF presents indie HORROR, SUSPENSE AND SCI-FI Films made by the next wave of Female Image makers. Here is what to expect…
Ghost Tracks directed by Gabriella Arredondo.
This documentary explores the famous San Antonio’s Urban Legend: The Ghost Tracks of the Southside San Antonio.
The Incubus directed by Jennifer Dombek. Mario, an average middle-aged man whose life is an organized pattern-until, that is, Enzo literally walks into him. Enzo seems to know Mario, though Mario doesn’t recall ever having seen him before. The next day, Mario discovers Enzo in the back of his car, dead!
Fear Itself directed by Maya Bastian.
A young woman awakens from a routine surgical procedure to suspicions that her body has been tampered with. Friends and co-workers, provoking her inner world to slowly disintegrate, cast her cries for help aside. Eventually, her fears manifest into terrifying reality that ultimately leads to her shattering destruction of self.
More short films that scare, thrill and chill!
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Watch finalist clips and keep up with SFWFF 2008 on IMEEM. IMEEM is an online community where artists, fans & friends can promote their content, share their tastes, and discover blogs, photos, music and video
Join Today at:
sfwomensfilmfestival.imeem.com
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