The Feminist & Women’s Media Festival is a 3-day series of events consisting of film, video, and TV screenings, a photography installation, media-maker Q&As, and academic symposia. All of this will take place in Providence, RI from March 14-16, 2014: at the Granoff Center at Brown University, and at the Cable Car Cinema in downtown Providence. The festivals invited guests, filmmakers, and panelists include Nandita Das, Lena Waithe, Cauleen Smith, Rhea Combs, Portia Cobb, Hong-An Truong, Mimi Thi Nguyen, and Nilita Vachani– with a photography installation featuring works by Nikki Lee. In displaying such a broad range of works and modes from different regions and time periods, the fest hopes to stimulate critical conversations within the Brown and Providence communities about the fraught and contradictory associations conjured by the overdetermined notions of feminist and women’s media.
ALL SCREENINGS AND EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
2 films from CFA’s JoAnn Elam collection (“Chocolate Cake” & “Everyday People”) will be screened via video projection at the festival’s “Depression” screening on Sunday, March 16th at 11AM. More on this particular screening below:
“In her book Heroines (2012) author Kate Zambreno narrates her life through the struggles of female modernists who were institutionalized, silenced and erased by their famous husbands. It is a book that is in part about how personal instances of female depression intersect with the political and social conditions in which women find themselves, or what feminist theorist Ann Cvetkovich might call the sense of “public feeling” that stems from trying to survive in a world that is inimical to your survival. But Heroines is also a book that critically comments on the spaces opened up by everyday memoir writing for both mediating depression and dwelling within it. Following Zambreno’s lead, but transposing the question to the moving image, this program explores the relationship between political depression and the genre of personal filmmaking. Rather than trying to offer any kind of comprehensive study of these intersections, the “Depression” screening brings together the work of three U.S. filmmakers who – while occupying distinct sociopolitical times and spaces – examine gendered experiences of depression, anxiety and rage.”