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Women Take the Reel
A Film Festival Celebrating Women’s History Month
This annual film festival is a collaborative effort among Women's and Gender Studies departments involved in the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies (as well as select institutions/universities aligned with its mission) that features films about issues relating to gender, race, sexuality, class and/or feminism. The theme of this year’s festival is Power & Access.
The focus is on the intellectual investigation of these issues, so every film is accompanied by a Q&A and discussion with the film director, producer, local activists and practitioners, and/or faculty members from the host institution for each film.
****All films are free and open to the public.****
More information about each film screening and associated events are below. Click on the film ttitles for full descriptions.
3/7: Scheherazade's Diary at Lesley
3/16: No Mas Bebes at Boston College
3/16: Equity at Emerson College
3/16: Trapped at Northeastern University
3/16: Mothers of Bedford at Tufts University
3/17: Daughters of the Dust at MIT
3/21: Remedy at Emerson College
3/23: Deprogrammed at Emerson College
3/24: Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger at MIT
3/29: Southwest of Salem at Tufts University
CALENDAR VIEW:
Please use the scroll arrows to view the month of March for the full calendar.
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13th
Directed by Ava Duvernay
Screening at MIT
March 3, 2017 from 7:00 - 9:00pm*
MIT Campus Building E-15 Bartos Theater
America makes up 5% of the world's population, yet locks up 25% of the world's prisoners. Ava DuVernay's 13th explores how we got here.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with Melina Abdullah, Professor and Chair of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, organizer with Black Lives Matter, and interviewee from the film 13th.
*pizza served at 6:30pm
Back to List.
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13th
Directed by Ava Duvernay
Screening at University of Massachusetts Boston
March 6, 2017 from 4-6:45pm
UMASS Campus Building University Hall Room 2-2120
America makes up 5% of the world's population, yet locks up 25% of the world's prisoners. Ava DuVernay's 13th explores how we got here.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with Professors Tahirah Abdullah and Andrea Leverentz, UMASS Boston.
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Scheherazade's Diary
Directed by Zeina Daccache
Screening at Lesley University
March 7, 2017 from 4:00 - 6:00pm
Sherrill Library Room 251
99 Brattle St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Lesley University Brattle Campus
This engaging tragicomic documentary follows women inmates through a 10-month drama therapy/theater project set up in 2012 by director Zeina Daccache at the Baabda Prison in Lebanon. Through their unprecedented theater initiative, entitled Scheherazade in Baabda, these "murderers of husbands, adulterers and drug felons" reveal their stories—tales of domestic violence, traumatic childhoods, failed marriages, forlorn romances, and deprivation of motherhood. The women of Baabda Prison share their personal stories, and in doing so, hold up a mirror to Lebanese society and all societies that repress women.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with Nisha Sajnani, Phd, RDT-BCT, Associate Professor, Lesley University.
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Jackson
Directed by Maisie Crow
Screening at MIT
March 9, 2017 from 7:00 - 9:00pm*
MIT Campus Building 6 Room 120
Jackson is an intimate, unprecedented look at the lives of three women caught up in the complex issues surrounding abortion access. Set against the backdrop of the fight to close the last abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson captures the essential and hard truth of the lives at the center of the debate over reproductive healthcare in America.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with film director, Maisie Crow
*pizza served at 6:30pm
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No Más Bébes (No More Babies)
Directed by Renee Tajima-Peña
Screening at Boston College
March 16, 2017 from 7:00 - 9:00pm
McGuinn 121 Auditorium at Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA
No Más Bébes is a documentary that tells the story of Mexican immigrant mothers who sued doctors, the state, and the U.S. government after they were sterilized while giving birth at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center during the 1960s and 70s. Led by an intrepid, 26-year-old Chicana lawyer and armed with hospital records secretly gathered by a whistle-blowing young doctor, the mothers faced public exposure and stood up to powerful institutions in the name of justice.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Women’s Studies & Gender Studies Program at Boston College
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Equity
Directed by Meera Menon
Screening at Emerson
March 16, 2017 from 7:00 - 10:00pm
Bright Family Screening Room
(559 Washington St., downtown Boston)
Naomi Bishop is an investment banker determined to overcome a previous stain to her professional reputation, which is a challenge in the male dominated financial sector she works in. As Naomi in that spirit makes her move managing a burgeoning new tech IPO, she has to endure not only the condescension of her colleagues, but also her imperious client even as troubling new developments cloud the venture's future. Against that, the probing of a college friend turned Federal investment law prosecutor and the conniving of her double-dealing boyfriend seem to be manageable complications, until a betrayal by a trusted colleague threatens to ruin everything.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with producer and actor David Alan Basche, Emerson ’90
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Trapped
Directed by Dawn Porter
Screening at Northeastern
March 16, 2017 from 5:00 - 7:00pm**
Northeastern Campus Behrakis Health Sciences Center, Room 310
(30 Leon Street, Boston, MA 02115)
What remains of a woman’s right to choose? US reproductive health clinics are fighting to remain open. Since 2010, 288 laws regulating abortion providers have been passed by state legislatures. In total, 44 states and the District of Columbia have measures subjecting abortion providers to legal restrictions now imposed on other medical professionals. Unable to comply with these far-reaching and medically unnecessary laws, clinics have taken their fight to the courts. Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling (Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt) that prevents individual states from essentially outlawing abortion. Trapped follows the clinic workers and lawyers who were on the front lines of the battle to keep abortion safe and legal for millions of American women.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with Jessica Silbey, Professor of Law, Northeastern University and Brooke Foucault Welles, Assistant Professor, Communications Studies and Network Science, Northeastern University.
**pizza will be served!
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Mothers of Bedford
Directed by Jenifer McShane
Screening at Tufts University
March 16, 2017 from 7:00 - 9:00pm
Tufts Women’s Center
Women are the fastest-growing U.S. prison population today. Eighty percent are mothers of school-age children. Jenifer McShane's absorbing documentary gives human dimensions to these rarely reported statistics, taking us inside Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison north of New York City. Shot over four years, Mothers of Bedford follows five women - of diverse backgrounds and incarcerated for different reasons- in dual struggles to be engaged in their children's lives and become their better selves. It shows how long-term sentences affect mother-child relationships and how Bedford's innovative Children's Center helps women maintain and improve bonds with children and adult relatives awaiting their return. Whether it be parenting's normal frustrations to celebrating a special day, from both inside and out of the prison walls, this moving film provides unprecedented access to a little known, rarely shown, community of women.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with Sabina Vaught, Associate Professor and Chair of Education and Director of WGSS, Tufts University and Deirdre Judge, MA student in Educational Studies, Tufts University
This film is co-sponsored by the Tufts Women's Center.
Back to List.
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Daughters of the Dust
Directed by Julie Dash
Screening at MIT
March 17, 2017 from 7:00 - 9:00pm*
MIT Campus Building E-15 Bartos Theater
At the dawn of the 20th century, a multi-generational family in the Gullah community on the Sea Islands off of South Carolina – former West African slaves who adopted many of their ancestors’ Yoruba traditions – struggle to maintain their cultural heritage and folklore while contemplating a migration to the mainland, even further from their roots.
The first wide release by a black female filmmaker, “Daughters of the Dust” was met with wild critical acclaim and rapturous audience response when it initially opened in 1991. Casting a long legacy, “Daughters of the Dust” still resonates today, most recently as a major in influence on Beyonce’s visual album “Lemonade.” This is a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the film’s original release.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with Sandy Alexandre, Professor of Literature at MIT.
*pizza served at 6:30pm
Back to List.
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Remedy
Directed by Cheyenne Picardo
Screening at Emerson College
March 21, 2017 from 7:00 - 10:00pm
Bright Family Screening Room
(559 Washington St., downtown Boston)
Remedy follows a young woman from the underground kink clubs of New York City into the world of commodified BDSM where workers are paid to embody the sexual and psychological fantasies of complete strangers. Despite her habitually submissive tastes, the woman finds a job as a dominatrix at a commercial dungeon, working under the pseudonym “Mistress Remedy.” Before long her personal proclivities peek through the veneer. She begins to show her compliant side to a few regulars. Soon an unscrupulous night manager asks Remedy to session with dominant clients, where she will be the client’s slave for the hour. Remedy quickly realizes that her submissiveness at home does not prepare her for the pressures and risks of this lesser-known side of the sexual service industry.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with film director, Cheyenne Picardo. The discussion will be moderated by author Melissa Gira Grant.
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Deprogrammed
Directed by Mia Donovan
Screening at Emerson College
March 23, 2017 from 7:00 - 10:00pm
Bright Family Screening Room (559 Washington St., downtown Boston)
Deprogrammed chronicles Ted 'Black Lightning' Patrick's anti-cult crusade. His practice of 'deprogramming', also known as 'reverse brainwashing', started in the early 1970s and quickly snowballed into a vast underground movement composed of concerned parents, ex-cultist-turned-deprogrammers and some sympathetic law-enforcers whose mission was to physically and mentally remove individuals from 'cults'.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with film director, Mia Donovan.
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Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger
Directed by Sam Feder
Screening at MIT
March 24, 2017 from 7:00 - 9:00pm*
MIT Campus Building 6 Room 120
Performance artist and writer Kate Bornstein explodes binaries while deconstructing gender—and her own identity. Trans-dyke. Reluctant polyamorist. Sadomasochist. Recovering Scientologist. Pioneering gender outlaw. Sam Feder’s playful and meditative portrait on Bornstein, captures rollicking public performances and painful personal revelations as it bears witness to Kate as a trailblazing artist-theorist-activist who inhabits a space between male and female with wit, style and astonishing candor.
Film to be followed by Q&A discussion with film director, Sam Feder
*pizza served at 6:30pm
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Southwest of Salem
Directed by Deborah S. Esquenazi
Screening at Tufts University
March 29, 2017 from 7:00 - 9:00pm
Location TBD
After being wrongfully convicted of gang-raping two little girls during the Satanic Panic witchhunt era of the 80s and 90s, four Latina lesbians fight against mythology, homophobia, and prosecutorial fervor in their struggle for exoneration in this riveting 'True Crime' tale.
Using the women’s home video footage from 21 years ago combined with recent verité footage and interviews, the film explores their personal narratives and their search for exculpatory evidence to help their losing criminal trials.
This event is co-sponsored by the Tufts LGBT Center.
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WOMEN TAKE THE REEL is a FREE roaming film festival SPONSORED BY: MIT Program in Women's and Gender Studies; the Graduate Consortium in Women's Studies; Boston College Women's and Gender Studies Program; Boston University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; Brandeis University Women's and Gender Studies Program; Northeastern University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; Simmons College Department of Women's and Gender Studies; Tufts University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; UMass Boston Women's and Gender Studies Department; Emerson College Department of Visual and Media Arts; and Lesley University.
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Phone: 617-324-2085
