(M)otherhood

[M]otherhood questions the existence of the widely-accepted “maternal instinct”. Is regretting motherhood still a taboo? Is motherhood an experience that women necessarily must have if they want to be truly happy? This documentary brings together several women who’ve decided to sound off on the subject, and whose reasons knock the concept of contemporary motherhood as an “ideal” off its pedestal.

Screening Saturday, March 21 at 2PM with Marriage Material

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5:03

After a night out ends in sexual assault, a normally confident student struggles to restore her sense of self.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program

Adam

Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter Warda. Their routine of housework and homework is interrupted one day by a knock on the door. It is Samia, a young woman looking for a job and a roof over her head. The little girl is immediately taken with the newcomer, but her mother initially refuses to allow a pregnant stranger into their home. Gradually, however, Abla’s resolve softens and Samia’s arrival begins to offer all of them the prospect of a new life.

Screening Saturday, March 21 at 8PM

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All We’ve Got

An exploration fo LGBTQI women’s communities, cultures, and social justice work through the lens of the physical spaces they create, from bars to bookstores to arts and political hubs.

Screening Friday, March 27 at 5PM with The Archivettes

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Arming Sisters/Sisters Rising

Six Native American women fight to restore personal and tribal sovereignty in the face of ongoing colonial violence against indigenous women in the US.

Screening Saturday, March 28 at 2PM with Ghazaal

Q & A with director

*Local filmmaker*

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Bekoji 100

Meet Desta and Zabu, two young runners from Ethiopia as they embark on the first-ever 100-mile ultra relay race across Ethiopia joined by international runners and their Girls Gotta Run Foundation teammates.  Along the way they share their athletic ambitions and the trials they face as young women in their society.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 2PM with Float and Life in Synchro

Belle Douleur

Belle Douleur tells the story of a woman’s journey of finding happiness as she breaks free from the confines of society that shackle women.

Screening Saturday, March 21 at 4PM

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Bobbi & Sheelagh

Bobbi meets a mythological creature whose ancient battle for acceptance helps Bobbi overcome her own fears of being herself – a young lesbian.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program

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Dear Carefree Black Girl

A spoken-word piece; a letter to little black girls and the little black girl inside all black women. It serves love, reminders, correction, and encouragement to remind us of beauty and worth.

Screening Saturday, March 28 at 12PM with PUSHOUT:The Criminalization of Black Girls

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Driving Lessons

Local laws say Bahareh’s husband must accompany her to driving lessons so she and her instructor will not be alone. A task made more complicated when the two men don’t get along.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program and Saturday, March 28 at 4PM with Finding Sally

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Exam

A teenage girl reluctantly agrees to deliver a pack of cocaine on the day of an important test. A series of unforeseen events threaten to derail more than just her GPA.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program

Finding Sally

The story of a young woman from an upper-class family who became a communist rebel, on the most- wanted list and disappeared. Four decades later, the director pieces together the mysterious life of her Aunt Sally and revisits the Ethiopian revolution and the massacre that followed during which half a million people died.

Screening Saturday, March 28 at 4PM with Driving Lessons

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Flesh Out

Verida is a modern girl. She works in a beauty salon, is addicted to social media and hangs out with her friends. Still, she is engaged to a man chosen by her family. Like many girls her age, she is under pressure to gain a substantial amount of weight in a tradition called gavage, in order to reach the voluptuous body considered in Mauritania a sign of great beauty, charm, wealth and social status. The wedding is fast approaching and meal after meal Verida is starting to challenge everything she always thought was normal: her loved ones, her way of life, and not least, her own body.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 4PM

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Float

When the Indian Ocean tsunami swept over much of the Asian continent in 2004, nearly 80% of those who drowned were women and children. One of the crucial reasons was that women didn’t know how to swim or even float. For many women living in rural areas in South Asia, there are cultural and social barriers to entering bodies of water that they often live right next to. Through the unique personal stories of three different women from coastal Sri Lanka who confront community expectations by learning to swim and, along the way, swimming becomes a way to float in life.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 2PM with Bekoji 100 and Life in Synchro

Found in Korea

A Korean adoptee travels back to Korea for the first time in 35 years in search of her birth parents and the world she lost as a baby. While retracing the steps of her own adoption, she discovers her culture, identity and questions why Koreans are not adopting their own.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 2PM with The ‘S’ Word

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Game

A new kid shows up at the high school boys’ basketball tryouts and instantly makes an impression. Will talent and drive be enough to make the team once they discover a secret?

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 4PM with Navigating THRU

Ghazaal

A 13-year-old Afghan refugee hustles around in a refugee camp, trying to survive.

Screening Saturday, March 28 at 2PM with Arming Sisters

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Go Back Forward

Coco reaches her drama class at the last minute. Allowed to take a seat, she embarks on a trip into her past for a very special sensory encounter.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program

Good Kisser

Jenna and Kate open up their relationship to an alluring stranger in the hopes of spicing up their two-year romance, only for it to expose faults in their foundation.

Screening Friday, March 27 at 9PM with Time & Again

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Home Games

A season in the life of Alina, a poor 20-year-old girl from Kyiv who has a chance to be saved by football. She’s about to join the Ukrainian national team, but life challenges her once again: her mother dies leaving two young siblings. Now, Alina must choose: football or family.

Screening Saturday, March 28 at 6PM with Micky

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Human Being

While on a mission on Earth, an alien becomes pregnant and seeks an abortion.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program

Jeune Juliette

A semi-autobiographical coming of age story inspired by Émond’s own teenage experiences, Juliette, is an overweight and unpopular young girl who is bullied at her high school but learns how to fight back with her wit.

Screening Saturday, March 28 at 8PM

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Labor Relations

In this absurd comedy, a very pregnant Emogen Farrar goes into labor at work and decides to keep working while she delivers her baby.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 6PM with Love Me Tender and Sunday, March 29 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program

Life in Synchro

Synchronized ice skating be a cold and unforgiving world, but to the women and girls who find family here, it’s home. Journey alongside skaters, both amateurs and professionals, as they push their teams and themselves beyond the routine and up towards greatness.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 2PM with Bekoji 100 and Float

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Love Me Tender

Suffering from agoraphobia, Seconda is unable to leave her house. When she finally succeeds, new challenges push this assertive super anti-heroine’s limits even further.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 6PM with Labor Relations

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Marriage Material

After her boyfriend rejects her marriage proposal, Leah checks herself into the “Late Blooming Bride” retreat, which prides itself on transforming less-than-perfect women.

Screening Saturday, March 21 at 2PM with (M)otherhood and Sunday, March 22 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program

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Micky

In San Francisco where homelessness is rapidly growing, a young woman travels the streets in search of a home and independence but discovers that comfort is not always a place.

Screening Saturday, March 28 at 6PM with Home Games

Ms.Diagnosed

Although women and men are completely different genetically, almost all the healthcare we receive is based solely on research done on men. Because of this inequity, women die every single day, worldwide. Ms.Diagnosed explores why the inequality exists, why it persists, and how it can change.

Screening Saturday, March 21 at 12PM

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Navigating THRU

Every year, thousands of people attempt a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, but only 1 in 4 will be successful. Of those who are successful, just 25% are women. THRU follows women attempting a 2016 thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail and discovering what it takes to become “the 25% of the 25%”. Told from a third-person perspective (a unique deviation from most first-person perspective hiking documentaries), THRU aims to explore the everyday struggles any thru-hiker faces as well as what it means to be a woman on and off the trail.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 4PM with Game

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Nice Chinese Girls Don’t

In this first documentary about a Chinese American Lesbian, Tsui brings to life her coming of age in San Francisco in the 1970s, her challenges, and her continued rise to celebrity by being rediscovered by a whole new generation of feminists.

Screening Saturday, March 21 at 6PM with Queering the Script

Nothing Fancy: Diana Kennedy

A candid look into the world of 96-year-old British chef and cookbook author Diana Kennedy, widely regarded as the world’s authority on Mexican cuisine. The film follows Kennedy during her early days as an authority on Mexican cuisine, giving cooking lessons out of her apartment, to her development as a writer and researcher recording indigenous Mexican recipes, and finally to the compound in Mexico where she’s lived for the past 43 years.

SPECIAL TICKET – OPENING NIGHT GALA FILM – Screening Friday, March 20 at 7PM

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One Hot Day

Celia’s a hot woman in a cold world and no one understands.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 12PM as part of Shorts Program

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Premenstrual Margot

In a world, where menstrual cycles are celebrated, a late bloomer fakes her first period to fit in.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 12PM as part of Shorts Program

PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls

This documentary confronts the criminalization and miseducation of African American girls that has led to their alarming high school dropout rate and increase into the juvenile justice system. Schools, throughout the country, have become a key entry point into the juvenile justice system with Black girls being the fastest growing population in this system.

Screening Saturday, March 28 at 12PM with Dear Carefree Black Girl

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Queer Genius

Queer Genius explores the lives of five queer female artists: Barbara Hammer, Eileen Myles, Black Quantum Futurism, Moor Mother, and Dynasty Handbag / Jibz Cameron. Deep, affectionate, and intimate portraits resonate across generations as critically acclaimed and notoriously radical queer artists overcome personal and political obstacles to find new ways to think about and live their own “genius.”

Screening Friday, March 27 at 7PM

Queering the Script

Queerness on television has moved from subtext, to all-out multi-season relationships. But in 2016, a record number of queer women died on fictional shows, angering queer fans and launching a successful fight for more diverse representation. Stars join with kickass fangirls in this history of queer women’s representation on television.

Screening Saturday, March 21 at 6PM with Nice Chinese Girls Don’t

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RED

On the evening of the Jewish Passover, Leon, a 14-year-old girl, gets her period for the first time. During the dinner celebration, she challenges her family to confront the patriarchal traditions within their home.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 8PM with Runaway

Runaway

On the cusp of her 14th birthday, a girl disappears from summer camp. On purpose. Filmmaker Meg Knowles – sister of the Runaway – unearths that summer of 1973, long ago buried by her family, to weave a tale of teen angst gone off the rails, a mother’s patient desperation and a sister’s disbelief. Join this 3,000 -mile hitchhiking/couch- surfing ride across America, from an upscale New England summer camp to a California commune.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 8PM with RED

That’s the Way You Love

Tamara, a successful career woman, lives in a world of high expectations and perfect performances. When she gives birth to her first daughter, the change shakes her world, altering the power dynamics in her marriage and sex life.

Screening Sunday, March 29 at 6PM

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The ‘S’ Word

A character-based short doc that follows 3 unmarried women from different generations, cities, and backgrounds who are without a partner for vastly different reasons.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 2PM with Found in Korea

The Archivettes

For more than 40 years, the Lesbian Herstory Archives has combated lesbian invisibility by literally rescuing history from the trash.

Screening Friday, March 27 at 5PM with All We’ve Got

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The Euphoria of Being

At 20 years of age, Eva Fahidi returned home alone to Hungary. She had survived Auschwitz Birkenau, while 49 members of her family were murdered, including her mother, father, and little sister. Today, at age 90, Eva is asked to participate in a dance theatre performance about her life’s journey. Three women – three months – a story of crossing boundaries. Whilst the extraordinary moments of Eva’s life are distilled into theater scenes, a truly wonderful and powerful relationship forms among the three women.

Screening Sunday, March 22 at 8PM

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The Smell of Smoke

The Smell of Smoke tells the story of Dottie, a woman in her 80s who struggles with increasing loneliness and frustration over being forgotten by the world around her.

Sunday, March 22 at 12PM as part of the Shorts Program

Time & Again

Former lovers, Eleanor and Isabelle meet again sixty years after their relationship break-up. A tale of two young women separated by society being given an unexpected chance to make peace in the winter of their lives.

Screening Friday, March 27 at 9PM with Good Kisser

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