Tonight's Central Illinois Feminist Film Festival Screenings

5:00 p.m. Documentary Film Winners

First Place: City’s Step Child and The Dump Hill Dreams (India, dir. Pranab Aich):

Unlike the many rag pickers working at this Dump Hill Land Fill in Delhi, young Devendra is committed to collect electronic waste discarded from our homes, in an attempt to create machines. Even the carcinogenic gases emitting from this hill have not been able to poison his engineering dreams. This 6min documentary takes us through the breading-winning yet melancholic hill made out of city waste and its inhabitants living at the margins of health and poverty. 6 minutes.

Second Place: Why Not be Beautiful. (Brazil, dir. Sabrina Luna):

A sound remix of the TV documentary Why Not Be Beautiful? (1969, Handed Film Corporation) made with appropriated images from vintage stag, burlesque, underground and BDSM movies.
Women are tortured by the voiceover, which suggests how they should behave and look to be successful in life. Now the women are trying to be free of this voice, who commands several females’ lives. 7:13 minutes. 

Third Place: Portraits of the Historical Maria Zélia Village (Brazil, dir. Patricia Helena dos Santos):

The film reveals the vestiges of the past and present in daily records of Vila Maria Zelia, a working pioneer village of São Paulo. 16:32 minutes.

 Student Film: The Skin I’m In (United States, dir. Rajaiah Jones):

Three black females share their experiences on life, insecurities and what it means to be beautiful. 5:59 minutes. 

5:45 p.m. Fictional Film Winners

First Place: Rainbow Party. (Iceland, dir. Eva Sigurdardottir):

In a tale of twisted innocence, 14-year-old outcast Sofia is offered the chance to join the popular group at school, but doing so requires making serious sacrifices. Whoever said that teenage girls were pure and innocent? 15:58 minutes.

Second Place: The Window. (Israel, dir. Rivkatal Faine):

This film offers a rare female perspective on a powerful inter-generational relationship between two woman—One young and rebellious, the other elderly and lonely. 24:56 minutes.

Third Place: The Position. (Spain, dir. Lidia Ortega Camara):

The film exposes the adventures of a woman when she enters a public bathroom. 11:00 minutes.

Student Films:

The Octopus Lady. (Singapore, dir. Amanda Wang Ziyan): Moving from the sea to the city, The Octopus Lady finds herself literally a fish out of water. Dreaming of a home, she is torn between her desire to fit into the industrious yet impersonal city that she is now trying to make a living in, and returning to the sea. 3:34 minutes.

Canned. (USA, dir. Ivan Joy, Tanya Zaman, Nathaniel Hattan): A street artist paints a beautiful mural of a woman on the wall and is suddenly chased by police for having vandalized. The beautiful creation comes to life to save her creator in a chase scene through the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. 3:03 minutes.

 

Thanks to Women’s Studies, the College of Arts and Humanities, The Coles County Arts Council, and the Central Illinois Feminist Film Festival Committee for helping make this such a successful event!