2018 Central Illinois Feminist Film Festival Award Winners

2018 Central Illinois Feminist Film Festival Film Contest Winners

Documentary Film Winners:

First Place: The Tipping Point by Danielle Cohen (U.S.)

https://vimeo.com/223812254

The Tipping Point examines the issue of defunding and the silencing of science in today’s changing political climate. The film explores the efforts of local Santa Barbara organizations and scientists, who are fighting back against the suppression of science, to safeguard its integrity and our planet for generations to come.

Second Place: Let Me Breath with My Dream by KM Taj-Biul Hasan (Bangladesh)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LLuQXFDuprmgjT7XQPkGDRc_PXr3pXou/view

‘Let me Breath with my Dream’ is a documentary film on the issue of Child marriage. For millions of girls in Bangladesh, marriage comes so soon and the damage follows them throughout their lives. This has been the way of lives of girls of Bangladesh from generation to generation. This film is a true story of a young girl named Sharmin Akhter who stood up against her child marriage arranged by her own mother and ultimately succeeded to stop it through a long struggle and become an icon in the society. Certainly, her heroic and victorious example of will encourage the girls to decide their own destiny while showing their parents a way to be supportive of their decision rather than regarding them as an economic burden.

Third Place: Duo Impacto by Molly Harding, Miranda Everingham, Alexandra Nagy (Cuba)

https://youtu.be/_a6eFU2xJYI

'Duo Impacto' is a short documentary film, shining a light on the work done by a lesbian couple who perform female to male drag. Filmed on location in Cuba, we get an insight into two women's efforts to challenge gender expectations, and spread acceptance in their rural community in Havana.

Student Winner: Colorism by Shakeinah West (EIU)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_2pDb7KDys5Ep6Y67htoGUXmc8FR7wGi/view?usp=sharing

Documentary shows people of color's experience of colorism within the black community. This film fits the criteria stated since it is about people of color, but also the social issues we go through within our own community. This issue could be local (within the United States), and could possibly be global.

Fictional Film Winners:

First Place: Icky by Parastoo Cardgar (Iran)

Trailer: https://youtu.be/vioKh67AM4U

Film on FilmFreeway: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/9065824

In the world of people with Rubik's cube head, there is a kid who is different from the others...

Second Place: Blue by Maddie White (U.S.)

https://vimeo.com/254144305

Through the young female lens, I wanted to explore the effects of creativity and exploration on relationships and mental health. So frequently our society turns to medicines to suppress the or “balance” the issue of learning differences, however, it has been proven that often these solutions aren’t really solutions at all. My goal with Blue was to explore the fantastical imagination of a young girl and to show the repercussions of such a vivid mental life, on her family and on herself.

Third Place: On a Monotonous Day by Arif Arman Badol (Bangladesh)

https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/9035306

Chit Na Vicche Ikko Din (On A Monotonous Day), an eight minute short film that portrays a melancholic day of a Chakma girl (one of the indigenous groups of Bangladesh). The film has a unique treatment of showcasing the life of an indigenous girl who comes to the city and goes through a forced metamorphosis in order to mingle with the majority of the city yet feels alienated due to her language and outlook. A dream of equity often remains undone.

Ecocinema and the City IV

The last section of Ecocinema and the City, “The Sustainable City,” illustrates green possibilities in urban settings. According to political scientist Heather Campbell and her colleagues “sustainability has become a three-pillars concept that includes the three interacting, interconnected, and overlapping prime systems: the biosphere or ecological system; the economy, the market or the economic system; and human society, the human social systems” (1).  Films in this section demonstrate viable ways to make the biosphere, economy, and human society sustainable.  “The Sustainable City,” highlights multiple ways cities become “greener.”  

Chapter 8, “Urban Farming on Film: Moving Toward Environmental Justice in the City” analyzes urban farming documentaries highlighting sustainability and illustrating some of the economic, social, and environmental challenges surrounding urban farming. Despite the difficulties they face, however, each of these films suggests the outcome is worth the battle. Urban farms grow strong communities, improve access to healthy food, benefit the local economy, and encourage interdependent relationships with the natural world. Although they point out a variety of challenges, films such as Voices of Transition (2012), New Farms, Big Success: With Three Rock Star Farmers (2015), and U.S. focused documentaries The Garden (2008), Urban Fruit (2013), Growing Cities (2013), and The Edible City: Grow the Revolution (2014) illustrate how well urban farming facilitates economic, social, and environmental sustainability. 

Chapter 9, “Lives Worth Living and the Sustainable City: Will the ‘Walls of Exclusion Finally Come Tumbling Down’?” explores the sustainable city and broaches accommodations and urban planning. Most films addressing people with disabilities highlight an individual (usually played by an able bodied actor) who overcomes adversity to become a productive member of society. What these films do not address, however, are the architectural barriers that promote exclusion both of human and nonhuman nature. Documentaries such as Lives Worth Living (2011) move beyond the individual to reveal the importance of cross-ability coalitions to transform the city from an inhospitable setting for people with disabilities to a well planned sustainable home. 

Our conclusion, “The ‘Absent City’ of the Future” provides insights into the future of cities in both developed and developing countries. At the center of the chapter is a reading of Mainland China’s Under the Dome (2015), a documentary that takes an approach similar to An Inconvenient Truth (2006) to demonstrate the causes of (and solutions to) urban air pollution that relies on a distribution process that augments its environmental message. Yet this optimistic, nostalgia-driven argument contrasts with those found in most fictional films exploring the city of the future. The chapters in Ecocinema and the City begins to explore such contradictory visions of urban nature on film.

Ecocinema and the City III

Our next section of Ecocinema and the City, “Urban Nature and Interdependence” begins to elucidate more positive relationships between human and nonhuman nature. The films examined in the urban nature and interdependence section demonstrate the interdependent possibilities of biophilic urbanism. Biologists Bjørn Grinde and Grete Grindal Patil draw on E.O. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis to reinforce the benefits humans gain from affiliating with nonhuman nature, both through interdependent relationships and sustainable urban living conditions. Wilson defines biophilia “as the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes” (Biophilia 1). Urban and environmental planner Timothy Beatley asserts that this affiliation with the natural world provides “social, psychological, pedagogical, and other benefits,” even in urban areas (211). “Urban Nature and Interdependence” showcases films exploring zoos, birdwatching, and urban gardens and highlights moves toward such biophilic urbanism.

Chapter 5, “Hatari Means Danger: Filmic Representations of Animals Welfare and Environmentalism at the Zoo” examines how zoo films with differing perspectives beg the same question: Does Hatari mean danger for humans or for the animals they capture and enclose for their own enjoyment? Although African safari films like Howard Hawks’ Hatari (1962) seem to promote trapping wild animals for human amusement in zoos or some other enclosure, and fictional zoo-centered films such as We Bought a Zoo (2011) and Zookeeper (2011) emphasize the benefits to humans provided by animals and a zoo setting, they also highlight, at least peripherally, the educational roles zoos have always held. Documentaries such as Zoo (1993), Nenette (2010), and Blackfish (2013), however, provide a more complex view of zoo life, revealing the detriments to animal welfare caused by captivity, as well as the complicated relationship humans have with entrapped wild creatures.

Chapter 6, “Eco-Therapy in Central Park: Documenting Urban Birdwatching” explores how the interdependence a union between humans and nature suggests also coincides with human improvement in three bird watching documentaries: Pale Male (2002), The Legend of Pale Male  (2009), and Birders: The Central Park Effect (2012). Whether they anthropomorphize the birds on display—as do Pale Male and The Legend of Pale Male—or display them in spectacular close up—as does Birders: The Central Park Effect—these urban birding documentaries highlight the multiple ways birding helps humanity. Despite their human approaches to ecology, however, all three films also demonstrate how these Central Park birds may inadvertently save themselves by healing their birders’ environmental grief.

Chapter 7, “Green Lungs: Partnering with Nature in the Urban Garden Film” examines how the U.S. animated feature Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941), the Vietnamese family melodrama The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), and the Peruvian drama The Milk of Sorrow (2009) demonstrate the interdependent possibilities of biophilic urbanism, although resting on varied visions of the “garden.” These films highlight the effectiveness of relationships between human and nonhuman nature that are more like the partnership ethic environmental historian Carolyn Merchant proposes or the re-constructed garden ideal ecocritic Joni Adamson recommends.