I’m already excited for the completion of MAKERS: Women Who Make America, airing in 2013. This documentary, an initiative by AOL and PBS, tells the stories of hundreds of women that have shaped our world. The video initiative is produced by filmmakers Dyllan McGee, Betsy West, and Peter Kunhardt, and features “exclusive access to trailblazing women – both known and unknown.” Some well known women in the documentary include Gloria Steinem, Ellen DeGeneres, and WAM!mer Courtney E. Martin, just to name a few.
WAM!mer Melissa Silverstein recently attended the International Frauen Film Festival to discuss the status of women’s film festivals (WFFs). Skadi Loist, a researcher from the Media and Communications Studies Department at the University of Hamburg, started the discussion with a presentation: Social Change?! The status of Women’s Film Festivals today. She let Silverstein publish it at Women and Hollywood, and after reading it I really thought about the main question Loist asks, which is “Why do we need a WFF and what are the functions it should serve?
Check out ”Is It A Boy or A Girl?: Improving Media Coverage Beyond the Binary,” a radio-style program on how the media covers non-binary and non-conforming gender and what we can do to make that coverage better. Hosted by Avory Faucette of QueerFeminism.com and Radically Queer, and featuring guests with expertise in gender-neutral parenting, non-binary identities, and media coverage of transgender issues, we’ll be looking closely at some misunderstandings the media makes and how feminists can take action to educate and improve coverage.
Listen to the program here, and check out more content from last month’s WAM!-It-Yourself events!
Did you miss the WAM!NYC Conference for Feminist Media Makers, featuring keynote speaker Rinku Sen (pictured above, photo by Lindsay Beyerstein)?
“I don’t think you can be a woman in the media without understanding how power works, how to unleash it, and how to use it responsibly,” Sen, president of the Applied Research Center and publisher of ColorLines, told attendees at the conference. Sen talked to WAMmers about how to tell stories that get to the heart of structural racism and sexism, how to react to triggers that arise while doing this work, and how much media-makers can learn from getting their hands dirty with some organizing.
Several weeks ago I talked about the impact that gendered toy commercials have on kids, and how the marketing used toward girls and boys really limits their growth and concept of gender roles. It’s exciting to see some recent action addressing this issue. Representatives from SPARK, an organization leading an activist movement to end the sexualization of women and girls in media, met with three LEGO executives last week to address concerns with gendered LEGO products.
From Snow White to Pretty Woman: What we Learn from Fairytales and Romantic Comedies
WAM!mer Chloe Angyal brought the fairytale discussion back to the table in her piece in The Sydney Morning Herald last week about the connection between fairytales and romantic comedies. What sparked this conversation is the release of the movie Mirror Mirror, with Snow White and the Huntsman soon to follow in June, and this year marking the 200th anniversary of the Brothers Grimm publishing stories including Cinderella and Snow White. Angyal looks at how fairytale narratives meant for young girls translate into messages for women in romantic comedy films.
Above: “Walking Home,” one of the shorts screened at the WAM!Boston 2012 Film Festival//
The WAM!Boston Film Festival, part of this year’s WAM!-It-Yourself, featured a number of films for, by and about women. The audiences at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge on 3/24 participated in a number of Q&As with the filmmakers, and saw films ranging from 4-minute shorts to full-length features. If you missed it or want to see something again, check out some of the trailers and shorts, and see what folks were saying on Twitter at #wamboston here: http://www.womenactionmedia.org/wiy-video-audio-more/#Boston
(Pictured: WAM!LA)
WAM!-It-Yourself, our annual decentralized conference, happened all over North America from March 22 - April 2.
Did you miss a WAM!-It-Yourself event that you were really interested in? Hoping to re-experience some of the great moments you did witness? Wondering what people were saying on Twitter but forgot to check?
