While there will hopefully be plenty of opportunities to celebrate International Women’s Day, wherever you are this March, if you need inspiration, look no further than the Feminista Film Festival UK Tour, coming to venues in the South West on the 8th of the month.
This brilliant programme of short films tells some of the most inspiring stories about women and girls from around the world. The line-up includes eight Festival favourites, from as close as Wales and as far as Pakistan, featuring swimmers, activists, ballerinas and everyday acts of quiet heroism.
Film Hub South West is proud to be supporting screenings in the South West, some of which will be presented by inspiring women who are participants of Film Hub’s Beyond Boundaries 360.
Find out when and where screenings are happening below!
Old Bakery Studios in Truro, Monday 2nd March 7.30pm,
Presented by Three Rivers Film Club.
Plymouth Arts Cinema, Saturday 7th March, 5.30pm
Plymouth based producer and film programmer, Lauren Tenn, will be introducing the Feminista programme at Plymouth Arts Cinema and hosting a panel discussion after the screening.
Trowbridge Town Hall, Sunday 8th March, 2pm
Venezuelan journalist and film promotor Lorena Pino, is bringing #GettingTogetherThroughFilms back to Trowbridge Town Hall and introducing this screening.
Bristol’s Watershed, Sunday 8th March, 4.30pm
Film curator and creative producer Rebecca Ballard will be introducing Watershed’s Feminista screening and hosting a discussion around inspiring women in the bar afterwards.
Exeter Phoenix, Sunday 8th March 4.30pm
Akulah Agbami, writer, poet, performer, theatre director, curator and creative wonder woman, will be presenting Feminista at Exeter Phoenix and running a dance workshop afterwards as a way of processing the experience.
This shorts programme features:
Dir: Felt Soul Media, 11 minutes
Singletrack shredders Jen Zeuner and Anne Keller have transformed their small town in Colorado into a mountain biking hotspot with their Hot Tomato Café. It wasn’t easy – some residents of conservative Fruita weren’t quite ready for their “lifestyle”, but they are now indispensable members of the community.
Dir: Kathryn Everett, 13 minutes
Life is hard in remote northern Pakistan – especially for women, who face significant barriers to opportunity and education. For the first time, girls in the region are bravely standing up to tradition for their right to go to school.
Dir: RC Cone, 9 minutes
Rivers run through Vala Árnadóttir’s blood and she’s teaching her daughter Mathilda everything she knows. This short film paints the fantastical and mysterious country of Greenland through Mathilda’s fantasies and Vala’s eyes.
Dir: Boryana Ivanova, 4 mins
Once a swimming champion in Syria, now Sarah finds herself on a broken boat in the Mediterranean. She knows that this will be the most important race she will ever compete in.
Dir: Felt Soul Media, 10 mins
Katie Lee was many things: Hollywood starlet turned river rat, guitar-wielding folk singer, uncompromising defender of wilderness and mischievous rabble-rouser. This short film pays tribute to a life shaped by beauty, adventure and the sorrow of a paradise lost, but most of all by uninhibited passion.
Dir: Rachel Pikelny, 16 mins
Directed by a recent breast cancer survivor, Grace captures the journey of a 36-year-old suburban mum who decides to reclaim her body by covering her mastectomy scars with an elaborate tattoo.
Dir: Andrew Margetson, 3 mins
A strikingly intimate study of the great classical ballerina Marianela Nuñez as she dances to Nina Simone, choreographed by Will Tuckett.
Dir: Hannah Maia, 25 mins
A story about womanhood, miscarriage, healing, loving your own skin & freezing your bum off in cold water. Multi award-winning My Big White Thighs encourages us all to turn down the volume on the demands of the world and to celebrate the quiet heroism of a female life and it’s body.