WOMEN RULE
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The CCSU Women's Film Festival is a Rare Opportunity for Women
to Dominate the Scene
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WOMEN RULE |
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The CCSU Women's Film Festival is a Rare Opportunity for Women |
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to Dominate the Scene
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Festival Chair Karen Ritzenhoff, Associate Professor, Department of Communications, at the University, conceived of the festival two years ago in conjunction with a course she was teaching on women and film. She says, “I had been the coordinator of an Asian Film Festival during its final year at CCSU -- we hosted it for twelve or so years. I thought that it would be wonderful to have a festival at the University, and the idea of a festival for women and film was well received. We have many co-sponsors as well as two AAUP summer curriculum grants and also a private donation to help continue this work.“
Each year the festival has a specific topic, and the selection criteria are designed to meet the needs of programming around that theme. “Two years ago we called the festival ‘Frames of Culture;’ this year's theme was ‘Women's Journeys,’” Ritzenhoff explains. “We showed ten documentary films, covering a wide range of topics. I selected the films in co-operation with a film curator at Women Make Movies, Christie George.”
The Festival Co-Chair, Doris Honig Guenter, director emeritus of the Ruthie Boyea Women's Center at CCSU. ”Doris and I conferred on the final decision,” Ritzenhoff continues. “ Further, I was assisted in the arrangement of the screening schedule by a large committee, consisting of members of the faculty, administration and community. They also helped me to put together panels and discussion groups to engage with the audience after most of the film screenings. The documentaries covered issues in Hawaii, New Zealand, Israel, Afghanistan, Colombia and the United States.”
The festival, which is unusual in that it does not run over a weekend, began at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 19, with a reception for all participants in Founders’ Hall. Immediately following, the first film was screened, a 55-minute film from 2002 entitled Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House, by Oscar-nominated director Deborah Dickson. The film follows the love, friendship, passion and politics of a brave couple as they pioneer their way into the realm of civil rights for gays and lesbians.
In 1959, Ruthie Berman and Connie Curtz, appeared to be local icons of middle class mores. Married to working class husbands in a predominantly Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood, they both had lives that focused on their children and the activities of the community. Their relationship began long before they were able to act on their desire to come out, and in 1974 they turned their families’ worlds upside down by leaving their husbands and children and moving in with one another. The film finds them 20 years later, having made history in a landmark lawsuit having won domestic partner benefits for all New York City employees. Today they are still icons, but now the lesbian grandmothers are national icons of a movement for truly equal rights.
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Just as Ruthie and Connie paved the way for homosexuals’ challenging the status quo, Kapolioka’ehukai Sunn, created an outlet of expression for a class of women formerly overlooked. Sunn was the founding member of the Women’s Professional Surfing Association and one of Hawaii’s most beloved community leaders, and her story HEART OF THE SEA, by filmmakers Lisa Denker and Charlotte Lagarde, was the 9:00 a.m. screening on Wednesday, October 20. Having opened the door to competition for women surfers in an arena dominated by men, Sunn’s losing battle against breast cancer was what really catapulted her into the national public eye. She continued surfing till her death while she carried the torch for education and awareness, for environmental changes and for cancer research.
GEORGIE GIRL, a video production by Annie Goldsen and partner Peter Wells, examined yet another battle for recognition and dignity. The film introduces Georgina Beyer, the latest “it” girl of New Zealand politics. Born George Beyer, a Maori sex-worker-turned-public-official, Georgina stunned the world in 1999 by becoming the first trans-gendered person to hold national office. Beyer grew up on a small Tarankai farm and achieved a small-time celebrity on the cabaret circuit in Auckland; she then overcame adversity and then successfully ran for office in a mostly all white, conservative electorate. Incorporating a montage of colorful archival images from Georgina’s days as an exotic dancer, theatre and television performer, Goldsen and Wells’ documentary breaks down stereotypes and promotes greater understanding of trans-gendered people.
Connecticut native Jennifer Dworkin contributed to the festival with her film titled, Love and Diane was followed by another panel discussion. The groundbreaking documentary is an honest and moving examination of poverty, welfare and drug rehabilitation in the United States today. Filmed in New York City over a five-year period, Dworkin documents the struggles of three generations of the Hazzard family as they face a myriad of emotional, financial and personal challenges. Love and Diane examines the potentially devastating cycle of teen pregnancy and the bureaucracy of the over burdened welfare system.
There were filmic tributes to remarkably brave and effective activists at the Women’s Journeys Film Festival, as well as films covering the rights of people of color and ethnic diversity.
Lisa Gay Hamilton’s film BeaCh: A Black Woman Speaks, screened on Wednesday and was followed by a panel discussion. The directorial debut of actress Lisa Gay Hamilton, this affectionate film celebrates the life of legendary African-American actress, poet and political activist Beach Richards, best known for her Oscar-nominated role in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. While Richards struggled to overcome racial stereotypes throughout her long career onstage and onscreen in Hollywood and New York, she also had an influential role in the fight for Civil Rights, working alongside the likes of Paul Roberson, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, W.E.B. DuBois and Louise Patterson.
MAI’S AMERICA is Marlo Pontas’ chronicle of a year in the life of one vivacious, resilient teenager who traveled from her native Vietnam to rural Mississippi to spend her senior year of high school. Though she believed she knew all there was to know about what to expect, she was amazed at what she found there: white Pentecostal and Black Baptist judgementalism, transvestism, and Vietnamese iconoclasm. By the end of her year, Mai has learned to be critical of everything and everyone, most of all herself.
International instability in world politics and especially in women’s rights were also explored in the festival.
MY TERRORIST, a 2002 film by Yulie Cohen Gerstel chronicles Gerstel’s nightmare experience when, as a young flight attendant for El Al, she was kidnapped by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. What surprised Gerstel was how the violence she experienced made her more sensitive to the need to end it. Twenty-three years after the kidnapping, Gerstel became involved in helping obtain the release from prison of the man responsible for her ordeal. The film is a very personal plea for peace with universal resonance.
The process of planning for next year’s festival is already underway. Women filmmakers with an interest in participating are encouraged to contact Dr. Karen A. Ritzenhoff, (860) 832-2692 or via e-mail at Ritzenhoffk@CCSU.edu.