The Old Women's Project

Jeanine Pontes

SDWFF Film Festival Presenting Sponsor:

2006 San Diego Women Film Festival
Awards

Judges Awards
Program: Dirty Pretty Things Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby 15' Canada Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure takes on difficult, often painful subject matter. Themes of addiction, violence, the destruction of the natural world and the agonies of adolescence are woven through the work, but as Sarah Milroy writes for the Globe and Mail, the work is 'anything but depressing... [it is founded in] a sense of wonder at the endearing weirdness of life and all the vulnerable, furry little creatures immersed in it (especially [humans]).'
Program: You & Me Sirah Cristine Spindler 15' Florida Sirah, a young Muslim girl born in the United States, wants to find friendship. To do that, she must choose between the culture that surrounds her and the one she grew up in.
Program: Selfhood Team Queen Leah Meyerhoff 4' Brooklyn A gender-bending, fire-breathing, tassel-twirling, post-punk rock n' roll prom. Featuring the best of New York burlesque: including Murray Hill, Julie Atlas Muz, Tigger, and Scotty the Blue Bunny.
Program: Homegrown Heroines Curley's Diner Amy Wendel 8' New York Welcome to Curley's Diner where 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee and a home away from home.
Program: NO! NO! Aishah Shahidah Simmons 94' Philadelphia One out of three women in the United States will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Through intimate testimonies from Black women survivors, commentaries from acclaimed African American scholars and community leaders, impacting archival footage, spirited music, dance, and performance poetry, NO! unveils the reality of rape, other forms of sexual violence, and healing in African-American communities.
Program: Speak Out Que Suene La Calle/May the Street Be Heard Itzel Martinez del C 62' Mexico/Washington, D.C. Que suene la calle goes deep into the lives of female teenagers living in the streets of Tijuana. During three years they take the cameras and show us their reality through little video stories, showing us the complexity of growing up and becoming and adult in those circumstances.
Program: Shifts The Broken Hearted Antoinette Karuna 11' Canada A fairy tale for those who have loved and lost...
Program: Global Response Don't Fence Me In Ruth Gumnit 30' Burma/Massachessutts Forced from their homes by the government, more than 100,000 Karen people live in refugee camps along the border between Burma and Thailand. Don't Fence Me In chronicles the life of 70-year-old freedom fighter Major Mary On and her people's struggle for self-determination. Her charismatic storytelling is accompanied by rare, clandestine footage smuggled out of the Karen refugee camps.
Program: Mother Lode Motherless Child Rachel Robinson 28' San Diego In 1960 a 33 year-old mother of 13 children commits suicide. After her death, the younger children are sent to live with other family members while the older children remain in the custody of their father, who forced them into modern day slavery and child prostitution. 45 years after their mother's death the siblings come together, some of them meeting for the first time, to tell their never before told stories.
Program: Checkpoint Turtely Keren Amiran 19' United Kingdom A Filipino migrant has been living and working in Israel for 10 years. Without a resident permit, in a country with very harsh law enforcement, she is only free to move around the house and the garden where she works.  She has a special bond with her pet, a tortoise.
Program: Crafts-fem-ship Palabra de Mujer: A Woman's Word Silvia Garcia Ponzoda 52' Egypt/Lebanon/Morocco Janata Bennuna is Moroccan; Hanan Al Shaykh, Lebanese and Nawal Al Saadawi, Egyptian. The three of them write in their mother tongue, the Arabic language, and they are all committed intellectuals who show through their books the complexity of the social reality in the Arabian world.
Program: Betwixt  & Between High Plains Winter Cindy Stillwell 10' Montana HIGH PLAINS WINTER is an attempt to understand the winter landscape and how it affects the human spirit on the high plains of Montana.
Program: Multiple Choice Damenwahl (Ladie's Choice) Annette Otto 55' Germany Love, Passion, Necessities...The filmmaker examines the deeper motives in the relationship of her parents. What was the nature of their love? Otto's parents shared their lives for more than 40 years. They ran a farm in a small village in Germany. In the last years of their marriage both of them spent so much time with their own interests that it seems that the farm was all they had in common. Everyday her father went dancing in the local spa resorts. It became almost an obsession. Here he enjoyed the attention of women who dressed and behaved more traditionally than her mother did.
Program: How We Want it, When We want it Dirty Mary Daniele Ferraro 19' Los Angeles Based on the true story... of a dirty, dirty, girl!
Program: Our Take (Youth-made) Scrolii Vanessa Bateau (Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Inc.) 5:34 Vanessa Bateau, 17, Midwood High School. After a regular doctor's visit, my life was changed forever. I was diagnosed with Scoliosis. View It

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Audience Choice Awards
Program: DirtyPrettyThings Internal Turmoil of the Plastic Kind Kelly Broad 2' United Kingdom Two aging starlets come to terms with life after beauty. Beauty is only skin deep ... Botox goes right to the brain.
Program: You and Me Sirah Cristine Spindler 15' Florida Sirah, a young Muslim girl born in the United States, wants to find friendship. To do that, she must choose between the culture that surrounds her and the one she grew up in.
Program: Selfhood 3:52 Face Your Demons Shawna Baca 12' Los Angeles Kate, a troubled young woman must experience a spiritual journey to recovery from alcoholism to face the inner demons haunting her. She must stand at the gates of her own personal hell and walk through them as she delves back into her childhood memories triggering her painful past.
Program: Homegrown Heroines Look Us In the Eye: The Old Women's Project Jennifer Abod 27' San Diego In this provocative and entertaining video, The three founders of the Old Women's Project in San Diego talk about ageism and activism. Wearing their multi-colored t-shirts that declare 'Old Women Are Your Future,' and carrying their giant puppet POWER (pissed old women engaged in revolution)   they take on the stereotypes of an ageist culture and turn them on their heads.
Program: NO! NO! Aishah Shahidah Simmons 94' Philadelphia One out of three women in the United States will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Through intimate testimonies from Black women survivors, commentaries from acclaimed African American scholars and community leaders, impacting archival footage, spirited music, dance, and performance poetry, NO! unveils the reality of rape, other forms of sexual violence, and healing in African-American communities.
Program: Speak Out Sita, A Girl From Jambu Kathleen Man 49' Nepal Sita, a beautiful young girl who lives in a remote village in Nepal, has fallen in love with Sushil, a rickshaw driver. But when her marriage arrangement falters, she meets a stranger who promises her a new life in the city. Sita is faced with a choice that will change her life forever.
Program: Shifts Starved Daria Matza 30' San Diego Eighty percent of women in America are dissatisfied with their appearance resulting for many into an endless cycle of diets, plastic surgery, and self-loathing. Starved explores the devastating emotional and spritual toll of this crisis through the stories of five women.
Program: Global Response Don't Fence Me In Ruth Gumnit 30' Burma/Massachessutts Forced from their homes by the government, more than 100,000 Karen people live in refugee camps along the border between Burma and Thailand. Don't Fence Me In chronicles the life of 70-year-old freedom fighter Major Mary On and her people's struggle for self-determination. Her charismatic storytelling is accompanied by rare, clandestine footage smuggled out of the Karen refugee camps.
Program: Mother Lode Motherless Child Rachel Robinson 28' San Diego In 1960 a 33 year-old mother of 13 children commits suicide. After her death, the younger children are sent to live with other family members while the older children remain in the custody of their father, who forced them into modern day slavery and child prostitution. 45 years after their mother's death the siblings come together, some of them meeting for the first time, to tell their never before told stories.
Program: Checkpoint Like Twenty Impossibles Annemarie Jacir 17' Palestine Occupied Palestine: A serene landscape now pockmarked by military checkpoints. When a Palestinian film crew averts a closed checkpoint by taking a remote side road, the political landscape unravels, and the passengers are slowly taken apart by the mundane brutality of military occupation. Both a visual poem and a narrative, like twenty impossibles wryly questions artistic responsibility and the politics of filmmaking, while speaking to the fragmentation of a people.
Program: Crafts-Fem-Ship D'bi Young: Blood, Dub, and the Patriarch Fances Ann Solomon 24' Canada Dub poet d'bi young shares the screen with her mother, Anita Stewart, and emphasizes the importance of family and heritage in her work. This influence is obvious as we travel with d'bi to Cuba for a fierce performance. Anita Stewart proves to be a formidable storyteller, as the two women explore their bond, their history, and their shared belief on the power of poetry.
Program: Betwixt and Between Un Azard Habanero: Voci Da Un'isola (Voices from an Island) Chiara Bellini 49' Cuba Born out of a journey that brought us to discover the new Cuban approaches to art, this documentary explores and unravels Cuba's new artistic languages - the wishes and the experience of an island which is contradictory but growing and constantly on the move.
Program: Multiple Choice All in One Basket Lauren Berliner 22' Massechussetts All in One Basket is a documentary that explores the emotional and physical risks of paid egg donation as it follows three donors through the process of donating. Their experiences open up a discussion of the ethics surrounding this increasingly common phenomenon.
Program: How We Want It Dirty Mary Daniele Ferraro 19' Los Angeles Based on the true story... of a dirty, dirty, girl!
Program: Our Take (Youth-made) A Girl Like Me Kiri Davis (Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Inc.)   7' Kiri Davis, 16, Urban Academy I wanted to make a film that explored the standards of beauty imposed on today's black girls. View It

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