Author: Fara

Pioneering feminist filmmaker Cheryl Dunye directed this
independent drama about four women struggling to make sense of
their past and live down one particular evening. Iris (Guinevere
Turner) and M.J. (V.S. Brodie) are a Lesbian couple who live in Los
Angeles, while their friends Lily (Lisa Gornick) and Carol (Cheryl
Dunye) are another couple with a home nearby. Iris, M.J. and Lily
were all members of a once-successful all-female rock band, but now
that they’re middle aged, they’re in an uncomfortable position where
they feel culture and politics are passing them by while a new
generation of women is hardly aware of the struggles of the 1960s,
70s and 80s. A year before, the two couples were at Iris and M.J.’s
house for a party when a younger guest, Cricket (Deak Evgenikos),
got into a drunken argument; the cross words turned into a fight, and
Cricket was accidentally killed. The four women buried Cricket’s body
and have been keeping the matter a secret, though fliers posted by
Cricket’s friends suggest they’re still looking for her. One evening, a
strong, androgynous young woman named Skye (Skyler Cooper)
pays a visit to Lily and Carol’s home, and Carol, clearly attracted, lets
her in even though they’ve never met. However, Carol soon realizes
she’s made a mistake — Skye clearly believes Carol knows
something about Cricket’s disappearance, and isn’t about to leave
until the finds out the truth. The Owls (the title is meant to be an
acronym for “Older, Wiser Lesbians”) was an official selection at the
2010 Berlin International Film Festival.
Trailer:https://youtu.be/WHawi94HU3U

 MARK STREET’s NYC + GLENNA ALLEE’s HANFORD + PAUL ECHEVERRIA’s DETROIT +
Our second LOCUS FOCUS is plotted out along three axes. Mark Street returns from NY with his 100 Sides of a Sphere book-launch and a few new movies: After the gloriously granular revival of his 16mmWinter Wheat, he unspools a sneak peak at Work Songs (inspired by StudsTerkel) and premieres Morning, Noon, Night; Water, Land, and Sky, on the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The program’s 2nd component is a bundle of briefs on the “Nuclear West”, anchored by (in person) Glenna Cole Allee’s Hanford Reach, a cautionary montage on the most toxic plutonium dump in North America. Glenna’s landscape is extended south to the Trinity Site by Georg Koszulinski’s New Mexico Death Wish Diatribe (world premiere), and even to the Mexican frontier by Laura Poitras’Triple Chaser (narr. David Byrne), on the sleazy dealer whose weapons are used against the refugees on the desert border. Our 3rd vector points to famously failed Detroit—Paul Echeverria’s Glitchtown, Dustin Dehah’s God Is an Artist (on Shephard Fairey’s mural), and an exc. from Sabine Gruffat’s I Have Always Been a Dreamer. Come early for Sharon Trahan’s space-time samples of the SaltonSea! *$7.77

Concept, Director and Editor Documentary, PanteA Bahrami, 2008, 106 minutes, in Persian with English subtitles

Thirteen female political prisoners explain their experiences in an Iranian prison. Three generations of women describe their stories of the last 50 years…

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About the Filmmaker: 

PanteA Bahrami is an internationally recognized documentary filmmaker with a doctoral degree in Film Studies from the University of Dortmund and the Institute of Theatre, Film and Television, Cologne University, Cologne, Germany. Her Ph.D. dissertation on the subject women in Iranian film was titled, “The Feminine Role in Iranian Films: A Comparison of the Identity of Women Before and After the Revolution.”

She began her career as a documentary filmmaker in 1998 and has made 20 films during the past 15 years among them “Islam: My Identity or the Reason for My Escape,” was selected for the 11th Women’s Film Festival, Feminale, in 2002; “Playing with Fire,” was awarded the Erasmus-Euro Media Siegel Prize in 2007; and “From Scream to Scream,” was nominated for the Julian-Bartel Award in 2007. Many of her works have been shown at various international film festivals around the world.

A former political prisoner who spent 4 years of her life in the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran, her latest documentary films focus primarily on the issues of human rights, women’s rights, and political freedoms, particularly in the Islamic countries.

Her documentary, “And in Love I Live,” (2008) was produced on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the 20th anniversary of the mass execution of political prisoners in Iran in the fall of 1988.

She works as a journalist and radio producer for Radio Zamaneh, based in Amsterdam, mainly covering human rights, culture, labor, and women’s issues. She has also worked as a journalist for Ruhe Welle and WDR (German Radio and TV), and as a producer for the Persian TV Program, “Ressaneh,” broadcast by Florian TV in Dortmund. She developed and implemented the project, “Integration of Refugees in Europe” in 1999 when she lived in Germany (1988-2005). Sixty percent of the project was financed by the European Union.