Author: Fara

Two years in the making, The Treatment is the third movie by Lovewarz. Taken into a world of live performance art filmed across the country, the piece is a narrative of historical examples of artists fighting for access to new language. A star cast jumps through vivid scenery exhibiting gutteral attempts at using new voices to address the commonalities in our lives. Not meant for the weary, The Treatment is an experience that challenges our culture’s motives, color schemes, and sense of self through others.

Facilitated by Lovewarz Siobhan Aluvalot and Sara Thustra.

Presented by Unifem San Francisco

The fringes of Iranian society can be a lonely place, especially if you are a teenage girl with few resources to fall back on.  The Glass House follows four girls striving to pull themselves out of the margins by attending a one-of-kind rehabilitation center in uptown Tehran.  Forget about the Iran that you’ve seen before.  With a virtually invisible camera, the girls of The Glass House take us on a never-before-seen tour of the underclass of Iran with their brave and defiant stories: Samira struggles to overcome forced drug addiction; Mitra harnesses abandonment into her creative writing; Sussan teeters on a dangerous ledge after years of sexual abuse; and Nazila burgeons out of her hatred with her blazing rap music. This groundbreaking documentary reflects a side of Iran few have access to or paid attention to: a society lost to its traditions with nothing meaningful to replace them and a group of courageous women working to instill a sense of empowerment and hope into the minds and lives of otherwise discarded teenage girls.

The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the US National Committee for UNIFEM (UNIFEM/USNC) was launched in June of 2009. UNIFEM is the United Nations Development Fund for Women, and it works on women’s rights and development issues across the globe. We are committed to expanding support and raising funds within the United States for UNIFEM. Through our efforts we hope to encourage ourselves and others to become involved in advancing women’s rights around the world. If interested in learning more, please send us an email at sanfranbayarea@unifem-usnc.org.

About the Film Series: This monthly film series will look at women’s rights and development issues. Each month, a film that touches on one of the four themes of UNIFEM (The United Nations Development Fund for Women) will be selected. These four themes are: – enhancing women’s economic security and rights, – ending violence against women, – reducing the prevalence of HIV and AIDS among women and girls, and – advancing gender justice in democratic governance in stable and fragile states. After each film, a discussion will be held that focuses on the issue being highlighted and what local Bay Area organizations are doing to address that issue.

Rethinking the boundaries between animation, visual art, and experimental filmmaking, this program of films by (mostly) Seattle filmmakers brings together artists working in mediums rarely shown together.

The program includes:

CARNIVAL OF LIFE by Cathy McClure;

A MOMENT’S REVERIE by Tess Martin;

THOUGHT CITY by Stefan Gruber;

THE SLOVENIAN BAG by Amanda Moore;

I FORGOT MY NAME by Matthew Cox;

SINKING OF THE HUNLEY by Drew Christie;

CREDO CIGALIA by Britta Johnson;

LIFE FORMS by Davis Limbach;

THE PRODUCTION AND DECAY OF STRANGE PARTICLES by Jon Behrens;

LAST CALL 1 by Webster Crowell; MYTH LABS by Martha Colburn;

LAST CALL 2 by Webster Crowell;

HOW TO DRAW DOGS by Salise Hughes;

DEERHOOF by Clyde Petersen & Forrest Baum;

BEDTIME STORIES by Sarah Jane Lapp;

LAST CALL 3 by Webster Crowell;

ENDLESS TUNNEL by Tommy Thompson;

MARINETTI’S FUTURIST MANIFESTO by Drew Christie;

MY LIFE IN LAW ENFORCEMENT by Friese Undine;

SAVAGE ARCHAEOLOGY by Britta Johnson;

and FRACTUMS with Brent Watanabe, Henry Gallery 2007 (including footage from Jeffery Michell’s Hanabuki Installation) by Brent Watanabe.