The 15th annual Women in Media-Newark International Film Festival wraps up on August 3rd.
WBGO's Doug Doyle spoke to three of the filmmakers involved in this year's screenings.
Catherine Gund's film Paint Me a Road Out of Here will be screened at the Newark Historical Society on August 2.
In 1971, underestimated artist Faith Ringgold made a monumental painting for the women incarcerated at Rikers Island jail called “For the Women’s House.” Fifty years later, artist Mary Baxter, who at the age of twenty-five gave birth in prison, finds herself banding together with an eccentric bunch of activists, politicians, artists, corrections officers, and Faith Ringgold to free the painting with the ultimate goal of freeing the women.
Paint Me a Road Out of Here is a wild tale of the painting’s whitewashed journey and the two artists who challenge the same powerful, oppressive, and persistent institutions, a half-century apart with their artwork, their voices, and their shared persistent goals.
Gund says this film was very important to her.
"This film is so dear to my heart, partly because I think the story will draw people in using this painting that is such a brilliant painting. It becomes a parable. The fate of the painting is tied to the fate of the women inside the prison."
Meanwhile, Dr. Sarah Temkin is a first-time film maker inspired to make a film about women by her lived experience as a surgeon. Her film 1001Cuts screens August 3 at the Newark Public Library.
1001cuts explores the careers of the daughters of Title IX through the experiences of surgeons. Social and cultural change in the 1970’s allowed for the opportunity to train and be included into this high stakes professional environment. This film documents the pervasive stereotypes and gender-based discrimination that persist within workplaces designed for, and still controlled by men. Within medicine and surgery, the failure to apply culture change has had wide ranging impacts on the careers of women, the healthcare system, and the patient care experience.
"This film became a huge responsibility for me to tell this story that's not only my story but the story of many women like me. The 70's were this time of extreme social change that really impacted the trajectories of women's lives in the United States. When we think about surgery and medicine since the beginning of time, women were excluded."
Earlier in the festival, Sistah's Getting Well was screetned at the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center in Red Bank. It's the work of filmmaker Jaqueline Glass of Jersey City. You can hear more about the film here.
The conversation also included Pamela Morgan, the Executive Director of Women in Media-Newark.
"This is an international festival. We really do have a global view."
You can SEE the entire interview here.
NOTE: Coverage of the Women in Media-Newark Film Festival is part of WBGO's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion series made possible in part by a grant from the Fund for New Jersey.
