Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Sarah Eagle Heart
Introducing NYWIFT Member Sarah Eagle Heart! Sarah is a filmmaker and social justice storyteller from the Oglala Lakota tribe on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Sarah shares her creative journey from writing a book with her twin sister about reflections of identity, to working with musical icon John Legend, to her latest feature film.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Grace-Mary Burega
Welcome to the NYWIFT community, Grace-Mary Burega! Grace-Mary is a composer for film, TV, and video games as well as a woodwind multi-instrumentalist on saxophone, clarinet, and flute. Her compositions have been on TV PSAs and in short and feature films, and she has scored over 30 films to date. Grace Notes is her media composing company, specializing in custom music for a variety of projects such as documentary, horror, comedy, animation, and more. Grace-Mary is a recent Masters in Film Scoring graduate of Berklee Online. She is the Secretary of Women in Film and Video of New England and Secretary of the Female Composer Safety League. Grace-Mary spoke to us about her favorite projects, latest game obsessions, and how Women in Film organizations have shaped her career.
READ MORENYWIFT at Sundance: Spotlight on Paula Eiselt
An alarmingly disproportionate number of Black women are failed every year by the U.S. maternal health system – and it is a crisis that has been largely ignored thus far. In the Sundance 2022 documentary Aftershock, Directors Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee follow the bereaved partners of two of these women as they fight for justice and build communities of support, bonding especially with other surviving Black fathers. The story is presented within the historical context of racism throughout the U.S. healthcare system, and the deadly tendency to ignore or minimize Black women’s pain and concerns.
NYWIFT Member Paula Eiselt spoke to us about how she and Lewis Lee approached this harrowing topic, and why community activists are the natural heroes of her creative work.
Recap: NYWIFT Talks with Julie Taymor and Kimberly Guerrero About “The Glorias” and Getting Out the Vote
NYWIFT blogger Kristin Reiber Harris reflects on our powerful conversation with the team behind The Glorias, including Julie Taymor's creative process, the celebration of Native voices, and how we as women live in constant dialogue with our former selves.
READ MORERecap of Denise Ho: Becoming the Song Virtual Event with Sue Williams
Filmmaker Sue Williams has a love affair with the city of Hong Kong. So when a friend introduced her to the Cantopop superstar Denise Ho, she knew she had the subject of her next film. But, what happens when current events upend the planned story arch of your film at the end of production?
READ MOREAmeRican Poet Tato Laviera: Affirmation in the words, rhythms and blended language of an influential Nuyorican poet
Poet Tato Laviera pushed the boundaries of language, inspired the spoken word movement, and defined the Nuyorican experience. As an artist he innovated: he combined music, theater, poetry, dance, the power of dramatic contrasts and a commitment to social activism to create a new type of poetry. As both a poet and performer, he documented his own experience and affirmed his community’s worth, redefined its sense of identity. NYWIFT member Vivian Hernandez Ortiz discusses her film about Tato's legacy, which screens as part of this weekend's NYWIFT Member Screening.
READ MOREIntroducing the New WFPF Series From the Vault: Women’s Advocacy on Film
History is perfectly capable of repeating itself. Issues from the past that seem dated have a way of rearing their ugly heads once more to become present-day concerns. In an age when our collective memory can be short, and in the era of “disposable media,” the NYWIFT Women’s Film Preservation Fund (WFPF) and UnionDocs (UNDO) present FROM THE VAULT: WOMEN’S ADVOCACY ON FILM, a series of nine programs of preserved documentary films, screened monthly. The series considers the relationship of these films to contemporary nonfiction storytelling and makes a strong case for their preservation and continued study.
READ MORETWEET OF THE WEEK
Congratulations @Malala on winning the 2013 International Children’s Peace Prize! #inspiring #education http://t.co/BSHRJwLeGt — Acumen (@Acumen) September 9, 2013 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js -@annelabarba
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