Innovative, empowering film festival showcases Texas-made movies at Houston art-house venue
Catch the acclaimed short For Love at the film fest.
A socially conscious film festival screens this weekend, one meant to empower and highlight women (trans & cis) and non-binary filmmakers.
The Bechdel Film Festival, an international showcase created in 2015, runs this weekend at the pioneering 14 Pews (800 Aurora St.). Viewers can expect films all genres by women and non-binary filmmakers of all ages. The festival centers on Texas filmmakers, works-in-progress, short films, and student filmmakers.
New for this year, the fest highlights Texas-made films.
Things kick off on Friday October 14, with a screening of Zara Katz’s A Woman on the Outside, a tender portrait of one family striving to love in the face of a system built to break them.
Saturday, October 15 afternoon will see a workshop screening of Raul Salinas and the Poetry of Liberation: Un Trip, a half-hour, split-screen jazz film based on the words of “Un Trip through the Mind Jail” by Raúl Salinas, written in 1969 in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.
Two blocks of shorts, all directed by women, will follow. The evening will close with a panel discussion/happy hour and a screening of Jenny Waldo’s Acid Test, based on true events that follow a Latina teen's tumble through self-discovery into adulthood.
Sunday, October 16 will begin will begin one more afternoon block of women-directed shorts, followed by three movies:
- Anuradha Rana’s Musher, a heartfelt look at the culture of sled dog racing in remote Upper Michigan through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl and three women.
- Kat Broyles’s Moondogs, about three teenage girls on a road trip across West Texas, in order to get their friend to the nearest abortion clinic.
- Nadia Szold’s Larry Flynt for President, which chronicles the wild ride of the Hustler publisher's campaign for president in 1983.
All short/film screenings are $10, while the panel discussion/happy hour is free.
For a full lineup of screenings, tickets, and more information, visit 14 Pews online.
