Women Filmmakers in the News
Kim Longinotto, Florence Ayisi's Sisters in Law Wins Peabody Award
Women filmmakers tackle difficult subjects including sexual abuse and the horrors of war in independent works currently making the festival circuit.
Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi
On June 16, 2008, Sisters in Law was recognized with a George Foster Peabody Award for outstanding achievement in electronic media. Directed by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi, the film also won the Prix Art et Essai at the Cannes Film Festival and has screened at more than 120 festivals around the world. The documentary film takes the audience to a small-town courthouse in Cameroon where two flamboyant sisters (one the court’s president and the other, state prosecutor) help women stand up to abuse. Longinotto frequently takes on controversial subjects, such as in her most recent film Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, a film about emotionally traumatized children attending Oxford boarding school Mulberry Bush.
Julie Bridgham
Filmmaker Julie Bridgham received the 2008 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival (HRWIFF) Nestor Almendros Award for courage and commitment to filmmaking for her documentary The Sari Soldiers. Shot over three years during Nepal’s transition from dictatorial monarchy to fledgling democracy, the film made its North American debut as the centerpiece at this year’s festival. The Sari Soldiers tells the story of six women and their conflicting efforts to shape the political future of their country during a time of escalating civil war.
Tamar Yarom
Filmmaker Tamar Yarom had a film featured as one of the opening night selections at HRWIFF. To See If I’m Smiling was the winner of the Silver Wolf and Audience Awards at The International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam (IDFA), and the Special Jury Prize at Hot Docs. The film profiles six Israeli women wrestling with traumatic memories from their compulsory military service. The filmmaker is a former Israeli Defense Forces soldier.
Lisa F. Jackson
The HRWIFF also presented a Q&A session with Emmy Award-winning director Lisa F. Jackson following a screening of her film The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, which won a Special Jury Prize for Documentary filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival. The Open Society Institute awarded a grant to Jackson to support the international outreach campaign using The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo as a tool to help end violence against women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Women Make Movies
These films are distributed by Women Make Movies (WMM), the world’s leading distributor of independent films by and about women, focusing particularly on timely documentaries that explore important subjects regarding women. The Women Make Movies collection includes more than 500 films including 13 of Longinotto’s films and the award-winning Troop 1500, a documentary about the daughters of imprisoned women working together in a Girl Scout troop.
