International Women's Day Film Festival

Join Hostelling International USA, Women in Film & Video New England, and the United Nations Association of Greater Boston for the second annual International Women's Day Film Festival.

The goal of the festival is to promote a greater understanding of the extraordinary lives of women around the world through relevant and thought-provoking films and discussions. Join us to honor the struggles, victories, and remarkable experiences of women around the world.

12:00 p.m.
Perspectives: Short films from the Middle East
Through the Negev (Egypt/Israel, 2007, 18 min)
Told through interwoven first-person accounts by the few women and children who have made the journey by walking from Egypt to Israel, Through the Negev is a short documentary that encapsulates the refugees' struggle for home and safety.

un(veiled): Muslim Women Talk About Hijab (United Arab Emirates, 2007, 36 min)
(un)veiled introduces the audience to ten Muslim women from various backgrounds who now live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In a time when Islam and especially Muslim women are represented as monolithic and beset by backwardness, the women in (un)veiled show the diverse, lively, argumentative debates in Muslim societies about the meanings of modernity, emancipation, and feminism.

RuTH (Israel, 2008, 56 min) – U.S. Premiere
During the days of the Israeli withdrawal from the settlements in the Gaza strip, when the residents of the Katif Settlements are uniting to fight for its existence, Ruth, a young teenager from the settlement, is searching for excitement. RuTH is an adolescence story of a young girl living in the most dangerous place in Israel. In a society demanding a united front and common beliefs, Ruth fights to interpret her faith in her own way.

2:30 p.m.
The Sari Soldiers (Nepal/USA, 2008, 90 min)
Filmed over three years during the most historic and pivotal time in Nepal’s modern history, The Sari Soldiers is an extraordinary story of six women’s courageous efforts to shape Nepal’s future in the midst of an escalating civil war against Maoist insurgents, and the King’s crackdown on civil liberties. The Sari Soldiers intimately delves into the extraordinary journey of these women on opposing sides of the conflict, through the democratic revolution that reshapes the country’s future.

4:30 p.m.
Club Native (Canada, 2008, 78 min)
In Kahnawake, the hometown of Mohawk director Tracey Deer (Mohawk Girls), there are two unspoken rules: Don’t marry a non-Native, and never, ever have a child with a non-Native. Club Native raises critical questions about belonging and idigenity, the heartbreak of “marrying out” of the Mohawk Nation, and the unjust patriarchal laws that disenfranchise Native women. It is a candid and engrossing work about the pain, confusion, and frustration suffered by many First Nations women, but also a testament to the triumph of love and the resilience of the human spirit.

6:30 p.m.
Maquilapolis (Mexico/USA, 2006, 68 min)
The inspiring story of women workers in Tijuana who, though laboring for poverty wages, still stand up to transnational corporations to win severance pay and to clean up toxic waste sites.

8:00 p.m.
The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo (USA, 2007, 76 min)
Winner of the Sundance Special Jury Prize in Documentary and the inspiration for a 2008 U.N. Resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war, this extraordinary film, shot in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), shatters the silence that surrounds the use of sexual violence as a weapon of conflict. Many tens of thousands of women and girls have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. A survivor of gang rape herself, Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson travels through the DRC to understand what is happening and why.