Al’leessi...An African Actress
A film by Rahmatou Keita

Zalika Souley is in her fifties. She lives with four children in a two-bedroom apartment with neither electricity nor water in Niamey, the capital of Niger. But thirty years ago, she was a movie star and Africa’s first professional female actress, working with such celebrated directors as Niger’s Oumarou Ganda and Moustapha Alassane. Souley was once the legendary bad girl of African cinema defying directors with her compelling improvisations. Yet, despite her fame, her life was beset by difficulty. In moving and often heart-breaking interviews, Souley speaks wistfully about how audiences confused her with the women she portrayed – vamps, adulteresses, prostitutes - and how, as her stardom rose abroad, she became a pariah in her own country. More

Filming Desire:
A Journey Through Women's Film
A film by Marie Mandy

“In this bold documentary Marie Mandy asks the question: how do women directors film love, desire, and, especially, sexuality? In rare interviews with many of the leading women directors working in the world today – including Sally Potter, Agnès Varda, Catherine Breillat, Doris Dörrie, Deepa Mehta, Moufida Tlatli, Safi Faye, and Jane Campion – FILMING DESIRE: A JOURNEY THROUGH WOMEN'S CINEMA directly engages the sexual politics of cinematographic choice. More

The Lost Garden
The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché
A film by Marquise Lepage

THE LOST GARDEN looks at the life and times of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968), arguably, the first narrative filmmaker in the world. Creating her first motion picture in France in the 1890s, Alice Guy-Blaché went on to found her own successful production company in the US, producing and writing more than 700 films. Clips from her films, which were cleverly edited to illustrate events from her personal life, are intercut with revealing excerpts from TV interviews with Guy-Blaché, photographs, reminiscences by family members, and interviews with film historians. More

	Gémeaux Award, Montréal, Best Documentary
	Columbus Int'l Film Festival, Honorable Mention

Nollywood Lady
A film by Dorothee Wenner

Peace Anyiam-Fibresima of Lagos, Nigeria is an impresario of showbiz and an impassioned spokeswoman for the thriving and innovative African film industry. She is “Nollywood Lady,” an ex-lawyer, producer, filmmaker, and the founder and CEO of the influential African Academy of Motion Pictures. And she is reshaping the way Africans see themselves—and how the world sees Africans. More

Seven Women-Seven Sins
Produced by Maxi Cohen

What constitutes a deadly sin today? Seven of the world’s best-known women directors produce their own version of celluloid sin in this omnibus film. Helke Sander (THE GERMANS AND THEIR MEN) reverses GLUTTONY with her vision of Eve forcing her apples into the hands of a reluctant Adam. Bette Gordon (VARIETY, EMPTY SUITCASES) finds GREED during a fight in the ladies’ room of a luxury hotel over a lottery ticket. Strangers reply to director Maxi Cohen’s ad in a newspaper to share their litanies in ANGER. Award-winning director, Chantal Akerman, battles to overcome her SLOTH in order to complete her film, while Valie Export (INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES) strips bare notions of the skin trade in LUST. More

	Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Best Short Film for "Anger"
	Tokyo Video Festival, Award of Special Distinction for "Anger"

Shooting Women
A film by Alexis Krasilovsky

Featuring more than 50 camerawomen from around the world, and shot over a period of six years, Shooting Women, by pioneering filmmaker and cinema studies professor Alexis Krasilovsky, celebrates the amazing talent and unflinching spirit of image-making women from the sets of Hollywood and Bollywood to the war zones of Afghanistan. More

	San Francisco Women’s Film Festival, Best Women in Cinema Award & Tribute Award
	Female Eye Film Festival, Best Documentary Film

Sisters of the Screen
African Women in the Cinema
A film by Beti Ellerson

Exploring the extraordinary contributions of women filmmakers from Africa and the diaspora, Beti Ellerson’s engaging debut intersperses interviews with such acclaimed women directors as Safi Faye, Sarah Maldoror, Anne Mungai, Fanta Régina Nacro and Ngozi Onwurah with footage from their seminal work. With power and nuance, Ellerson also confronts the thorny question of cultural authenticity by revisiting the legendary 1991 FESPACO (Pan-African Festival of Cinema and Television of Ouagadougou), in which diasporian women were asked to leave a meeting intended for African woman only. More

Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema
A Film by Kay Sloan

In the days before movies could talk, silent films spoke clearly of sexual politics, and in Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema, historian and writer Kay Sloan has assembled rare and wonderful footage that opens a historic window onto how women’s suffrage was represented in early American cinema. More