[WAM!Van] Better than Bechdel: Let's Put Movies to Our Feminist Tests! with WAM Vancouver

[Aleks B]

Hi everyone,
Your new WAM collective is pleased to be putting on our first event this
Thursday, admission by donation (of toiletry items to the Downtown Eastside
Women's Centre). All event details below! And please RSVP to our
Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/better-than-bechdel-lets-put-movies-to-our-feminist-tests-tickets-19506275796

When: Thurs., Dec. 3rd, 6:30-9:30pm
Where: The Hub, 251A E 11th Ave., Vancouver


Tired of watching movies where women are objectified, undervalued or
scripted into obsessive conversations about their heteronormative,
patriarchal love interests? We are too! And this time, the Bechdel test (
http://bit.ly/1hlgqrw) just isn't going to cut it.

We invite you to pick apart this tired standard of supposed gender
progressiveness on screen and create your own new and improved version!
What would an authentic meter for assessing intersectional feminist content
in a movie look like? What standard should we hold movie makers and
producers up to when pushing for feminist content in the film industry?

Join us and a room full of progressive media lovers to
craft/collage/scribble your very own Better than Bechdel test, and then
test run it! Reserve your spot on EventBrite: http://bit.ly/1WQOZM2

6:30-7:20pm Panel of Local Progressive Media Orgs/Projects
Love Intersections <https://www.facebook.com/loveintersections/>
and
Kim Villagante of Access to Media Education Society (AMES)
<https://www.facebook.com/AccesstoMediaEducationSociety/>
** (see below for details and bios!)
7:20-7:45pm Workshop: Make Your Own Test!
7:45-9:15pm Watching 'Pariah'
Closing

Our featured film of the night is 'Pariah' (2011), directed by Dee Rees in
which "A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks
friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual
expression." This film won the Best Independent Picture award from the
African American Film Critics Association.

Entrance by donation. We ask that you bring toiletry items (such as
pads/tampons, soap, tooth brushes, etc.) or warm winter wear (scarves,
socks, etc.) which will be donated to the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre
<https://www.facebook.com/DowntownEastsideWomensCentre/>. We will also
accept cash donations, sliding scale. No one turned away for lack of funds
or donation.

Popcorn will be served during the movie!

Accessibility info:
The Hub has stairs leading up to the front entrance, but also includes an
accessibility elevator for community members with mobility aids. There are
two gender neutral washrooms in the space. It is scent-reduced. The movie
will be captioned.
----------------------------------------------------
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Speakers:

Jen Sungshine & David Ng of Love Intersections

The premise of the Love Intersections video project is to use the medium of
video to talk about race, gender, and sexuality, through a lens of
solidarity and movement building. We seek creative and practical ways to
share personal and public moments of solidarity building. Using visual
storytelling (film & photography), we want to share stories from other
queer youth of colour, and their own journey as racialized, queer, trans,
and gender-non conforming youth. It is our belief that there is tremendous
power in storytelling.

Recognizing how underrepresented queer and trans people of colour are in
mainstream media, another intent of ours is to create our own autonomy
through visual storytelling. We all want to see ourselves reflected in the
stories that are told, so why not tell our own stories?
--
Jen Sungshine speaks for a living but lives for breathing life into
unspoken situations in unusual places. As a queer, Taiwanese
artist-activist based in Vancouver, BC, she is grateful to live, breathe,
dance and work on the unceded, occupied and ancestral lands of the Coast
Salish nations. She facilitates with creativity and social justice media to
evolutionize and revolutionize QTIPOC visibility and community-based work
through Our City of Colours, Love Intersections, Out in Schools and the
Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University
of British Columbia.

David Ng is your typical queer, marxist-feminist, anti-colonization,
anti-prohibition, pro-Palestinian, pro-choice activist…with champagne
taste, but a beer budget. Three women’s studies degrees later, he is
currently the Outreach Coordinator for Theatre for Living – an
anti-oppression, interactive theatre company. He’s super excited to be
embarking on the Love Intersections journey!


Kim Villagante, representing AMES

Since 1996, AMES (Access to media education society) uses digital media and
artistic collaboration to engage marginalized youth in personally and
socially transformative storytelling practices. AMES programs led by
activists and artists in the community, primarily engage young people who
have lived experience with various forms of oppression and provide them
with safe spaces to creatively reflect on issues that are relevant and
meaningful to them through digital media and art.

--

My name is Kim Villagante but I also go by my artist name K!mmortal. I'm a
queer, filipina artist/artivist living on unceded Coast salish territory.
Much of my identity lies in my passion for all the arts, but I have a deep
connection to hip hop, the art of word, drawing, and acting. I consider
myself an artivist as I use art as not just a form of expression but also a
form of resistance within a system that was not built for people like me
and for the people I love. I am a graduate of UBC's Visual Arts and Art
History program, but much of my education and deschooling has come about
outside of institutional settings, like through grassroots organizing, hip
hop social justice communities and through listening to hip hop and spoken
word. I am currently working as a facilitator and UBC community researcher
but my life blood is coffee and my art. Check me out at kimmortal.com
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