FREE EVENT
https://belfastfilmfestival.ticketsolve.com/#/shows/873570074

Chaired by Emma Campbell from Alliance For Choice, the panel will include filmmakers whose work, documentary and narrative, reflects issues that affect women in the world today. We ask how film can be a form of feminist activism and what drives these filmmakers to tell women's stories.

We will be using a fast-moving format of discussion for the panel, as it is a feminist festival, we wanted to try and make the session as inclusive and liberating as possible. Trying to include everyone is always tricky and we would hope that the panel also come away with as much as the audience from this session.

What we really want to tease out is how film can do things we cannot do in other ways, the idea of a feminist topic is expansive but we have all been involved with trying to tackle it with the medium in different ways, and from different perspectives (some of us as producers and some of us as community ‘insiders’ and some of us as the subject). We all, I imagine, have differing intentions for the work depending on our perspectives and relationship with the topic.

The space for the audience and panel feedback is to try and properly interrogate these ideas without a hierarchy of expertise and to try and gain insight into our own endeavours from others, this will likely lead to some paradoxes, or tricky questions, which I have given equal time to at the end. This can often be the most interesting part of the session!
We want this to be a useful and learning experience for everyone involved.

The panellists:

Lisa Keogh - Dedicated feminist, writer and director whose works include the short films Taking The Boat (2012) and Thumb Wars (2014). Lisa boldly tells the stories of women suffering daily hardships, making difficult decisions and following through while running the gauntlet of everyday oppression. Her narrative films are taken from examples of real life stories, researched and enacted with the greatest care.

Caoimhe Butterly - Currently based in Dublin, Caoimhe has over 20 years experience as an activist living and working alongside social movements and grassroots community projects around the world. She movingly reflects the experiences of the people she encounters, most recently while working with migrants in Greece and the surrounding islands. Caoimhe's films give space to the voices of those suffering human rights abuses within Europe today. Her film The Border/Idomeni will screen after the discussion.

Treasa O'Brien - The director of Eat Your Children (2014),Treasa is a filmmaker, producer, academic and festival curator. O’Brien’s repertoire is vast and ranges from making fiction, experimental and documentary films to her Phd practice and festival curation as well as working within the feminist performance collective Speaking of IMELDA. Treasa is also speaking before the panel in the Ulster University Conor lecture theatre at 1pm and this is a free event.

Rosa Thompson - Rosa is an activist, writer, teacher and mother. Since 2014 Rosa has been an active member of the Alliance for Choice campaign to "Trust Women", she has been involved in the X-ile Project, The Abortion Diary Podcast, The Rise and Repeal Newspaper 2016 and she is currently also a core admin member of the Belfast Feminist Network. The project, “Step Into Our Stories, Step Into Our Shoes” for access to safe and legal abortion by Love Matters in partnership with WGNRR, uses Rosa's own story from the Abortion Diary Podcast. To listen to Rosa's story in full, visit http://theabortiondiary.com/felt-like-criminal/

This event is sposored by Alliance For Choice.

WANDA is supported by Belfast Film Festival, Film Hub NI, Ulster University and Alliance for Choice.