Watching Project W: Stories of Women Creating Change

Concluding our week of special guests and screenings, Friday’s premiere screening of the works of the Project W class was a huge success!

Professor Sally Rubin, who leads the program, described the purpose of Project W:

Lots of people have asked me, ‘what is Project W, anyways?’.  Project W is a program we designed last year, to fill a gap – to fill a need here at Chapman.  We have this great documentary program; we’re making films all over the world, both locally and internationally, but we realized that we were missing national stories, and in particular, we decided it would add a lot to our students learning, to start a program that made films about today’s most pressing national issues, through the eyes of some of our most powerful women leaders.

The evening began with introductions by some very powerful women of our own; Janell Shearer, Chair of the Media Arts division, who spoke about the empowering spirit of women thought-leaders, such as Sheryl Sandberg.  Importantly, Janell also drew a parallel between her and our beloved sponsor Neda Nobari, whose ongoing support of our program has allowed students to reach beyond their own lives, and to affect the world around them.

Sally described the successes of the program over the past year, this year marking the release of its eighth film.  The films who premiered last year are currently being selected and reworked for broadcast nationally, and another film has just been submitted to the international CILECT conference.

The final speaker of the evening was CK Magliola, a Women’s Studies and Sociology Professor, who served as an advisor on the project and to encourage the interdisciplinary collaboration programs such as these thrive on.

I found CK’s words particularly inspiring:

It’s a thrill to be with you all tonight for Project W.  The luminous documentaries you’re about to see tonight, explore the vital link between art and collective politics…  Because I teach Women’s Studies, it astounds me to continually confront the position that stories about women are somehow esoteric, a special interest.  Not only am I astounded by this because women are people – and deserve to be studied – not only because women constitute the majority of the people on the planet Earth, and not only because we all come from women and have women in our lives, but also because gender, is a central organizing principle of the world.  So if you don’t use gender, don’t use a gender analysis as it informs reality, then you don’t know much about the world.  And how could you possibly be a good scholar, or a good filmmaker, without that?

And while gender certainly played a crucial role in the subject matter of the four short films screened, it used the perspective CK alluded to, in order to tell universal stories of connection, communication, and power, across peoples and cultures.

In

One
Motion, 
filmmakers explore the world of competitive female surfing.  Through a provocative investigation of current interviews, archival footage, and product commercials, they present the unique hurdles facing female surfers, from an over sexualized media, to an internal struggle to listen to themselves.

Without a doubt,
The Pink Helmet Posse
was my favorite film of the evening.  This cute, short film follows the lives of a cabal of young, outgoing girls, who refuse to be told they can’t play with the same equipment as the boys on the playground.  Through some truly masterful editing, we learn as much about these girls through what they say and do, and what the filmmakers show us.

If You’re Afraid
is a powerful short documentary exploring the troubled lives of one Inuit Eskimo woman’s efforts to stop domestic abuse in her small Alaskan fishing village.

Finally,
The L-Riders
looked at a local cadre of motorcycle enthusiasts. Whereas the traditional stereotype of a biker would certainly begin with a heterosexual male, the L-Riders draw pride, and a sense of community, from their shared identity as lesbians.  The film brings us into a tight-knit community of independent, powerful women, who refuse to live life by anyone else’s rules.




If you couldn’t join us in person for the screening, feel free to view the event on our live streaming archive, to watch the entire event!