What is your film festival’s mission?
Our festival mission is to celebrate lady filmmakers and the men who collaborate with them. We also foster relationships with filmmakers and industry professionals and help create networking, mentoring, employment, and enrichment opportunities.
What role does your film festival play in supporting your film’s community?
We promote diversity and women. It is extremely important to bring a positive message of equality and diversity and interweave that with everyday topics and discussions. We screen outstanding independent films from around the world that incorporate social awareness. Our Ladies Illuminate Programs bring up different issues that affect women, children, and families from around the world. It helps open peoples eyes to things that they may not normally have exposure to in everyday news, or in their everyday lives. For example we’ve had films about the recent Syrian Conflict from the perspective of female journalists, a film from Costa Rica dealing with Indigenous Peoples and child marriage, and a US/Israel film, about a women victims of sexual violence.
What is something people look forward to every year at your film festival?
People always look forward to our entertaining films, classy venues, and industry events. We have been told our content is eclectic and entertaining. They look forward to our festival because they don’t know what they’re going to see, but they know it’s going to be good. They are going to meet successful and accessible industry insiders, and have fun too! They look forward to our intimate parties and industry panel discussions that give our filmmakers a rare opportunity to mingle and meet industry insiders.
“The Lady Filmmakers Film Festival is an invaluable, “can’t-miss” festival that all women filmmakers should seriously consider.”
Read more: http://www.filmthreat.com/features/42028/#ixzz1cQzRiuJV
Hammad Z., Film Threat
How long has your film festival been around?
We are in our 8th year!
How did your film festival come into being?
When I became a filmmaker we realized that at the time, there weren’t enough outlets that seemed to feature and promote women’s content. We thought that we needed to create a positive, fun event that showcased women filmmakers and make the festival environment men inclusive. My husband and I thought that this was a great idea and it’s turned into a labor of love. We are very passionate about it and we have a lot of fun.
What do you want audiences to take away from your film festival?
Women and people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and cultures can all make great films. There is no real reason to distinguish or put people into categories. We show great films that can be appreciated by almost everyone. We want people to go “Wow, that was an amazing film! Look at the diversity of the cast and crew, how amazing is that? Why don’t you see that in blockbuster films?’
Anything else you’d like to tell the audience about your festival?
We try to encourage a safe and warm environment for up-and-coming filmmakers to showcase their work, and that we support them throughout their career as much as possible. We promote anything that filmmakers would like to share through our newsletter. We also have great new programs that are open to our alumni filmmakers; they can qualify for our ‘Script & Screen’ program, our ‘Mentorship’ Program, and other upcoming programs through the Lady Filmmakers Foundation, an IRS approved tax-exempt 501 (c) (3).
The 2016 Lady Filmmakers Festival runs from September 23rd-25th 2016 in Beverly Hills. Follow the link to check out their website: www.ladyfilmmakers.com
Audience Awards is an innovative, filmmaker platform, with a rapidly growing community that is 150,000-members strong. AudAwards features live events, audience voting, branded film challenges, video contests and film news. Audience Awards provides an organic opportunity to cross-promote brands, projects, products, services, causes and the work of emerging filmmakers on a broad scale.
