Whether large or small, well-funded or struggling to make ends meet, women’s organizations remain the most vigorous advocates for women’s participation in the arts, for women’s voices in the media, and for an accurate portrayal of the lives of women and girls.
In this second of three installments on “women’s issues” organizations, arts and media group leaders talk about the work they do, why it’s important and their plans for the long term. The first installment, which ran last week, addressed money and the economy. The third installment will take up health issues.
Women in the Director’s Chair
It’s mid-February. Calls about the upcoming festival pour into the offices of Chicago’s Women in the Director’s Chair. The person putting together the schedule has the flu. The good office printer is on the fritz. All this might throw some people, but not WIDC director Rebecca Gee. “The festival is over three weeks away,” she says, sounding cool and calm amid the chaos.
WIDC’s 20th Annual International Film and Video Festival–billed as the oldest and largest women’s one in the world–runs Friday through March 25. More than 130 films and videos from 14 countries will be shown in four locations, including WIDC’s theater (941 W. Lawrence Ave.). There is slightly more video than film because young artists increasingly choose to work in that cheaper medium, says program director Sabrina Craig. Also, she adds, “We don’t want a festival that’s only meaningful to a bunch of feminist film scholars at the Art Institute,” Craig says.
Festival highlights include the Chicago premiere of Cheryl Dunye’s “Stranger Inside.” Dunye is best known for her highly acclaimed “Watermelon Woman,” a faux documentary about a contemporary black lesbian on a search for a famous 1930s black lesbian movie legend. Her new film is about an African-American girl born in prison and later incarcerated in the same facility as her mother, whom she has never met. It is the first piece to be funded by HBO Films, a new independent film initiative.
While WIDC is concerned that women make up only 17 percent of those holding the highest level creative jobs on America’s top-grossing films, its major goal is not to turn artists into celebrities.
“We try to give voice to the marginalized who are using media to express their experiences, hopes and dreams,” Craig says.
With the festival, a publicly available archive and a national touring program, WIDC seeks “to expand exhibition and distribution opportunities for women media-makers beyond mainstream movies, and to attract a larger audience for their work,” Gee adds.
But for WIDC, having the work viewed is not an end in itself.
“We use media to start a conversation about issues,” Gee says. Indeed, the festival brims with opportunities for dialogue, about domestic violence programs in Nicaragua, gentrification battles in New York City, young women’s struggles with body image and the challenges of life in public housing.
“We don’t just show great videos and films,” Craig says. “We provide opportunities to change hearts and minds.”
For more information, go to www.widc.org online, or call 773-907-0610.
Women’s Enews
Rita Henley Jensen is a female version of the crusty old newspaper guy. While many of her male peers rose uneventfully through the ranks, Jensen’s ascent was anything but ordinary.
The editor-in-chief of Women’s Enews–the first and only Web-based women’s news service–was once a battered wife. “The first time I was beaten, I was 18, and four months pregnant,” Jensen recalls. The beatings went on until Jensen turned 24, when she fled with her two children and went on welfare.
Jensen spent her early days in journalism at newspapers in New Jersey, piling up a bunch of awards for public service. Eventually, she turned her laserlike investigative eye on the questionable activities of lawyers in major firms, for American Lawyer and the National Law Journal.
When Jensen won an Alicia Patterson Fellowship grant to take time off to further investigate law firms, she penned an expose about the role lawyers played in Charles H. Keating Jr.’s scam to swindle thousands of people out of their savings. She planned a book about similar scandals. But spurred on “by Newt Gingrich’s rise to power,” she says, she decided instead to write an article for Ms. magazine about welfare stereotypes.
“That was a real turning point. I’ve lived very much a woman’s life, and I needed to communicate what that is really about.”
Women’s Enews, a project of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, publishes news stories and a weekly op-ed, called “Outrage of the Week.” Recent stories have covered the paltry level of rape prosecutions in Philadelphia, stalking and sexual assault among college women, the Junior League’s look for the 21st Century, and the scandal of Afghans selling their daughters in response to a ban on growing opium.
While anyone can visit the site, the main goal is for news outlets to pick up stories, the way they do with The Associated Press, Jensen says. While the staff is small and the writers all freelance, “we have a tremendous amount of talent,” says Jensen, “and the desire to get the story that hasn’t been covered yet.”
Though up less than a year, Women’s Enews is seeing results. MSNBC.com posted a Women’s Enews opinion piece about the criticism of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’ appearance. The New York Daily News also ran it. The Asbury Park Press in New Jersey uses Women’s Enews items regularly, and several historically black newspapers have picked up stories as well.
In 2001, Jensen intends to find new subscribers and writers, and to keep digging up stories that others miss.
“I want to be as ubiquitous as CNN,” Jensen says. “If you think about news, I want you to go to Women’s Enews. You’re only getting half the story if you don’t.”
Go to www.womensenews.com.
National Museum of Women in the Arts
“If you look at most art museums around the country, they contain mostly art that has been created by men,” says Susan Fisher Sterling, curator of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. While there has been progress, she says, “there is not equality and nothing close to parity.”
This year the museum will feature “Grandma Moses in the 21st Century,” an exhibition of new works from the museum’s permanent collection, and a contemporary Brazilian art exhibit called “Virgin Territory.”
The goal, Sterling says, “is to have a balance of programs that give visibility to artists we think we know so we can see them in a new way and to put forward contemporary artists who may not necessarily get that chance without us.”
For more information, go to www. nmwa.org or call 202-783-5000.
