LOS ANGELES FEMALE FILMMAKERS FESTIVAL

This weekend Passerbuys and Women & Film will present the first annual Female Filmmakers Festival (FFFEST), a 3-day screening and talk series dedicated to celebrating accomplished female filmmakers and empowering women who want to break into the industry.

FFFEST will take place from October 12th through October 14th at the Downtown Independent theater in Los Angeles, California and will foster a community for female filmmakers to share resources, guidance and inspiration.

FFFEST’s diverse program includes feature-length such as the critically-acclaimed SKATE KITCHEN directed by Crystal Moselle, the award-winning MOSSANE directed by the first Sub-Saharan African woman director, Safi Faye and short films such as the premiere of MAVERICK by Cara Stricker. Between screenings, FFFEST will host exclusive talks featuring some of the top women working in the contemporary film industry such as Sarah Finn (Casting Director, Black Panther), Lake Bell (Director, In A World), Jameela Jamil (Actress, The Good Place) and Natalie Farrey (Head of Vice Film) as they provide answers to the most pertinent questions facing women working in film today.

The primary mission of the Female Filmmakers Festival is to inspire more women to make films by celebrating the women leading the way, and by creating a space where women can share information amongst each other.

FFFEST has also teamed up with women-owned and women-led fashion brand VEDA to create custom merch for the festival where a portion of proceeds from every sale will go to Camp Reel Stories.

“I founded Passerbuys out of a desire to have women share resources and information amongst one another. As a lifelong fan of cinema, it felt natural to transfer such ethos to a film festival. There are a number of great organizations supporting women in film, and I see FFFEST’s role as a space to bring them together and hopefully become a tradition to celebrate and support female filmmakers.” – Clémence Polès, Founder of Passerbuys and Co-Founder of FFFEST “Women & Film was created to celebrate the women directors that have paved the way as well as the trailblazers and contemporary women of cinema. Our goal is to act as both a learning tool and source of inspiration among filmmakers, both accomplished and budding. We want FFFEST to create a sense of community for women in film in the hopes that more stories by and about women get made.” – Natalie Fält, Founder of Women & Film and Co-Founder of FFFEST

“Women are responsible for creating some of the greatest works of film in the history of cinema, yet the mass media has rarely depicted or celebrated women behind the camera. In response to that, we saw FFFEST as an opportunity for our audience to celebrate the women who’ve made strides in film and continue to today, and to inspire budding women filmmakers to join the industry and share their stories.” – Mimi Packer, Co-Founder of FFFEST

“We have stories to tell and we have a different perspective. Women in general tend to be more emotionally connected and in-tune with their surroundings but the demands of life can cause creative complacency. fffest was created to reawaken these hidden narratives and provide a platform to inspire more women to bring their stories to life.” – Dasha Faires, Co-Founder of FFFEST

For more information, please visit https://fffest.org/

A FLAWLESS NIGHT: LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

The Town Hall presents: A FLAWLESS NIGHT: LONG LIVE THE QUEEN
A Tribute to Flawless Mother Sabrina on Thursday May 10, 2018 at 8pm
Featuring A 50th Anniversary Screening of the Landmark Documentary The Queen, The Pioneering Producer’s Drag Show Beauty Pageant, Filmed at The Town Hall in 1968
For more information and to purchase tickets please go here

The Queen 1968 film poster

In 1967, Jack Doroshow, aka Flawless Sabrina, produced and hosted a legendary drag pageant at The Town Hall in New York. It was documented in the film, The Queen, and selected for the Cannes Film Festival. The film came to be regarded as a landmark of queer culture.

The Queen captures the groundbreaking (and law-breaking) spirit of Flawless Sabrina, who began producing drag shows in 1959 and continued on for a decade afterward. Crisscrossing the country, Flawless mounted dozens of local shows each year where many queens – including Divine – performed in drag for the first time. Andy Warhol saw a performance in Pittsburgh and helped locate a benefactor to fund a film of the “Miss All America Beauty Pageant” at the Town Hall, and The Queen was released in 1968.

Fifty years after the release of The Queen, the Town Hall and the children of Flawless Mother Sabrina celebrate their legacy. This special event, hosted by Linda Simpson, will feature a rare theatrical screening of The Queen plus performances by Taylor Mac, Justin Vivian Bond with Nath Ann Carrera, The House of LaBeija, Julie Atlas Muz, Tigger!, Brandon Olson, Poison Eve, DJ Sammy Jo, and more, joined for one special night to pay homage to a New York City icon, mentor and mother.

Zackary Drucker, transgender artist and producer of the TV series Transparent will be on stage to introduce the film. Says Drucker: “The Queen is an invaluable relic of a bygone era that is sparsely documented.The history of drag queens and trans people is largely an oral history, but The Queen is a rare window into our community pre-Stonewall, when it was still illegal to cross dress.”

Over the years, Flawless Sabrina served as mother and mentor to hundreds of artists and musicians like Drucker, and as an inspiration to countless more people who visited her salon/home on the Upper East Side. Flawless Sabrina’s activism and compassion for others created reverberations that can be felt and observed to this day, from the continued tradition of drag performativity on RuPaul’s Drag Race, to having influenced the U.S. government to ensure trans people could change the gender marker on their passports.

On November 18, 2017, Flawless Sabrina, one of the loudest and proudest voices for the LGBTQ community, passed away at age 78. The Town Hall event honors Sabrina’s fearless commitment to art and individuality, reflected in the motto: “If it doesn’t make you nervous, it ain’t worth doing.”

For more information and to purchase tickets please go here

A portion of the proceeds from A Flawless Night: Long Live The Queen benefits Ali Forney Center in its mission to protect LGBTQ youths from the harms of homelessness and empower them with the tools needed to live independently. Since AFC’s launch with just six beds in a church basement in New York City, the organization has grown to become the largest agency dedicated to LGBTQ homeless youths in the country – assisting nearly 1,400 youths per year through a 24-hour Drop-In Center which provides 70,000 meals annually, medical and mental health services through an on-site clinic, and a scattered site housing program.