Since Feb. 27, the 14th annual Women Take the Reel film festival has brought female voices to the screen through a series of films and workshops hosted across universities and institutions in the Boston area. Tufts has the privilege of hosting the final event on Thursday evening, which will feature two short films directed by women.
The festival, which was founded by MIT’s Women’s and Gender Studies department, investigates issues pertaining to gender, race, sexuality, class and feminism. The films featured are directed entirely by women, highlighting their unique perspectives within the industry and world they occupy.
The Daily recently had the opportunity to speak with Jennifer Burton and Julie Dobrow, two professors participating in the festival and founders of the Half the History project. Burton, who is a professor of the practice in Tufts’ Film and Media Studies Program, shared her thoughts surrounding the importance of platforming unheard voices.
“This festival brings together a lot of different kinds of films and speakers who you might not normally see, especially together. So, it starts a conversation and helps you see patterns of ways that female directors will show the world and show what they're thinking about,” she said.
Tufts will be hosting “Projections of Anna May Wong,” followed by a discussion with Burton and the co-directors, Cinthia Chen (LA’17) and Annie Jin Wang. The festival will also feature a sneak peek at Half the History’s upcoming project, “The Women of the Old Manse,” directed by Burton and her sister Ursula.
The films both follow the lives of remarkable women, using film and space as a medium for storytelling. Chen explores hybrid identities through multimedia artmaking, often marrying performance art and film in her work. “Projections of Anna May Wong” is one such example, as Chen and Wang invite the viewer to experience the iconic Chinese actress’ work through an immersive experience of the theatrical and filmic medium.
Burton discusses the unique mode of storytelling that this form presents, emphasizing its potential for bringing information to new generations.
“It’s this amazing kind of hybrid form that brings together these different ways of telling stories, and it works perfectly for someone like Anna May Wong, who was a movie star,” Burton said. “To explore representation — Chinese American representation at the time, women’s representation at the time, what was possible then, what is possible now — it’s this really powerful way of bringing in a lot of ingredients that you might have at hand.”
Burton continues to explore stories that feature powerful women through her project with Dobrow. “Women of the Old Manse” is the latest installment for Half the History, a short-form biography, film and podcast production project that showcases the lives of women both well-known and obscure. Audiences will be graced with a glimpse of this latest project, one that explores the multitude of fascinating women who occupied the historic Old Manse house in Concord, Mass.
“Our film highlights six of those women, including a woman named Phebe Bliss Walker Emerson Ripley, who was the first woman who lived in that house, and it was really her vision to divide this large house into relatively small interior rooms,” Dobrow said. “We think that years before Virginia Woolf was writing about how important it is for women to have ‘a room of one's own,’ Phebe understood this.”
Burton and Dobrow’s work is grounded in research and reality, often finding subjects for their next projects in history books, articles and archival sources. Their commitment to reality and professionalism is even reflected in their production process, as they filmed this short in the real Old Manse house.
“Everything in that house is original: the furniture, the artwork, the artifacts. It’s really an amazing opportunity for us and for our students to be able to be in the room where it happened,” Dobrow said.
Burton spoke about the ideological legacy that is deeply ingrained in the home.
“Women were in the domestic space … and fostering this place where these ideas were developing. So, you have these kinds of revolutionary ideas, of transcendentalism and of connection between nature and life in a way that hadn’t been done before,” Burton said. “What’s really amazing is to have this house that we were actually able to film in that was such a space of transformation for things that still shape American ideas about ourselves and about philosophy.”
With the help of SAG-AFTRA actors and students from Burton’s “Producing for Film” course, the Burton sisters will truly be able to bring these stories to life. And when it comes to the future of filmmaking for women, she emphasizes the importance of a continuous probing of the status quo. But most importantly, she encourages a hopeful outlook.
“We’re a creative species, and we have a voice, and I think looking for people who are creating things that are nurturing, and that are meant to bring hope to people and that are meant to bring positive change — that exists all over the place.”
