Celebrate International Women’s day with WIFV/NE, at these events!

Monday, March 5th
5:30 – 8:30pm
MCLE Auditorium
10 Winter Place, Boston

The Women’s Forum at the United Nations Association of Greater Boston, will be screening War Redefined, the final film in the Women, War and Peace series, and featuring a panel discussion after the film with award-winning film producer Abigail Disney, Ambassador Swanee Hunt, Dr. Amani El Jack, and Sahana Dharmapuri. The event is scheduled to run from 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm.  There will be a reception prior to the film from 5:30-6:30, and then the film screening and panel discussion will go from around 6:45-8:30 pm.  The film and panel discussion will both be framed around the role and impact of women in war and peace.  This is a timely topic, with 3 women peace-builders winning the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, the Obama Administration’s December announcement of the US National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, and Secretary Clinton’s recent comments on the lack of women at high-level security talks.

Thursday, March 8 at 7:00 pm
Newton Free Library
330 Homer St., Newton

Join award-winning filmmaker Liane Brandon for a screening of two of her classic short films, Anything You Want To Be and Betty Tells Her Story. Recently featured at the Museum of Modern Art and the Tribeca Film Festival, these films were among the earliest and most popular in the modern Women’s Movement.  Both helped spread the word about women’s quest for equality across the country in the 1970s and are enjoying renewed interest by today’s audiences.  Ms. Brandon will introduce and discuss the films, answer questions about them, filmmaking in general and the early Women’s Movement.

Anything You Want To Be, a groundbreaking film about a teenager’s humorous collision with sex-role stereotypes, was one of the first to explore the external pressures and the more subtle, internal pressures a girl faces in finding her identity. Made in 1971, and screened in schools, libraries and art museums in the U.S. and abroad, it was one of the most widely used consciousness-raising films of the modern Women’s Movement. The film has just been restored and re-released.

Betty Tells Her Story is a poignant tale of beauty, identity and a dress, and is considered a classic of documentary filmmaking. Betty’s saga of her search for “the perfect dress” explores our culture’s emphasis on female “beauty” and the ways in which clothing and appearance affect a woman’s identity. Betty Tells Her Story was nominated for inclusion in the National Film Registry, was featured at the Library of Congress and is being shown at film festivals across the country. Made in 1972, it was one of the first to explore women’s image and identity in our culture – and it has become one of the most enduring.

University of Massachusetts/Amherst Professor Emeritus Liane Brandon was one of the first independent women filmmakers to emerge from the early Women’s Movement in this area. She is a co-founder of New Day Films. Her classic films have been featured on Home Box Office, The Learning Channel, U.S.A. Cable and Cinemax, and have won numerous national and international awards. Brandon is a recipient of the Boston Society of Film Critics Award and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Boston University. Currently she works as a still photographer with credits including PBS’s Murder at Harvard, Typhoid Mary: The Most Dangerous Woman In America and Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women.

For more information call the Newton Free Library at 617-796-1360. All programs are free and open to the public, parking is free. The Newton Free Library is handicap accessible.