2025 SPE Annual Conference: Adaptation
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Past SPE Annual Conferences
exhibitions
SPE Media Festival
An international juried video festival
Friday, March 22 - 9:00AM to 5:00PM
Lindell
2024 SPE MEDIA FESTIVAL
March 21-23, 2024, St. Louis, MO
Festival Co-Directors: Lynn Estomin, Amanda Kline
LGBTQ Caucus Jurors: Nick Simko, Dana Smessaert
Multicultural Caucus Jurors: Shadia Nilforoush
Women's Caucus Jurors: Lynn Estomin, Amanda Kline, Kristin Reeves
LGBTQ MEDIA FESTIVAL
BEST LGBTQ FILM:
Aliens from the Sky | 9:00 am
Directed by Katina Bitsicas | Distribution: katina.bitsicas@gmail.com | 2022 | 12:16 min.
Aliens from the Sky tells the story of three female identifying sex workers in Cape Town, South Africa, and the systems they must navigate in order to survive.
Is This Really Fucking Happening? | 9:12 am
Directed by Mad Koester Green | Distribution: g.mad@wustl.edu | 2023 | 12:17 min.
A lesbian couple deals with a strange illness during an ongoing alien invasion in St. Louis, MO.
Night Hawkes | 9:25
Directed by Atlas Ferrera | Distribution: atlasferrera@gmail.com | 2023 | 12:45 min.
Closeted gay "mad man" enters an underground Brooklyn queer bar in this 1959 fever dream.
Unnamed | 9:38 am
Directed by Iranmehr Salimi | Distribution: iranmehr.salimi@gmail.com | 2022 | 13:00 min.
Zainab is a successful girl who supports her family financially, but considers herself a boy in spirit, and now she has decided to undergo gender transition, but in addition to her family's opposition and the society's inappropriate view of this issue, she has more difficulties. There is something more important to come.
MULTICULTURAL MEDIA FESTIVAL
BEST MULTICULTURAL FILM:
S.P.I.C | 9:51 am
Directed by Heidi Miama Marshall | Distribution: johnnysanchez@mac.com | 2022 | 17:48 min.
Johnny's mom was arrested by I.C.E. His Dad asks a drug-dealer for a loan, to hire a lawyer for the mom. But instead, the dealer offers the Dad a job, not a loan. Dad hesitates. So behind Dad's back, Johnny does the job. Dad must now get his son back.
After the Flood | 10:09 am
Directed by Ali Gautier | Distribution: alimgautier@gmail.com | 2022 | 24:03 min.
In the wake of historic climate disasters Kentuckians of color and their allies come together to support impacted community members, cultivate the joy and diversity in Appalachian culture to inspire, and facilitate change.
A World in the Evening | 10:33 am
Directed by Dan Boord and Luis Valdovino | Distribution: luis.valdovino@colorado.edu | 2023 | 9:00 min.
A World in the Evening offers visual and literal poetry – poetry that cannot be reconciled with the brutality of history, with the death of a poet and the sleep of reason. Inescapable nightmares of the past are reflected in the present.
Demi-Goddesses | 10:42 am
Directed by Martin Gerigk | Distribution: magerigk@gmail.com | 2023 | 7:25 min.
An essay about still dominant dark aspects of our modern society. It is conceived as a surreal anti-patriarchal thought experiment that raises important questions about gender, power, and social change, prompting us to reflect on how historical patterns of discrimination and oppression might be either repeated or overcome in a reversed gendered world.
Des racines nées (Birthed Uproots) | 10:49 am
Directed by Jessica Alunaya | Distribution: jessica@alunaya.co | 2022 | 8:53 min.
Uprooted from its land of origin, the diaspora tries to put its roots down elsewhere. But is it still possible to belong?
FORGOTTEN SONG | 10:58 am
Directed by Monika Grzybowska | Distribtion: monika.grzybowska@irka.com.pl | 2022 |
29:59 min.
A young boy comes to the Friendship Settlement, where the Soviet builders of the Palace of Culture and Science lived in the 1950s, in search of accommodation for his grandparents from Ukraine. Here he meets a girl singing in the choir, who becomes his guide.
Game Over | 11:28 am
Directed by Saeed Mayahy and Miriam Carlsen | Distribution: saeed.mayahy1991@gmail.com | 2023 | 28:24 min.
In a basement in Istanbul a group of illegal Afghan teenage boys are determined to smuggle themselves into Europe – a utopia far away. Caught in the no-man's land between childhood and adulthood, they fearlessly play a dangerous game of destiny over and over again. But at what cost?
Meddle | 11:56 am
Directed by Gillian Darling | Distribution: info@bullfrogfilms.com | 2020 | 7:03 min.
With kinetic innovation and expansion of traditional and contemporary forms, Haida Manga artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas directly confronts the tension between contemporary and so-called "Native Art." Meddle captures Yahgulanaas`s artistic process and philosophy as he creates a re-purposed, car-hood art piece for the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, BC.
Rage Against the Archive | 12:03 pm
Directed by Anshul Roy | Distribution: anshulisnot@gmail.com | 2023 | 24:00 min.
This browser-based video scrutinizes how New York Public Library's website catalogs and displays ethnographic photos from the 19th-century book The People of India, questioning the infusion of capitalism in the archival process, and documents the "hacking" methodology used to insert different texts in a symbolic act of electronic civil disobedience.
The Other | 12:27 pm
Directed by Negah Sohrabi | Distribution: madactodistribution@gmail.com | 2022 | 13:58 min.
Farhad is a young historian who is hired by a widow to organize her deceased husband's diaries. During the process, he meets the old woman's niece and falls in love with her. Their romance takes an unexpected turn when Farhad realizes that he is, in fact, the old man born into a new body.
THE SPRAYER | 12:41 pm
Directed by Farnoosh Abedi | Distribution: farnoosh.abedi@yahoo.com | 2022 | 8:45 min.
In the land occupied with the sprayer's army, no one has the right to grow any kind of plants. One day a soldier finds a seed buried deep down in the dust and his curiosity is just the beginning of something extraordinary, something big, something revolutionary.
White Gaze | 12:50 pm
Directed by ETA | Distribution: etawashere@gmail.com | 2023 | 30:00 min.
Latine twentysomething, Gema, is forced to confront the looming threat of gentrification head-on – after having no choice but to let an overeager stranger move in or risk being evicted. The uneasy peace soon turns sinister, exposing her to something far more invasive.
White Noise | 1:20 pm
Directed by Soyeon Jung | Distribution: soyejung@gmail.com | 2023 | 5:28 min.
White Noise is an abstraction of the sociopolitical concerns reverberating throughout the United States. A video that travels through an anonymous landscape synchronizes with increasingly chaotic sounds of newscasts and punditry, transforming a familiar experience into something ominous as it gives voice to the issues pulling at our social fabric.
28th ANNUAL SPE WOMEN'S FILM & VIDEO FESTIVAL
BEST WOMEN'S FILM:
Abrazo | 1:25 pm
Directed by Paola Baldion | Distribution: paolabaldion@gmail.com | 2023 | 16:50 min.
Luz, a young pregnant Central American migrant, accidentally finds shelter in the house of Norma, a North American conservative woman.
Among Us | 1:42 pm
Directed by Mara Trachtenberg | Distribution: marastrachtenberg@gmail.com | 2023 | 8:01 min.
Among Us is a cut paper stop motion animation about Monsters. Among us is my reaction to the ever-present abuse and horror in the concurrent political, environmental, and social unraveling that we are bearing witness to.
Černobílá / Black&White | 1:50 pm
Directed by Eluned Zoe Aiano and Anna Benner | Distribution: e.z.aiano@gmail.com | 2019 | 19:10 min.
Nurses and Nazis, syphilis and seduction: this experimental short delves into a scandalous urban legend from World War II Czechoslovakia. Combining documentary footage with animation and excerpts from the history of cinema, Black&White deconstructs the ways stories about women are generally told and how they affect our unconscious perceptions.
Conditions for an Unfinished Work of Mourning: Wretched Yew | 2:09 pm
Directed by Dawn Roe | Distribution: dawnroe@gmail.com | 2020 | 10:52 min.
Produced over a two-year period in the North American forests of the Pacific Northwest where wildfires have become increasingly destructive in recent years, Wretched Yew is part of an ongoing site-responsive series considering the potential of place and topography as harboring evidence of wounds and repair.
ENTIRETY One's Fulfillment | 2:20 pm
Directed by Sumedh Madhukar Jadhav | Distribution: sumedh.j28@gmail.com | 2023 | 27:01 min.
Extremely poor Addu is required to make a kandil (lantern) for class. His friends are going to purchase kandil making kits for 250 rupees. Addu asks his mother for help. Her unique creation garners admiration from both the community and the school, highlighting her resilience and resourcefulness in the face of challenges.
Enya | 2:47 pm
Directed by Reuven Yamrom and Haim Eliyahu | Distribution: asaf@costanza-films.com | 2023 | 21:59 min.
A teenage girl's typical appearance hides her battle with cancer at 15. Her story exposes universal struggles with fate, self-image, faith, and mortality.
I am Kanaka | 3:09 pm
Directed by Genevieve Sulway | Distribution: gensulway@gmail.com | 2022 | 15:00 min.
Despite a dark history and only 5% speaking the native language, a local Hawaiian hero fights to save his culture by teaching traditions, sustainability and life skills to disadvantaged indigenous kids.
Love, Barbara | 3:24 pm
Directed by Brydie O'Connor | Distribution: orders@wmm.com | 2022 | 15:06 min.
A short documentary about the iconic legacy of pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, through the lens and love of her partner of over 30 years, Florrie Burke.
My Word | 3:39 pm
Directed by Carme Puche-Moré | Distribution: puche.carme@gmail.com | 2023 | 3:22 min.
Who defines who we are? What happens when images betray our words? How do we survive in a world that constantly misunderstands us? 'My Word' is an audiovisual creation project based on artificial intelligence where a woman shows us her journey to define herself.
Neurodivergent | 3:42 pm
Directed by Afton Quast Sale | Distribution: orders@wmm.com | 2023 | 25:41 min.
In this profoundly personal mixed-media experience inside the ADHD mind, a 35-year-old film student interrogates her past and future, while trying to make sense of this misunderstood disorder.
Paradiso | 4:08 pm
Directed by Jonna Volz | Distribution: lennyfhernandez@gmail.com | 2023 | 12:00 min.
Paradiso is a glimpse of a day in the life of an unhoused couple looking for shelter for the evening. As they find paradise in a vacant apartment they start dreaming big with possibility, until they are caught.
The Great Delusion | 4:20 pm
Directed by Beth Johnston | Distribution: info@beth-johnston.com | 2022 | 7:09 min.
The Great Delusion is a visual and auditory essay investigating the ongoing legacy of the commodification of nature: nature as other.
Winn | 4:27 pm
Directed by Erica Tanamachi and Joseph East | Distribution: orders@wmm.com | 2022 | 16:52 min.
This powerful, short documentary exposes the horrifying experience that incarcerated pregnant women endure and documents Pamela Winn's mission to end shackling and ultimately prison birth.
Witness | 4:44 pm
Directed Aida Tebianian | Distribution: aida.tebianian@gmail.com | 2023 | 15:00 min.
Shermin is a young girl who faces a dilemma to save her father's life, and finally she makes a difficult decision.
TOTAL RUN TIME: 7 hours 58 minutes
Screening times are approximate.
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