It’s film season in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Not only is the air abuzz with questions of “Who won Best Picture? Best Actor? Have you seen 12 Years a Slave? What about Dallas Buyers Club?” after last weekend’s Academy Awards, but Sun Valley has its own back to back film festivals happening in March—The Family of Woman Film Festival (FWFF) (March 4-10) followed up by the Sun Valley Film Festival (SVFF) (March 13-16).
While the glamorous A-listers and big gowns of the Oscars are entertaining in their own right, these smaller film festivals, like the FWFF, now on its 7th year running, are important for a different reason.
“[The FWFF] is a gem, compared to the chaos of other festivals,” said Freida Lee Mock, an Academy and Emmy Award winning filmmaker, director, writer and producer (and Sun Valley resident), whose film Anita sold out this year's event. With only five screenings and a small group of filmmakers, this festival remains tight and intimate—a place for like-minded artists from around the world to gather and connect about the issues of today.
This year’s theme was “Women and Education.” Founder Peggy Goldwyn, together with co-chair Stephanie Perenchio, brought in feature-length dramatic and documentary films from places like Ethiopia, the Philippines, Jordan, Afghanistan, Brazil and Senegal, focusing on issues like sexual harassment, reproductive rights, environmental justice, poverty, terrorism and family.
With a lineup of such powerful and compelling subjects, it's clear that these aren’t just women making films—these are women with a purpose. Many of them are also volunteers, educators or ambassadors from around the world, using movies as a megaphone to bring attention to different topics.
The festival was originally founded back in 2007 to highlight the work of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a UN agency for reproductive health and the rights of women. Proceeds from the film festival go to promote this work, helping to empower women and girls throughout the world.
This year, films included Allison Shigo’s A Walk to Beautiful, which focuses on obstetric fistula in Ethiopia, where she has been partnering with the United Nations to educate survivors on reproductive health. Egyptian Monda Eldaif’s film, Rafea, Solar Mama, documents the life of an illiterate woman from the Jordanian desert, who struggles against family and society to travel to India and become the first solar engineer in her country. And the powerful drama, Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, was made by a 19-year-old Iranian woman, Hana Makhmalbak, who comes from a “radical” family of filmmakers. Set in Afghanistan, this film has been celebrated around the world and has claimed many prestigious awards.
Even though many of these issues are very different from those women face in small town Sun Valley, Idaho, Goldwyn said she found this “was a community which cared about what happened in the world, and which brought the world to the valley.”
Goldwyn also recognized the power of film to connect people to something outside of their experience or frame of reference, taking intangible ideas and philosophies—freedom, education, injustice—and making them very real. As co-chair Perenchio explained, “It’s one thing to read about intolerance or gender persecution in the newspapers; it’s a significantly different thing to see the stories unfold on the big screen.” The characters put a face to the struggle, a voice to the words, and a human story to an otherwise abstract and faraway problem. It brings those people straight into your living room or theater and, as Perenchio explained, “adds a layer of understanding.”
Last week, the 2014 FWFF celebrated record attendance, making it the most successful festival to date. While the world was distracted by red carpets and glittering starlets, Sun Valley was focused on the faces of women from around the world—the stars of the Family of Woman Film Festival.
We look forward to what the upcoming Sun Valley Film Festival will bring this week!
