DIS...MISS

Freewaves commissioned 25 short videos by 5 different artists addressing gendered reactions to traditional upbringings and current culture. They will be screening  all evening as a loop.

BUKI BODUNRIN

Adebukola Bodunrin is a film, video, and installation artist who explores language, culture, and media.

In her collage animations, she manipulates film using unorthodox manual and digital techniques in order to produce unexpected cinematic experiences.

Her practice is influenced by but not limited by African American feminist theory. The artist aims to provide nuance and individualism to African American representation in the arts community.

 The artist’s series of five short films called Hear My Voice, recounts real critical comments made about women’s voices. The videos feature short clips of a diverse group of women speaking while an audio narrative is played over it. The Hear My Voice series sarcastically illustrates women’s dismissal.

MAIL ORDER BRIDES

 For more than a decade, Reanne Estrada, Eliza Barrios, and Jenifer Wofford have worked together as the artist group Mail Order Brides or M.O.B..

The three women are Filipina-American artists working in and around notions of culture and gender. Their practice is multidisciplinary but largely humorous and performative in nature. M.O.B. projects have spanned everything from karaoke videos to public service posters to makeovers.

In No Apologies, the artist trio presents a short video they created around the expectation and/or tendency of women to apologize too much. An abuela carrying a red suitcase is repeatedly bumped into or made to feel guilty for either not moving fast enough or simply going about her business. Throughout this series of events, the abuela holds a small sign readying “disculpe” (sorry in Spanish) in her mouth. She is silent the whole time and yet continually apologizing. In the final scene, a man runs into her and instead of apologizing she buffets him with her suitcase, defending her body and her space from an unapologetic intruder. The sign falls out of her mouth and the letters fall to the ground, destroying the word. She walks over the now meaningless letters to end the film.

GLORIA MARIA GUADALUPE MORÁN

Gloria Morán is an award winning filmmaker and writer based out of Los Angeles, working on producing, directing and editing digital content. With nearly 10 years of industry experience in commercial and documentary programming, Gloria is an effective and eloquent storyteller.

Gloria’s credits include the WGBH and WORLD Channel broadcast of her short documentary Every Girl Matters (2015), a short documentary that takes a personal look at the success of young women in single sex education. Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP).

Gloria’s first short documentary about gentrification in the Mission District of San Francisco and one San Francisco native’s interpretation of this change, titled Homes for the Homies (2010), and was reviewed as SF Weekly’s “Best Pick” for The Mission Cultural Center Videofest 2010. She is also director and producer of The Unique Ladies (2013) a short documentary that follows an all women’s lowrider car club in San Diego. The first of its kind documentary has screened nationwide in film festivals and garnered the “Best Local Film” award from the San Diego Latino Film Festival.

MEENA NANJI

 Meena Nanji is a Kenyan-born Indian filmmaker who explores visual narrative as a means of resistance. She delves into her own diasporic upbringing (the artist’s childhood was spread between moves from East Africa, London, and Los Angeles) while focusing on different social themes, often geopolitics and cultural or race representation.

Her work has screened at film/video festivals internationally as well as broadcast on PBS stations throughout the US, and on European television. Her first feature documentary, View From A Grain of Sand about 30 years of women’s rights in Afghanistan, won awards at film festivals and was broadcast internationally.

For DIS…MISS, Nanji has partnered with the Ovarian Psycos Bicycle Brigade to create a series of shorts that explore issues of physical and sexual violence against women. The films all use bicycles as a form of empowerment.

CARESS REEVES

Caress Reeves is a 2D animator and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her practice is rooted in feminist theory, with particular focus on writers such as bell hooks. Using these texts as a jumping off point, the artist explores notion of blackness and femininity. Despite Reeves’ pursuit of these somber and nuanced topics, the artist does not feel compelled to shape her narratives along similarly somber lines. Instead, Reeves balances a whimsical and playful mode of storytelling through a steadfastly critical lens. The artist believes strongly in the pairing of critical theory with the act of animation itself.

Reeves has created five short films for DIS…MISS that deal with issues of gender equality spanning from online dating to video games.