New England Tour- Mt. Holyoke and Smith

With Desiree Garcia and Bernadine Mellis

We left New Haven very early to drive to Mt. Holyoke for a 3-hour presentation in Bernadine Mellis' (filmmaker of The Forest for the Trees) class on Film and video production. It's always so invigorating to talk to students, and to have the opportunity to revisit our whole filmmaking process, from beginning to end! Bernadine joked to the class: "look at these guys, they're exhausted and have slept little, and yet look at their passion!". Yeap, passion is not lacking! It was great spending time with Bernadine as well as Mt. Holyoke Fellow and Visiting Professor Desiree Garcia, who had also facilitated our visit, and whom I had also met a few years back at Brown...From there, we headed to Northampton, to present the film at Smith college. We were kindly invited by Elisabeth Armstrong at the Program for the Study of Women & Gender (thank you Lisa!) and the screening was supported by other departments and local groups, including Liana Foxvog from Sweatfree Communities, and student organizer extraordinaire Alisa Kowal. Local organizers attended, and an organizer from the Western MA Coalition for Immigrant and Worker Rights (check it out their blog!) stood up to talk about their work in the community around undocumented immigrants, and the May 1st events. We encouraged her to write that information on the huge chalk board in the auditorium... and very soon there was a line of organizers patiently waiting for the one chalk to post the information about their organizations and events!

With Alisa Kowal and Liana Foxvog

We went to dinner afterwards with some of the organizers, and it was a beautiful finish to the tour, full of new people, new places, and new experiences... Wherever we go, we want to think that the film leaves a mark -and its circle of impact expands day by day...

 

 

 

This event was sponsored by: SSJIC, Nosotras, Sweatfree Communities (one of our outreach partners - to find out how to become a partner, click here), the Program for the Study of Women & Gender, and the Film Studies program (Mt. Holyoke).