documentary

Last night I had the chance to attend a screening of Handmade Nation at the Museum of Contemporary Craft here in Portland. Most of you are probably pretty familiar with the culture of DIY, but author and director, Faythe Levine has done a great job of bringing many of the diverse activities within the community (whether it be people who make things for fun or profit, galleries or shops, etc.) in to an inspiring film for anyone who makes things, wants to make things or who supports those who make things. (more after the jump)

I was back in Minneapolis this weekend for the National Conference for Media Reform, an annual event organized by the folks at Free Press, a nonpartisan group focused on media reform and policy.

I'm back in Portland, still processing and reflecting on my trip to the Midwest. I'll be posting more about that soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to share this video about displacement/gentrification in Detroit, featuring Detroit-based female hip-hop artist, Invincible. It's a beautiful example of how powerful a story becomes when different forms of media are combined.

This past weekend, we at Bitch were honored to be a community partner in Portland's Queer Documentary Film Festival's screening of FtF: From Female to Femme. QDOC is the only festival in the United States (and apparently one of two worldwide) devoted to queer documentaries, and FtF: From Female to Femme is – to my knowledge – the first feature length documentary that explores the experiences and identities of femme as a queer identity. This lack of femme analysis is a little alarming, considering the breadth and depth of analyses focused on butch, FtM, and other masculine(/queer) identities. But then again, as books like Julia Serano's Whipping Girl: A Transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity illustrate, femme identities and femininity in general continue to be misunderstood and maligned (and in some senses, masculinity so fetishized), so it also makes sense. 

Are you out, proud and ... femme?

Here in Northeast Portland is a place called In Other Words Women's Books and Resources, a nonprofit bookstore founded in 1993. I've only lived in Portland for a year, so most of what I know I've learned from talking to people and reading news articles, like this.

A few nights ago I went to a screening of a short documentary called Moving In: A nonprofit feminist bookstore and the politics of place. The documentary, created by Dawn Jones (who's on the board of Bitch; photographed below), examines the bookstore's 2006 move, which resulted from being economically displaced from their original neighborhood, to a historically African-American neighborhood. The film is fantastic; you should see it if you have the opportunity.

 

If there's anything more awesome than seeing an eight-year old girl scream that into a microphone, it's being in a theater full of girls like this celebrating the opening of Girls Rock! The Movie.