Bluestocking Film Series Issues Film Challenge to Celebrate 5th Anniversary
The Maine-based Bluestocking Film Series is celebrating its fifth year of screening women’s stories with a special blue collar challenge as well as its regular Bechdel Test-approved category for its festival taking place in Portland, Maine, July 17-18.
Filmmakers are invited to submit short films that feature complex female protagonists and pass the Bechdel Test (at least 2 women characters who talk to each other about something other than a man). The festival awards a cash prize for Audience Choice winners; other prizes are in the works.
Special for Bluestocking’s 5th anniversary year will be a separate category called the “Blue Collar Heroine Challenge.” This category requires films to be set in the workplace of a blue collar female protagonist.
“Working class and poor people are so rarely depicted convincingly on-screen and we are excited to throw down this challenge to filmmakers around the globe,” Artistic Director Kate Kaminski says. She adds that truly diverse representations of women wage earners who are competent, quick-witted, and enterprising are practically taboo. “Women who work for wages are too often represented stereotypically or as clichés, their lives rarely captured in full dimension, but we’re aiming to help change that.”
Each film selected for the “Blue Collar Heroine Challenge” will be a world premiere and Kaminski is hopeful that the challenge will entice filmmakers to go out and create a film especially for the festival, set to take place on July 17-18, 2015.
Regular deadline: March 31
Late deadline: May 1
For all category details and to submit a film for consideration, visit the Bluestocking Film Series listing on Withoutabox here.
To learn more about Bluestocking Film Series mission and to see trailers of past events, click here.