11:00AM

MORAL

Director: Marilou Diaz-Abaya

Year: 1982

Country: Philippines

Language: Tagalog / English Subtitles

Run Time: 2hr 30min

The intersecting lives of four college friends are portrayed in intimate snapshots spanning from 1979 to 1982. During these three years, Kathy, Joey, Sylvia and Maritess collectively refuse inherited moral constraints that define traditional adulthood, each in their own way. Marilou Diaz-Abaya follows the fractious lives of these four women and, as a result, the film holds a mirror up to society and demonstrates how they used love, politics, and professional ambitions to resolve conflicts. Moral has not only become a watershed film in the history of Philippine Cinema but also represents one of the first feminist statements of its second golden age that remains resonant to this day.

Digital restoration provided by ABS-CBN + Sagip Pelikula.

About the Filmmaker:

Multi-awarded film director Marilou Díaz-Abaya was part of the Philippines’ New Wave of directors. Diaz-Abaya directed at least 20 feature films, making her mark in the 1980s during a period of Martial Law in the Philippines. Most notably, Díaz-Abaya directed a seminal trilogy of films, which include Brutal (1980), Moral (1982), and Karnal (1983). Taken together, these films tackle feminist issues amid a brutal and unrelenting patriarchal system. Commonly referred to as the foremost woman filmmaker in the Philippines, Diaz-Abaya was also the founder and president of the Marilou Díaz-Abaya Film Institute and Arts Center, a film school based in Antipolo City.

2:30PM

LOSING

GROUND

Director: Kathleen Collins

Year: 1982

Country: USA

Language: English

Run Time: 1hr 26min

Post-screening conversation with Kathleen Collins’ daughter, author Nina Lorez Collins.

Losing Ground tells the story of a marriage between two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives. Sara Rogers, a black professor of philosophy, is embarking on an intellectual quest to understand “ecstasy” just as her painter husband, Victor, sets off on a more earthy exploration of joy. Celebrating a recent museum sale, Victor decides to rent a country house for the summer. Away from the city, the couple’s summer idyll becomes complicated by Sara’s research and by Victor’s involvement with a young model.

Digital restoration provided by Milestone Films.

About the Filmmaker:

Raised in Jersey City, NJ, and educated at Skidmore and the Sorbonne, Kathy Collins was an activist with SNCC during the Civil Rights Movement who went on to carve out a career for herself as a poet, playwright, professor and filmmaker during a time when black women were rarely seen in those roles. Collins left behind a tremendous body of work, in various forms, which share stories specifically about black women dealing with matters of love from both the mundane to the most supreme perspectives. Collins most known work is Losing Ground, one of the first fictional features directed by an African American woman. Never before released collections of short fiction and personal diary entries written by Collins have been published in recent years with, “Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?” in 2016 and “Notes from A Black Woman’s Diary” in 2019.

About Nina Collins:

Nina Lorez Collins is the founder of The Woolfer, an online community/website/app/podcast for women over 40. She’s the author of a book, What Would Virginia Woolf Do? And Other Questions I Ask Myself As I Attempt to Age Without Apology, which was published in April 2018, and she also manages the literary estate of her late mother, Kathleen Collins. She’s a graduate of Barnard College, has a Master’s degree from Columbia in the field of Narrative Medicine, and has a long professional background in book publishing, both as a literary scout and then as an agent. She has four nearly grown children and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

5:30PM

HOUR OF

THE STAR

Director: Suzana Amaral

Year: 1986

Country: Brazil

Language: Portuguese with English Subtitles

Run Time: 1hr 36min

Macabéa is a young girl who leaves the Brazilian Northeast to pursue a better life in São Paulo following the passing of her beloved aunt. Interning as a typist next to savvy city-girl Gloria, Macabéa naively fantasizes about marriage to fellow immigrant Olimpico while struggling to learn the social norms that could secure her dream life. She longs to find her happy ending but fate has other plans.

About the Filmmaker:

Suzana Amaral is renowned for making films that contain narratives with female protagonists and give voice to the often-ignored perspectives and grievances of Brazilian women. Amaral’s career in cinema began non-traditionally in 1968 when she enrolled in a film course at University of São Paulo’s Film and TV program. At the time of her enrollment, Amaral was 36 years old and raising eight children. In 1976, she went on to study in the graduate program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her career spans more than 50 years and includes teaching as well as directing television series, promotional videos, shorts and both documentary and narrative feature films. Her most known work, literary adaption, A Hora de Estrela garnered more than 25 awards and was Brazil’s submission to the 59th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.

8:00PM

WANDA

Director: Barbara Loden

Year: 1970

Country: USA

Language: English

Run Time: 1hr 43min

Set amid a soot-choked Pennsylvania landscape, distant and soft-spoken Wanda has left her husband, lost custody of her children, and now finds herself alone. Drifting between dingy bars and motels, she falls prey to a series of callous men—including a bank robber who ropes her into his next criminal scheme.

About the Filmmaker:

Barbara Loden’s first and only feature film, Wanda, which she wrote, directed and starred in, became an art house darling, distinguishing her as one of the few woman directors whose work was theatrically-released during the 1970’s. She won praise in all three departments, nabbing the Venice Film Festival's International Critics Prize as the only American entry in the 1970 festival. Before embarking on a career as a film director, Loden dazzled as a stage and screen actress appearing in films such as Wild River (1960) and Splendor in the Grass (1961).