St. John's women's film festival marking 25 years

The 25th edition of the St. John's International Women's Film Festival opens Tuesday evening at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's with a film called October Gale.

Thethriller is written and directed by Canadian Ruba Nadda, and kicks off five days of screenings, workshops and other events.

The festival, which established in 1989, is one of the longest running women's film festivals in the world, and aims to support and promote women filmmakers.

Noreen Golfman, the festival's founding director and chair of the board of directors, said she never could have anticipated 25 years ago that it would last this long.

"It's a bit of a blur," she told CBC News.

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The festival attracts over 4,000 participants each year, receives some 500 film submissions, and features a range of international documentaries, short films and feature works.

Events conclude on Oct. 18 withfeature filmRelative Happiness by St. John's filmmaker Deanne Foley.

Golfman said the community is very supportive of the festival, and there's a "hunger" to watch alternative films.

"Now we have a sense of our legacy and longevity ...," Golfman added.

The festival grew out of an initiative by the National Film Board of Canada to show films created by women, and began when Golfman and several others organized an event.

The turnout was "astonishing," she noted.

"We just thought, 'hey, there's something going on here. This audience is really hungry for good documentaries, stuff made by women.'

"We had this intuitive sense that we could do this annually, or at least the next year, and see what would happen," she recalled.

Male dominated industry

The festival endured, despite funding uncertainty.

Golfman attributes its longevity to a "critical mass of people" who remain committed to its success and growth.

"We've really only been paying staff for the last dozen years or so," she noted.

One of the highlights of this year's festival is a panel discussion on the small number of women involved in the film industry.

While the situation is not so dire in this province, Golfman said, "It's astonishing how much of a boy's world filmmaking still is."

She said women directors and writers are a tiny minority in places like Hollywoodwhere big budget action films like Transformers dominate the scene.

"There really is a pervasive, deeply rooted discrimination going on," she said. "The kind of Transformer mentality that dominates Hollywood is not very friendly to women creators, who are not necessarily interested in making films about robots who blow up the world.

"There's a place for that, but when it dominates, you have to ask yourself, 'What kind of culture is producing that kind of story?' And at the exclusion of so many other stories?'"