Les Femmes Underground International Film Festival
Echo Park Film Center | March 10, 2018 | 7:30 p.m. -11:30 p.m.
1200 N Alvarado St, Los Angeles, CA 90026 | Mixer & Reception at 7:30 p.m. | Special Guest Panel
Featured Panelists
Fattitude: Screening Encore
a film by Lindsey Averill and Viridiana Liberman
Fattitude, is a feature length documentary that examines the representation of the body in media and popular culture. It explores how the term “Fat” is utilized and its negative portrayal through stereotyping. We will also hold a panel discussion on women's body image and how it is represented in media.
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Exclusive Panel Cohosted by Cinefemme
"De-constructing the Female Body in the Media"
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Join us on May 5th for our Books for Babes fund-raising event, as we celebrate women's month through our exclusive premier of the documentary feature film,"Fattitude" at the Echo Park Film Center at 7:30pm. Come watch our special guests discuss the representation of women's body image in media through a special panel co-hosted by Cinefemme, put on by Les Femmes Underground International Film Festival.
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Guest Moderators:
Celia Finkelstein
Writer and Actor
Celia Finkelstein is a writer and actor. She has appeared in Horrible Bosses, American Horror Story, and Angie Tribeca. She’s currently a writer on the new Shondaland show, For the People.
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Abigail C. Saguy
UCLA Professor of Sociology and of Gender Studies
Abigail Saguy is a UCLA Professor of Sociology and of Gender Studies. She is the author of What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne (California, 2003), What’s Wrong with Fat (Oxford, 2013); over thirty scientific journal articles; and several op-eds published in leading news outlets.
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Pia Schiavo-Campo
Blogger/ Speaker / Speaker / Certified Life Coach
Pia Schiavo-Campo is a fat feminist, writer, model and author of the blog Chronicles of a Mixed Fat Chick. Her agenda includes extinguishing conventional notions of beauty, c hanging the representation of women of size and women of color in the media, and empowering women to take up as much space as they please. Pia has written many articles on the subject of body image and self-acceptance, which have earned her a place as a valuable voice in the body positive movement. She has been featured on Good Morning America, People Magazine, the New York Post, Yoga International Magazine, Mantra Magazine, Volup 2 Magazine, and more.
Ragen Chastain
Professional Speaker and Writer
Ragen Chastain is speaker, writer, and thought leader in the fields of body image, fat activism, Health at Every Size, and corporate wellness who has spoken on corporate, college, and conference stages from Google, to Dartmouth, to the International Weight Stigma Conference in Iceland. She is the author of www.danceswithfat.org, the book Fat: The Owner's Manual, editor of the Praeger Anthology "The Politics of Size,” and frequently gives expert commentary on radio, television and in print. The co-founder of the Fat Activism Conference and the Fit Fatties Forum, Ragen is a featured interviewee in the documentaries America the Beautiful 2, and A Stage for Size, is an ACE Certified Health Coach, national champion dancer, marathoner, and triathlete. She lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée Julianne and their adorable dogs, and is training for her first (and last!) IRONMAN triathlon.
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Jamie Hanson
Writer and Director
After graduating from the University of Central Florida’s film program, Jamie made her way back out to California, her birth state, after a 17 year vacation in Florida. In the past 2 years she has created 2 web series. Hers & History starring Lindsey Shaw (Pretty Little Liars) and Mike Bailey (Skins) was acquired by Studio Canal and is currently available in France on their streaming platform Studio Plus.
Jamie also work as a Story Editor for shows like Bar Rescue where she gets to fly around the country and help shape the story for each episode she is assigned. Before that Jamie worked as a Production Secretary and Office PA on several Warner Brothers shows including Undateable Season 1, 2 and 3, The Mentalist, and multiple pilots.
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Michelle Kantor
Co-founder of Cinefemme
Michelle Kantor co-founded Cinefemme as a graduate student at San Francisco State University and has served as Executive Director since 2007. She is an award-winning director, producer, writer and editor dedicated to advancing women in the professional ranks of cinema. Michelle’s industry credits include work for advertising agency BBDO, Logo’s “Gay for Play Starring RuPaul,” HBO, FYI, OWN, World of Wonder, The History Channel, Sony, Universal, MJA Advertising, and NASA. Michelle's distinctions include Best Music Video at LA Femme Film Festival, Goldfarb Award for Best Student Film, and Thunen Memorial Scholarship from the Illuminating Engineers Society. She holds an MFA in Cinema from SFSU, and BFA in Film Production from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Michelle is also a certified paralegal, artist, mother and writer. The youngest daughter of political refugees who fled Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960’s, she is producing two projects about her family's historic escapes: Red Star documents her father's return on the 50th anniversary of his escape, and The Rebel, a narrative feature film in development.
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About the Filmmakers
Lindsey Averill
Writer and Director
Lindsey Averill is many things - a mom, a filmmaker, an academic, a writer, an activist, an aspiring novelist, a sake and sushi lover, a notorious trashy television watcher, an odd beauty secret keeper, an amazing dancer... really, the list is endless. Lindsey received her M.F.A in Writing from Emerson College and Ph. D. in the Comparative Studies from Florida Atlantic University. The focus of Lindsey’s research is feminism, fat civil rights and the representation of fat bodies in popular culture. From 2005 to 2016 Lindsey worked as a college professor teaching women’s studies, literature and writing courses. In her spare time, Lindsey writes stuff for lots of cool media outlets, like CNN, xojane, Time.com, The Huffington Post, Alternet, Refinery29, and Bustle. Lindsey has also written academic stuff where she speaks to feminism – or a lack there of in young adult novels – like Twilight and the Hunger Games. Basically, Lindsey is one of those public intellectual types, who has dedicated her life to ending the hateful relationships people have with their bodies and changing the national conversation about body image so that it focuses on effect the very real issues of bias and systemic prejudice.
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Viridiana Liberman
Writer and Director
Viridiana Lieberman is a filmmaker and writer who has also been known to podcast, obsessively watch sports, ride a bike and enjoy a nice whiskey. She received her BFA in Film from the Miami International University of Art and Design and her M.A. in Women's Studies from Florida Atlantic University. After a decade of editing television and film, Viridiana began directing her first documentary feature, Behind the Octagon, chronicling the musical Lesbian Love Octagon. This documentary was chosen to be workshopped at the 2013 CineSLAM Program at the Pride of the Ocean Film Festival. In 2014, her book Sports Heroines on Film: A Critical Study of Cinematic Women Athletes, Coaches and Owners was released by McFarland Publishing. She worked on Back on Board: Greg Louganis which aired on HBO in 2014 and Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper which aired on HBO in 2016. In 2017, two films she edited premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, I Am Evidence, an HBO feature documentary investigating the national rape kit backlog and Love the Sinner, a short documentary exploring the connection between Christianity and homophobia in the wake of the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. She just finished editing the feature, The Sentence, which is world premiering at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
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Vendors: The Kitty Cult
The Kitty Cult
Feminist Art Collective
Kitty Cult is a collective of feminist artists whose art work ranges in form but is united by the belief of unity, support, and love. They vend a variety of esoteric pop curiosities from pins, to prints, and much more!