Bright Lights

Weekly screening series sponsored by the Emerson VMA department, free and open to the public.

Doc|POC|Social Justice|Women Directed

TikTok, Boom – Thursday, March 23rd

Co-presented with GlobeDocs, the Boston Women’s Film Festival, and the Roxbury International Film Festival Directed by Shalini Kantayya, documentary, English, USA, 97 minutes, 2022. Dissecting one of the most influential platforms of the contemporary social media landscape, TikTok, Boom. examines the algorithmic, socio-political, economic, and cultural influences and impact of the history-making app. This rigorous exploration balances a genuine interest in the TikTok community and its innovative mechanics with a…

Read more

LGBT|POC|Social Justice

Framing Agnes – Thursday, March 30th

Co-presented with Wicked Queer: The Boston LGBT Film Festival and GlobeDocs Directed by Chase Joynt, documentary, English, USA, 75 minutes, 2022. In the late 1950s, a woman named Agnes approached the UCLA Medical Center seeking sex reassignment surgery. Her story was long considered to be exceptional and singular until never-before-seen case files of other patients were found in 2017. Framing Agnes features preeminent trans culture-makers breathing new life into those…

Doc|LGBT|Social Justice|Women Directed

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed – Thursday, April 6th

Co-presented as part of the Wicked Queer: LGBT Film Festival with GlobeDocs, the Boston Women’s Film Festival and the Boston Jewish Film Festival Directed by Laura Poitras, documentary, English, USA, 117 minutes, 2022. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to…

Uncategorized

Mad God – Thursday, April 13th

Co-presented with the Boston Underground Film Festival and the Boston Sci Fi Film Festival. Directed by Phil Tippett, animation, no dialogue, USA, 83 minutes, 2021. Equipped with a gas mask and a crumbling map, the Assassin, an iron-clad humanoid, descends into a rusty, peril-laden underworld of grime, blood, and unsettling monstrosities. As the stealthy invader meanders through the labyrinthine post-apocalyptic wasteland on a mysterious mission, going deeper and deeper in…

Feminist|Social Justice|Women Directed

Women Talking – Thursday, April 20th

Co-presented with the Boston Women’s Film Festival and the Independent Film Festival Boston. Directed by Sarah Polley, drama, English, USA, 104 minutes, 2023. a group of women gather in a hayloft to discuss how to respond. While the men are away, the women narrow their options down to three: do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Some fear that any act of defiance will jeopardize their entry into heaven, while…