Thomas Edison Film Festival 41st Annual Season – Women’s HERstory Month Marathon celebrating women, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming filmmakers, in collaboration with the Hoboken Historical Museum.

PROGRAM ONE – Streaming March 1 – 31, 2022 Selected documentary films about women by filmmakers in Italy, Belarus, and the US.

To reach the 3 programs, go to https://tefilmfest.org/curations.php, scroll down and click on “2022 Seasons Curations” to open list, and then select “Women’s HERstory Month Marathon”, Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3.

Miss Alma Thomas: A Life in Color – Documentary 20 min. by Cheri Gaulke, Washington, DC, US

Alma W. Thomas lived a life of firsts: the first Fine Arts graduate of Howard University (1924), the first Black woman to mount a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1972), and the first Black woman to have her paintings exhibited in the White House (2009). Yet she did not receive national attention until she was 80. The film explores Thomas’ incredible life through the lens of curators, art specialists, scholars, and her family, with award-winning actress Alfre Woodard as the voice of Miss Thomas.

The Pigeon Lady – Documentary 4 min. by Giulia Brazzale, Rome, Italy

Every day an elderly lady – a true philosopher – wanders the streets of the historic center of Rome feeding pigeons. Her mission, however, goes far beyond simply feeding the birds.

Generation 328 – Documentary 18 min. by Veranika Nikanava, Belarus and NY, NY, US

A group of mothers defy Europe’s last dictatorship, fighting to free their children from draconian sentences in brutal Belarusian prisons. The filmmaker, Veranika Nikanava, was born in Belarus – she was an actress, filmmaker, and activist. She died on 25 July 2019 in an attempt to cross the Teklanika River in Alaska at the age of 24. Nika was deeply concerned about human rights and liberties in her homeland, and she was an active member of a Belarusian community in New York, where she lived since 2017. “Generation 328” was her last film project.

The Pratt in the Hat – Documentary 15 min. by Susan Hillary, Goshen, NY, US

Beneath the brims of hundreds of colorful hats is a woman who shares her wisdom, humor, and personal experiences about being black in America. Frances Pratt’s hats make a bold statement as does her southern charm and pithy expressions which she garnered through a lifetime of service to her community fighting for racial equality, voting rights and education.

Neurodivergent – Documentary 25 min. by Afton Quast Saler, Pasadena, CA, US

“My mind is like someone emptied the junk drawer onto a trampoline.” From post-it notes to keys, pens, rubber bands, and receipts, the unorganized chaos of a junk drawer is the perfect representation of what goes on in the mind of someone with ADHD. In this personal film, the filmmaker documents her journey as she discovers her ADHD diagnosis. When she turns the camera on herself and her family to process what her diagnosis means, she discovers why so many women with ADHD are undiagnosed.

To learn more about the Thomas Edison Film Festival and the Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium, visit www.TEFilmFest.org, Jane Steuerwald, Executive Director, +1 201.856.6565, Jane@TEFilmFestival.org