For nearly 40 years The Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee has been advocating for gender equity in our city. Starting next week, they’ll be carrying out this mission through film. The fund is collaborating with Milwaukee Film for a series called Cinematic Sisterhood.
Each screening in the series will be accompanied by an event with visiting filmmakers and roundtable discussions to help foster connections both in and outside the theater.
The first film of the series is a documentary called She Rises Up, screening on July 14. The film follows three women in the Global South as they build small businesses from the ground up, overcoming various systemic barriers along the way. Director Maureen Castle Tusty will speak following the screening, along with a panel discussion including local female entrepreneurs.
Ahead of the event, Women’s Fund Executive Director Lisa Attonito and Milwaukee Film Executive Director Susan Kerns join Lake Effect’s Audrey Nowakowski.
“Having worked with the Chicago Feminist Film Festival and my background working with women’s history, women’s film history and the industry, it seemed like a really great fit to be able to highlight the work of women filmmakers and be able to kind of connect to the film industry with the Women’s Fund in Milwaukee,” Kerns says.
She sees the series as a way to build bridges between women filmmakers, artists and entrepreneurs in the Milwaukee area, and hopes the series will be an inspiration and networking opportunity for “women from all walks of life.”
Although the Women’s Fund has dabbled with film-related events before, Attonito is looking forward to a new chapter of collaboration with Milwaukee Film and hopes the series will foster positive change.
“This is by far our most significant grant into the film industry in our history, and it is the first of what we hope will be several years of investment of this size,” she says. "The Women’s Fund is working to accelerate transformational change with more significant investments. In this case it allows us to influence change in the role of women both on the screen and off the screen."
Kerns notes the longterm goal for the Cinematic Sisterhood series is to have another event in August, one in September that corresponds with the Dialogue and Documentaries Film Festival, a bigger event in October and wrapping up in January building off of The Women's Fund event about the science of happiness.
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