As part of Indiana University’s celebration of International Education Week #DirectedbyWomen invites the community to a free screening of short films by women filmmakers from around the world. We are deeply appreciative to the filmmakers who have offered their films for this event.

Transatlantic Saudades directed by Kitso Lynn Lelliott

When something is born out of such prolonged and sustained degradation of human dignity, can the resulting structures not bear traces of the permeating and pervasive traumas? A question that started forming in my mind a few weeks into my stay in Bahia and has remained with me ever since. And a question as applicable to my home in South Africa as it is to my experience of Brazil.

I explore the breadth and limits of links between myself, my personal lived memories, the communal memories I claim in an African context and the degree to which I can claim a kinship to the communal pool of radicalised memory I encountered in Bahia. This project plays between memories of a personal lived encounter in Bahia, which mirrors my own social positioning in South Africa, in order to create a lapse or slippages between the two space. It becomes a conflation of different experiences of marginality, expressed through specificities of the personal in different contexts.

The idea of memory is used as a vehicle through which to connect the personal experiential with broader historical narratives while at the same time disrupting the historicised cannon of histories that were shaped over centuries on the Atlantic and have come to sit so firmly on my skin.

Find out more about Kitso Lynn Lelliott on her website and explore her new project South Atlantic Hauntings here.

Pava directed by Vaishnavi Sundar

This film is a portrayal of a metamorphosis of a relationship between a young girl and a barber. Appealing to the sensibilities and memories of growing up, we see how certain moments mark the crescendo of a relationship – not as an end, but as a portrait that will remain etched in the memory forever.

Find out more about Vaishnavi Sundar on her Lima Soda Films website and explore her Women Making Films initiative here.

Story of Aishan directed by Hong jia bao

This an animated documentary I made for my friend, who has suffered blindness since she was born. Light is the only thing she can perceive through her eyes. In this animated documentary, fragments of our conversations have been edited. All I want for this documentary is to let more people know about the hard life of my friend.

They Call Us Maids – the Domestic Workers’ Story
directed by Leeds Animation Workshop

Leeds Animation Workshop is a women’s collective… independent and not-for-profit…making and distributing short animated films since the late 1970s. Congratulations to Leeds Animation Workshop on 40 years of accomplishments! They Call Us Maids – the Domestic Workers’ Story is a hand-painted animated film about migrant women workers and modern slavery.

Find out more about Leeds Animation Workshop on their website.

Terminal directed by Natasha Waugh

A girl and a woman meet in an airport departure gate. Just before they board a plane to Manchester, we witness a private exchange as they share the different reasons that brought them to this moment, and the traumatic journey that awaits them.

Find out more about Natasha Waugh on her Fight Back Films website.

Respira directed by Amanda Pérez

Facing her inability to break her own record, a swimmer decides to take a breath and enjoy her surroundings for a moment.

Stay tuned for announcement of additional films…

“International Education Week honors the idea that global education and exchange help improve cultural understanding, preserve cultural heritage, and prepare individuals to work in a global society.”