Festival Overview
The Best of 2024 festival brings together standout films from the past year, spotlighting bold new talent and unique storytelling. With screenings in Cambridge MA, Berlin DE, and online, GRRL HAUS CINEMA connects local and international audiences with radical, boundary-pushing filmmakers.
The Best of 2024 festival brings together standout films from the past year, spotlighting bold new talent and unique storytelling. With screenings in Cambridge MA, Berlin DE, and online, GRRL HAUS CINEMA connects local and international audiences with radical, boundary-pushing filmmakers.
Festival Schedule
Dec. 9 & 10 at
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Featured Films
A curated selection of short films by women, trans, and non-binary artists, with a focus on DIY, low-budget, and experimental approaches. This year’s program highlights diverse voices, genres, and visual styles, offering an exciting mix of innovative narratives. Festival Highlights Live Screenings and Awards Join us at the Brattle Theatre for two evenings of screenings, awards, and celebration of independent filmmakers. International Reach With events in both Cambridge and Berlin, GRRL HAUS CINEMA bridges the vibrant arts communities in the U.S. and Germany. Online Access Virtual events make it possible for global audiences to experience GRRL HAUS’s unique programming. |
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Our Best of 2024 Jurors
Our guest jurors bring a wealth of expertise in areas such as experimental filmmaking, global film programming, youth engagement, and socially conscious storytelling. They embody a commitment to innovation, inclusivity, and the power of cinema to bridge cultures. Submitting your work offers the chance to have it reviewed by influential film programmers and key industry figures, providing a unique opportunity for wider recognition and impact. We are fortunate to have Megan Garbayo López, Alison Folland, Nancy Pappas, Malic Amalya, and Youjin Moon as our inaugural guest jurors for our first festival as a nonprofit!
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Megan Garbayo López (she/they) is the Education Manager at SIFF, where she cultivates new and deepens existing audiences with education through filmmaking and film appreciation experiences. Megan previously worked as Outreach and Education Manager for Three Dollar Bill Cinema, where they managed the Reel Queer Youth filmmaking program. Megan is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter with a passion for changing hearts and minds by building community through film. A true child of the West, Megan grew up in Texas, California, and Oregon before receiving their B.A. at Emerson College in Boston. Megan has also trained on attachment with the BBC in London with a focus on factual television production. Megan’s passions in life are closing the arts access gap in underserved communities and promoting media created for and by young people.
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Alison Folland (she/her) is a filmmaker and performer based in Somerville, MA. Her short hybrid films engage questions of affect and truth-value and are directly informed by her work as an actor in the commercial film industry. Alison's films have been screened at festivals such as Athens International Film and Video Festival (Ohio), Athens International Film Festival (Greece), Antimatter, Crossroads, Winnipeg and Milwaukee Underground Film Festivals. As a performer, Alison worked with directors such as Gus Van Sant, Todd Haynes, Barbet Schroeder, and David O. Russell. She is a member of Agx Film Collective and teaches 16mm filmmaking at Emerson College.
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Nancy Pappas (she/her) is a Congolese Greek American video producer, archival researcher, and film programmer. Growing up a third culture kid, she became interested in cultural studies, with a particular focus on archival theory and research, vernacular photography, and Third Cinema to make sense of the world around her. Her international upbringing gave way to nomadic global wanderings with camera in hand, living and working from Kenya to Vietnam, Morocco to Zanzibar, and beyond. Now Seattle-based, she works as a video producer and has had the pleasure of programming films for the African Pictures program at SIFF since 2019, thanks to a chance encounter with kismet. She has also served on the shorts/mid-length jury for Make Believe Seattle. Nancy studied Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin and continues her personal work in experimental archive montage. Nancy has a deep love for cinema and believes curation to be a form of mapmaking and tools to foster cross-cultural understanding.
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Malic Amalya (he/him) : Visceral and cacophonous, Malic Amalya’s films traverse gritty landscapes of abandoned buildings, blast zones, and back rooms. Situated between non-linear avant-garde traditions, the oppositional and self-reflective aesthetic considerations of queercore, and an intersectional feminist politic, he creates single channel and expanded cinema performances across 16mm and Super 8 film, digital and analog video, and 35mm slides. His creative framework is informed by prison abolition, decolonization, anti-racism, gender self-determination, disability justice, anti-capitalism, and climate justice.
Since 2014, Malic has been collaborating with Nathan Hill under the name Vitreous Chamber. Malic’s films have screened in film festivals and queer bars across the world. Festival screenings include Festival Les Merveilles (Paris), Ann Arbor Film Festival, Light Field Film Festival (San Francisco), MIX Copenhagen, the Scottish Queer Film Festival, Cinema of the Dam’d (Amsterdam), EXiS Festival (Seoul), Onion City (Chicago), the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, MIX NYC, and the TIE Cinema Exposition (Milwaukee & Montreal). Visuals for dance nights at queer bars include “Buttcocks” at Club SchwuZ in Berlin, Germany, “Trqpiteca” at Danny’s in Chicago, and “Other Stranger” at The Stud in San Francisco. Malic is an Assistant Professor of Experimental Media and Film Production at Emerson College. He holds an MFA in Moving Image from the University of Illinois, Chicago; a MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art from the San Francisco Art Institute; and a BA from Hampshire College. He lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. |
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Youjin Moon (she/her) is a South Korean artist and experimental filmmaker based in Boston. Moon earned two MFAs in 2D Fine Arts and Film/Video from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She received a BFA in Oriental Painting from Hongik University in Seoul. Moon has shown her works at national and international film festivals and exhibitions, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ann Arbor Film Festival, the deCordova New England Biennial, and the solo film program at Harvard Film Archive. She received the Korean EXiS Award at the 12th and 16th Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul. Moon’s works have been featured in the Boston Globe and Art New England, among other publications.
Using light as a material connection between painting and film, Moon has expanded her abstract paintings into the painterly surfaces of cameraless films and digital videos. Through the fusion of media, she brings in tactile and expressive qualities to her digital compositions. Moon’s layered worlds navigate the realms between inner and outer, macro and micro, and natural and constructed. |
GRRL HAUS CINEMA Sponsors and Support
GRRL HAUS CINEMA extends its gratitude to our sponsors including Clocktower Law, Fenway Health, High Output, Women in Film & Video New England, and Irving House, whose support helps bring groundbreaking films to audiences worldwide.
We also thank our longtime collaborator, The Brattle, for its ongoing partnership, as well as the Mass Cultural Council and the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) for their generous grants supporting our 2025 programming.
We also thank our longtime collaborator, The Brattle, for its ongoing partnership, as well as the Mass Cultural Council and the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) for their generous grants supporting our 2025 programming.
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