Makeover Movie - Sue Ding
18:21 (United States) 
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A pop culture essay film on the makeover movies we grew up loving—and all the ways they taught us that we needed to fix ourselves.
For more than a hundred years, movie makeovers have promised audiences that with a little help, any ugly duckling can transform into the belle of the ball. Why has this trope continued to capture our imaginations? And what has it taught us about ourselves? Featuring clips from nearly a hundred films, MAKEOVER MOVIE immerses us in the candy-colored, kinetic, and kaleidoscopic world of the makeover montage. Alongside these iconic images, the director and her friends—all women of color and/or queer women—share personal reflections on the racialized, heteronormative, and contradictory beauty standards at the core of the movie makeover.

​Sue Ding (she/her) is a filmmaker and artist based in Los Angeles. Her work explores race, gender, and diaspora through the lens of visual culture and everyday life.
She is passionate about experimenting with film form, and crafting creative approaches with a strong visual sensibility. Her short film The Claudia Kishi Club premiered at SXSW and was acquired by Netflix. She also directed and produced the Emmy award-winning documentary Artbound: Light and Space.
Sue works in a variety of nonfiction media, including digital, broadcast, immersive, and interactive projects. She also serves as a creative producer for docuseries, consults and lectures on nonfiction storytelling, and leads the XR/emerging media program at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.
Sue is an alum of MIT’s Open Documentary Lab and Comparative Media Studies program, and a Senior Civic Media Fellow at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Quality Control - Jasmine De Silva
1:54 (United Kingdom)
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Quality Control is about the construction of the human body. The characters wear a uniform of green to match their sterile surrounding of an ambiguous canteen setting. One by one they collect their dinner trays and, in unison start to create the human face. With each one looking the same, this aims to portray the sense of a simulated and controlled world.

Combining retrofuturism, hyperreal aesthetics, pop-art style colours and diamond studded female bodies, Jasmine De Silva playfully satirises the desire for physical perfection, holding up a mirror to our own dehumanising obsession with appearances, aiming to expose society’s unrealistic standards of beauty. Jasmine studied at the London College of Fashion, completing a BA and MA in Fashion Photography. Upon graduating in 2019, Jasmine has won awards for emerging talent in both Photography and Directing. Jasmine was selected as a winner of 2022 British Journal of Photography Female in Focus Awards. She works in London as a freelance photographer and director for music videos, commercials and narrative, whilst developing her debut feature film.
Three Things We Won't Talk About - Jessie Craig Roche
8:26 (United Kingdom) 

A woman comes to realise how she has compromised her own wellbeing for her crumbling relationship, with dark consequences.
THREE THINGS WE WON'T TALK ABOUT is a short film written and directed by Jessie Craig Roche (she/ her) that explores themes of mental health and relationships. 
When her neglectful partner leaves on a business trip, we follow a woman as her emotional wellbeing unravels. He ignores her calls and texts as she obsesses over Julie, his female friend whom she becomes convinced he is having an affair with. Finally he returns home and confesses all his wrongdoings – but in the form of a monster of her own creation. 
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This is Craig Roche's first foray into narrative shorts, having worked as a stills photographer shooting film & tv campaigns for clients including Netflix, Amazon, Paramount and Disney. She is Canadian and based in London, currently developing a psychological horror feature she wrote which was a Semi-Finalist in the Nicholl Academy Fellowship.
MPF (Movies) - Elly Stern
0:50 (Canada)

A woman takes charge of her sexuality and gets lost in a sensual fantasy. An official animated music video by Elly Stern for MPF (Movies) by Eliza Niemi.

​Elly Stern is an animation filmmaker and artist with a BFA in Animation from Massachusetts College of Art & Design in Boston. She has a passion for experimental stop motion filmmaking, specializing in mixed media narrative animation created using repurposed trash. Elly's thesis film, Waste Away (2020), has screened at festivals internationally and received numerous awards and recognitions. She currently resides in Vancouver, Canada, where she spent two years working for stop motion studio Spotted Fawn Productions, and is now a freelance animator and artist.
Loved Girls Wear Short Shorts - Megan Teo
12:02 (Singapore)

With a bit of puppy love and a few new colorful friends, Bunny realizes the world is not as gloomy and treacherous as her mother painted it out to be. A portraiture on queer girlhood, LOVED GIRLS WEAR SHORT SHORTS is a bright bubbly short film about coming of age, queer puppy love and girlhood in Singapore.

​Megan Teo (she/they) is a Singaporean filmmaker, studying in London. Their films hope to explore the cultural dysphoria of growing up in Singapore, and the experience of queerness. Their films also aim to capture different aspects of the female experience.
Anatomy of Feelings - Çağıl Harmandar
3:22 (Turkey) 

This is the second film I made ever since I moved to Japan. I wanted to create pseudo-scientific visual explanations and representations of feelings. I was inspired by retro sci-fi posters. The poem midfilm, in Turkish and Japanese, talks about the mind being a room floating on the sea, and the waves of this sea are said to be like feelings. In this film, we see this room floating on the sea, a girl is reading a book inside the room, the room becomes her head, and she becomes the book, titled the Anatomy of Feelings.

Çağıl Harmandar (she/her) was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1992 and lived there until she moved to Boston to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University at Tufts University which she graduated in 2016 with a BFA. In 2023, she received her master's degree from Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Film and New Media. Çağıl is currently a Phd Student at the same university in Yokohama, Japan.
Leija - Elsa Kallio
21:10​ (Finland )
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Shy and desperate Juno lives her day trying to balance between her obsessiveness, internalized male gaze and heartache.
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Elsa Kallio is a Finnish filmmaker based in Berlin. She graduated from the Helsinki Upper Secondary School of Visual Arts and later studied at the Art-On-The-Run film school in Berlin. She has participated in local youth- and queer-oriented film contests and screenings in Finland and now has premiered her first official short film "Leija”.
After Closing - Carley Byers
8:23  (Boston Local)

A waitress is stuck with a house full of eccentric customers after the diner’s scheduled closing time. As she tries to get them to leave, she’s whisked into disco chaos.

​Carley Byers is a Boston-based filmmaker specializing in directing and producing. Her love of storytelling began with dance and theatre. These passions translate into her films through her theatrical visual style and sensitivity when working with performers. She finds immense joy in collaborating with other local artists on creative projects.
Fleecing The Sheep - Charlie De Koster
4:34  (Boston Local)

Fleecing the Sheep is an olive branch to all those who are creatively burnt out! At Crossroad Enterprises we pride ourselves on our ability to help lost sheep. Call the number and start your journey now: 666-219-0103.

Charlie De Koster (they/them)  is a queer non-binary filmmaker from Boston. They are enjoying their time in the MassArt Film Department by making short films that address ideas of home, remembrance, and lost media – exploring how these concepts can interact with identity. Presently, they are working with the optical printer on campus which allows them to push their work further and has inspired a love of analog film in their practice.
White Noise - Ren Evans
3:32  (Boston Local)

A young woman turns to unorthodox methods to ward off an unrelenting visitor who is the producer of an intolerable noise.
Ren Evans (she/her) is a Boston-based interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker/directress exploring unconventional storytelling and forms which encapsulate themes of home, identity, and escapism. Implementing innovative uses of mediums, sound, and design are foundational features of Ren's work.

Ren Evans (she/her) is a Boston-based interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker/directress exploring unconventional storytelling and forms which encapsulate themes of home, identity, and escapism. Implementing innovative uses of mediums, sound, and design are foundational features of Ren's work.
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Our Landlord - by REKLAMA - Alex Miklowski 
3:10  (Boston Local)

“Our Landlord” is the music video for the title track off REKLAMA’s new EP “Who Swallowed Who” which will be released on streaming platforms and cassette tape on May 13, 2023. The video features Steph Stroud on drums, Skye Crush on bass, and Alex on guitar. You can hear all the old stuff at reklama.bandcamp.com
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​Alex Miklowski (she/her) is a disabled multimedia artist and musician living in Boston MA.
Firstborn - Erica Stockwell-Alpert 
6:43  (Boston Local)

A man tries to sacrifice his firstborn son to a demon, but is in for a shocking revelation.

Erica Stockwell-Alpert is a filmmaker in Maynard, MA. At this time she has made three films; Firstborn is her first. She is also the director of the Strange Maynard Independent Film Festival (which is happening May 7!)
How Does Your Garden Grow - Liza Giangrande and Darya Bradshaw
5:59 (Boston Local)

Meet Zoe and Jane, two transplants in their twenties moving from Boston to New York and just trying to find their footing in the Big Apple. It's a female driven comedy starring Kallie Tabor, Liza Giangrande, Liz Bishop, and Oscar Enrique Villeda written and produced by Liza Giangrande and directed by Darya Sea Films. Cinematography and editing by Darya Sea Films and sound by Matt Leake. This film is dedicated to Julia Brown and our beloved Anne. 

Liza Giangrande (She/Her) Liza is a graduate from Fairfield University with her BA in Music and the two year Meisner Foundational Training at the Michael Chekhov Actors Studio in Boston. An avid film and theatre lover, she made her television debut at age 13 on Season 4 of Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman on PBS Kids Go. After moving to New York City to act and perform stand up, she wrote How Does Your Garden Grow based on several awkward encounters with her downstairs neighbor.

Darya Bradshaw (She/Her) Darya Sea Films. The Professional Daydreamer… CREATE ART FROM YOUR HEART. By pursuing a career and lifestyle that combines a love for film, photography and travel, my work has been able to reflect meaningful feelings, beliefs or purpose through a vibrant and dreamy lens. For over a decade, I have been transforming daydreams into reality in photography and videography for myself and my clients, with an evolving passion for the craft. By infusing art with such love, this brings more love into the world.
The end of the drought - Las que cruzan - Raquel Páez and Mariana Rey
3:39  (Boston Local)

"The end of the drought" is an experimental animation that plays with words and different visual and sound textures, to explore crying as an experience that is reflected in the natural world.
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Las que cruzan is an artistic collective formed by Raquel Páez (she/her) and Mariana Rey (she/her) with interests in movement, the everyday, and the intimate as political forces that are explored through graphic and audiovisual mediums. Formed in Bogotá, Colombia in 2020, they have been part of different festivals such as Cine Oftálmica (Mexico, 2021), Festival Atemporal (Peru, 2021) and the Bogotá Experimental Film Festival (2021). They were also the winners of the "Acción Colectiva" contest held by the UNL Historical Museum of Argentina, with the piece “Llenos vacíos" (2021).
A Certain Sort of Trinity - Charlotte Benoit
19:45 ​ (Boston Local)

A Certain Sort of Trinity follows best friends Mary and Ruth as they try to adjust to life as recent (or soon-to-be) college graduates. Back in their hometown on Halloween, they attend a party with their former high school classmates. Over the course of the night, each girl must confront their uncertain futures with the help of a costumed grim reaper.

​Charlotte Benoit (she/her) grew up in Maine. She studied history and played rugby at Vassar College, which she graduated from in 2020. After working in elementary special education for a couple years, she attended a film program at Maine Media College + Workshops, graduating in 2022. Charlotte currently resides in Boston.