The slate is set for the 2022 CASCADIA International Women’s Film Festival, featuring 32 films from a dozen countries that share powerful stories from established and emerging women directors about everything from a Native American adoptee’s discovery of her Lummi heritage to the journey of the first Nepali woman to summit Mt. Everest.
The festival, which runs from May 12-15, returns to the theatre this year with in-person viewings of features, shorts, documentaries, animation, experimental and narrative films at the Pickford Film Center in the Bellingham Downtown Arts District. An online version of the festival runs from May 19-30.
The 2022 festival kicks off with an opening night retrospective featuring five short films from the first five years of CASCADIA. Three additional shorts featured in previous festivals will be shown before two of the feature films. The shorts include the directorial debut of “Desperate Housewives” star Brenda Strong, as well as “Graceland,” a film directed by Bonnie Discepolo about a Southern mom whose daughter believes she is the reincarnation of Elvis Presley.
This year’s feature films, curated by Program Director Claudia Puig and members of CASCADIA’s program selection committee, continue the festival tradition of featuring work by Indigenous directors and women directors of color.
“This year’s films once again represent a variety of styles and stories told by women directors from around the world,” explained Executive Director Cheryl Crooks. “The films include documentaries, narrative films, animated films, and experimental films. We’re proud of the fact that one-half of our short films were made by women of color.”
Since the festival began in 2017, CASCADIA has showcased the work of more than 125 women directors from around the world. Crooks points out that women remain grossly underrepresented as directors in the film industry. Of the 250 top-grossing films in 2021, only 17% were directed by women, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television at San Diego University. This makes CASCADIA’s mission all the more critical, according to Crooks
