Writing with Fire: Women Take the Reel Film Festival

Join us in screening the documentary Writing with Fire as part of the annual Women Take the Reel Film Festival. This film follows the women journalists of India’s all-female newspaper as they risk it all, including their own safety, to cover the country’s political, social, and local news from a women-powered perspective. From underground network to an independent media empire they defy the odds to redefine power. After the screening, Professor Sulafa Zidani and Dolly Arjun will host a discussion with the audience. Professor Zidani has published on online culture mixing, Arab and Chinese media politics, and critical transnational pedagogy in venues such as: Social Media + Society; Asian Communication Research; Media, Culture & Society; International Journal of Communication, and others. Dolly Arjun is a Dalit-American feminist who works in medicine and lives in the Boston area.

The screening will take place on March 15th, 2022 at 6:30 PM in the Bartos Theater. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. 

This annual film festival is a collaborative effort among Women’s and Gender Studies departments involved in the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality (as well as select institutions/universities aligned with its mission) that feature films directed by women and about issues relating to gender, race, sexuality, class and/or feminism. The focus is on intellectual investigation of these issues as well as visibility for woman-identifying directors, and so every film is accompanied by a Q&A and discussion with either the film director, producer, relevant organization, or a faculty member from the film screening’s host institution.

Women Take the Reel is a free roaming film festival  sponsored by: MIT Program in Women’s and Gender Studies; the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Gender, Culture, Women, and Sexuality; Boston College Women’s and Gender Studies Program;  Northeastern University Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; and Lesley University.

This event is made possible by the partnership and collaboration of MIT’s Women’s & Gender Studies Program, MIT Anthropology, Pleasure @ MIT, The MIT Institute Community & Equity Office, Women & Gender Services, and Violence & Prevention, and the List Visual Art Center. 

We will continue to follow MIT’s COVID protocols.