Monthly Film Festival

NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) hosts its March Monthly Film Festival and celebrates up-and-coming female talent in front of and behind the camera with this month’s InFocus: Female Cinema across two shorts programs and the Los Angeles premiere of Pamela J. Hogan’s documentary The Day Iceland Stood Still.

The day’s programming opens with the Los Angeles premiere of  Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmaker and journalist Pamela J. Hogan’s  The Day Iceland Stood Still, a lively telling of the 1975 nationwide women’ s strike in Iceland that began Iceland’s journey to its current place as #1 globally on the gender parity index. “We hope this untold story will inspire viewers for generations to come to reimagine the possible!” says Hogan.

The day continues with InFocus: Female Cinema Shorts I,  a program highlighting the filmmaking, perspectives and stories of women. This selection includes stories about self image, bears witness to government oppression, highlights unknown heroes, takes us on a chaotic heist, and showcases reinvention after trauma, the dynamics of interracial friendship, the depths of loyalty, encounters with predators, and sisters processing grief together. Among the films is the world premiere of 2023 Best of NFMLA Best New Filmmaker winner Gabriela Garcia Medina’s latest film, SKRRRT! The block opens with a selection of films produced through Girls’ Voices Now,  Women’s Voices Now’s youth development program, which empowers the next generation of youth from under-resourced communities to find, develop, and use their voice for social change through filmmaking.

The night concludes with the InFocus: Female Cinema Shorts II,  with another exciting collection of films by emerging female filmmakers. This program explores embodiment: hidden desires, sexual pleasure and dysfunction, gut-wrenching intuition, illness, and the hyperbolic psychosomatic. The tone ranges from the sensual to the dramatic to the comedic and poignant. 

NFMLA showcases films by filmmakers of all backgrounds throughout the year, across both our general and InFocus programming. All filmmakers are welcome and encouraged to submit their projects for consideration for upcoming NFMLA Festivals, regardless of the schedule for InFocus programming, which celebrates representation by spotlighting various communities of filmmakers as part of the NFMLA Monthly Film Festival. This project is made possible in part by grant support from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).  

The South Park Center is an ADA compliant venue and is wheelchair accessible. We request captioned films from all filmmakers participating at our Festival. For any accessibility needs, please send a request to info@nfmla.org at least 72 hours prior to the event.