NYWIFT Member Screening: The Dilemma of Desire

Join us for this month’s virtual NYWIFT Member Screening of Maria Finitzo’s documentary feature, The Dilemma of Desire, which explores the work of four women who are shattering myths and lies about female sexual desire, bodies and – ultimately – power. 

Watch the film: Any time Thursday, May 20 at 3 PM through Monday, May 24 at 11:59 PM

Join the Q&A: Monday, May 24, at 5 PM ET

Cost to attend: $2 for NYWIFT members; $4 for non-members

The film will be available to all who register to view via an exclusive link at any time throughout the weekend of May 20, 2021.

Then, join us for a special Q&A with the director and subjects on Zoom moderated by writer, comedian, and podcaster Jourdain Searles.

Please register in advance in order to receive the links.

The NYWIFT Member Screening Series provides members with the opportunity to show their work in a theatrical setting (or in this case, a virtual theatrical setting). We hope you will join us in celebrating the work of our talented NYWIFT members!

Register

Please note: if you would like to “bring” a guest, the guest must be registered separately with a separate email address – links to view the films are individually crafted for each registered email.

About the Film

The Dilemma of Desire
Maria Finitzo (Director/Producer)
Cynthia Kane (Producer)
Diane Moy Quon (Producer)
Documentary
2020, 108 min.

Entertaining, thrilling and radical, The Dilemma of Desire explores the work of four women who are shattering myths and lies about female sexual desire, bodies and – ultimately – power. 

Groundbreaking artist Sophia Wallace challenges long-held ideas of women with her “cliteracy” project, putting front and center the clitoris as fundamental to female orgasm.  Dr. Stacey Dutton, a neuroscientist who realized she had never seen a drawing of the clitoris until she discovered Wallace’s work, is now committed to studying its biology and pushing the publishing industry to correct the deliberate omissions of the clitoris in major anatomy textbooks. With 20 years of research, Dr. Lisa Diamond is dismantling outdated notions about women’s arousal. And industrial designer Ti Chang heads CRAVE, a company dedicated to designing and manufacturing elegant vibrators for women.

Providing the embodiment of this work are the personal stories of Umnia, Becca, Jasmine, Sunny, and Coriama – five young women discovering and owning their sexuality.

The Dilemma of Desire is a powerful reminder that true equality will come only when we all arrive at a place of understanding and acknowledgement that women are sexual beings, entitled to live their lives fully within the expression of their desire.

Panelists

Maria Finitzo (Director/Producer) is a two-time Peabody Award-winning filmmaker who has won every major broadcast award including the Alfred E duPont Award for her directing on the series Hard-Earned. Her films have screened in festivals around the world, exploring different realms of storytelling by investigating the important social issues of the day. She is an associate of four-time Oscar-nominated Kartemquin Films. Finitzo is also a screenwriter and fiction film director. In 2014, she founded Film Arts Productions, LLC to produce independent fiction films. Those Left Behind, her first feature film, from her original screenplay premiered at festivals throughout the country and is in distribution with Random Media and The Orchard. Film Arts is developing Finitzo’s next fiction film, A Taste of Life, adaptation of the story Passion by Nobel Prize winning author Alice Munro.

Ti Chang is a design entrepreneur and activist passionate about designing better products for women. She is the co-founder and VP of Design of CRAVE, a San Francisco-based company specializing in aesthetic pleasure products. Ti leads the design vision for the company’s full line of products which has won international design awards and has led CRAVE to mainstream partnerships with the likes of Nordstrom, MoMA Design Store, Standard Hotel, Goop, and Saint Laurent. Ti is credited with mainstreaming the category of sex jewelry with the introduction of the iconic Vesper vibrator necklace in 2014. Its viral duality as both a public and private object has continued to create connections and conversations around normalizing pleasure. Ti holds an M.A. in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London and a B.S. in Industrial Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

Stacey B. B. Dutton, Ph.D., is a neuroscientist with a passion for creative pedagogies, student-centered research, and mentorship. She earned her doctorate in Neuroscience from Emory University in Atlanta, GA, and her Bachelors of Science in Biology from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne, MD. She received her post-doctoral training through the Fellows In Research and Science Teaching (FIRST) program at Emory University. Her research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and has been presented on national platforms, including the Annual Society for Neuroscience and the American Epilepsy Society conferences. She has also received grants from the Epilepsy Foundation and the National Institutes of Health to fund her research. Dr. Dutton currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department and Neuroscience Program at Agnes Scott College, where she challenges her students to “think deeply, live honorably and engage the intellectual and social challenges of their times.”

Jourdain Searles (Moderator) is a writer, film critic and performer who hails from Georgia and is currently living in New York City. She has written for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, Sight & Sound, Vulture and many other publications. Her work focuses on culture and the way it is influenced by race and gender.