In a new partnership between New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) and BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), we’re thrilled to present a collection of groundbreaking contemporary films that delve into science and technology in the modern world. These urgent documentaries and empowering fictions take us from the depths of outer space to the on-the-ground action of a Hasidic women-run ambulance corps and beyond.
Join us for a screening of Every Body followed by a conversation with director Julie Cohen. Moderated by NYWIFT Board Member Okema T. Moore.
Date: Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Time: 7:00pm ET
Location: Peter Jay Sharp Building, 30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, 11217
Price: Free with reservation
About the Film:
Running Time: 92 min
Every Body is a revelatory investigation of the lives of intersex people. The film tells the stories of three individuals who have moved from childhoods marked by shame, secrecy, and non-consensual surgeries to thriving adulthoods after each decided to set aside medical advice to keep their bodies a secret and instead came out as their authentic selves. Actor and screenwriter River Gallo (they/them), political consultant Alicia Roth Weigel (she/they), and Ph.D. student Sean Saifa Wall (he/him) are now leaders in a fast-growing global movement advocating for greater understanding of the intersex community and an end to unnecessary surgeries. Woven into the story is a stranger-than-fiction case of medical abuse, featuring exclusive footage from the NBC News archives, which helps explain the modern-day treatment of intersex people.
Panelist
Julie Cohen is an Academy Award-nominated, Emmy winning director and producer of RBG, along with Betsy West. Other theatrical documentaries she’s directed with West include the Oscar-shortlisted Julia and the Peabody-winning My Name is Pauli Murray. Solo directing projects include Berlinale Official Selection, The Sturgeon Queens, and the New York Emmy-winning Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing. Before starting her own production company, Better Than Fiction, Cohen was a producer for Dateline
NBC.
Okema T. Moore (Moderator) is an Emmy Nominated, PGA producer and rising director. She has created unscripted and branded content for Lifetime, Netflix, Nickelodeon, DreamWorks, FOX, and Disney/Marvel. Some of that content includes Kenya Barris’ Klutch Academy, for BET, Beat Bobby Flay and The Kitchen on Food Network, Oprah’s Color of Care, Founding In Color Season 2 on Peacock and Nomad with Carlton McCoy on CNN. Most recently, she developed and produced a new docuseries for STARZ, and she was the lead producer for a short in this year’s AFI DWW 50th Anniversary Fellowship. She is a finalist presently for the PANO production microgrant, and has a host of indie shorts and a few features on deck to produce and direct. Her scripted work has premiered at a host of festivals, including TRIBECA, Outfest, ABFF, and the Oscar Qualifying Reel Sisters of the Diaspora.
Okema has been a semi-finalist for The Blackhouse Producer’s Lab and Sundance’s Producer’s Track in 2022, and in 2023 was a fellow for both the Stowe Story and the Black Magic Creative Producers Labs. She also proudly serves on the board of NY Women in Film & TV and the Black TV & Film Collective, where she led their inaugural Producer’s Fellowship in 2021. Okema is committed to continuing to lift while she climbs, to build up womxn, queer, IPOC, Caribbean and Black creatives, as she continues to build her own successful career in film and television.
Thanks to our partners:
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
The Screening Series is supported by:
BAM Brooklyn
30 Lafayette Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11217
programs@nywift.org
Join the conversation on social media:
#nywift | @nywift
NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are supported, in part, by grants from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
