Festival Programme
WOFFF20 | 26–30 SEPT | ONLINE | WOFFF.CO.UK
Join your hosts, Nuala O'Sullivan and Natalie Burwell, as they announce the jury prizes for WOFFF20, along with sponsors, Heidi McCormack and Steve Wardlaw from Emerald Life, as they announce the results of the WOFFF Emerald Choice Audience Choice Award 2020.
Join Nuala and Natalie from Team WOFFF as they announce this exciting new development for WOFFF21.
In 2021, TENA will be the lead sponsor of the Women Over Fifty Film Festival 2021. You’ll know TENA, the makers of incontinence pads and pants. Earlier this year TENA really stepped up their aim to break down negative perceptions around women when we age, as we are prone to do!
In partnership with TENA, we’re excited to launch a new category for films on the theme “our bodies change, but why should we?” This category will be part of our 2021 festival and follow the golden rule of WOFFF. And that is that all film entries should feature a woman over 50 at its centre or be directed, written or produced by a female filmmaker over 50. Together, WOFFF and TENA will put older women centre stage!
More details will be available when submissions open on Filmfreeway in the New Year.
WOFFF20 LINE UP
Our sixth festival in September 2020 was packed with stunning, independent short films, filmmaker Q&As, a lecture and an awards ceremony.
Over five days WOFFF presented eight programmes of 58 international short films showcasing the very best work from older women in front of and behind the camera around the globe. We hope this virtual festival inspires, engages and galvanises you in this COVID-19 time and beyond. Image by Sue Bridge, The Last Egg.
Welcome to WOFFF20!
Hello! We’re so glad you’re here! Our sixth festival, and our first one online, is packed with short films, filmmaker Q&As, a lecture and an awards ceremony.
We want WOFFF to be inclusive and accessible to everyone. Thanks to the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, distributed-by The National Lottery Community Fund, every short film is subtitled and/or closed captioned.
Here’s festival Director, Nuala O’Sullivan, to welcome everyone to WOFFF20.
SATURDAY 26 SEPT | WEDNESDAY 30 SEPT
Films to channel your anger, to make you scream and shout, to galvanise you into action. Join this revolutionary band of older and younger women planting trees, fighting sexual abuse, and bursting balloons.
The filmmakers from programme one in conversation with Nuala O’Sullivan on their work, process and inspiration for their short films.
Mignon McLaughlin said, “The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it; we can always feel it.”
Though initially these films seem to be located in years gone by, they burst through with the urgency of now.
The filmmakers from programme two in conversation with Nuala O’Sullivan on their work, process and inspiration for their short films.
Films exploring the world of work – in pre-COVID and COVID times – with stories of politics, power, love, friendship, abuse, fierce competition, and juggling.
The filmmakers from programme three in conversation with Nuala O’Sullivan on their work, process and inspiration for their short films.
7 love stories – love in nature, love of ourselves, love that’s just a swivel of the heart, pining for love, and a love that melts even a cruel witch’s heart.
This programme of shorts will cast a spell of love on you.
The filmmakers from programme four in conversation with Nuala O’Sullivan on their work, process and inspiration for their short films.
from intersectional oppression in the industry to defying ageist agendas by Dr. Francesca Sobande
Reflecting on the on-screen careers and star narratives of Viola Davis, Angela Bassett, Halle Berry, Pam Grier, and Grace Jones, this talk focuses on how famous Black women have faced intersectional forms of oppression in the screen industry and have defied restrictive ageist assumptions and agendas concerning their acting and performance trajectories.
Which films will capture hearts and minds and win the WOFFF20 Emerald Life Audience Choice Award?
Your online ballot – which you can cast during the festival period – helps decide the winner of this essential award.
Sylvia Earle says without water, we got nothing. Water is the stuff of life and of these tales of remembering, healing, friendship, and rage. Dive into these aquatic shorts.
The filmmakers from programme five in conversation with Nuala O’Sullivan on their work, process and inspiration for their short films.
Jumping on a bus and heading off – anywhere, just away. And so the journey begins. Through time and space, through long marriages and short midnight drives, to a kiss on a bridge and a long march up a mountain – these films are the ideal travelling companion.
The filmmakers from programme six in conversation with Nuala O’Sullivan on their work, process and inspiration for their short films.
Home: a house with 4 walls but no roof; where you go to work; where you can take and give care. Home can be in a trailerpark or behind high locked gates. Home may be the place where neighbours welcome you more than your family does.
The filmmakers from programme seven in conversation with Nuala O’Sullivan on their work, process and inspiration for their short films.
These shorts are tales of change and power, desire and redemption, renewal and deciding who’s going to be Ginger Spice. Brilliant WOFFF shorts of metamorphosis.
The filmmakers from programme eight in conversation with Nuala O’Sullivan on their work, process and inspiration for their short films.
Because of COVID-19 we’re not able to be in our usual festival home, Depot, in Lewes, East Sussex this year but we’re already looking forward to returning to Depot in 2021. Depot is an independent cinema with café restaurant, bar, education room and editing suite. There’s a beautiful garden too – perfect for the WOFFF September evenings. WOFFF Festival Director, Nuala O’Sullivan says, “We’re really missing our festival home this year but we hope it will make our return there next year all the sweeter.”
