LunaFest features award-winning short films “by, for and about women.” Last Saturday, the Zonta Club of Burbank returned LunaFest to the Laemmle Theater in NoHo, and engaged the audience with eight greats:
****Tryouts (14:00 minutes) features a Muslim American teenaged girl who wants to join her high school’s cheerleading squad. This gem of a film invites us to separate the essentials of our traditions from our accustomed expressions of them.
**Tits (4:45 minutes) is an earnest story of a young woman learning to appreciate her body without needing approval from an image-obsessed culture.
****Chica’s Day (10:00 minutes) is worthy of comparison with The Sixth Sense. It’s one of those rare films that can give the same event two very different meanings.
***Lady Parts (6:05 minutes) shows us a straight-shooting auto repair shop run by women. Somewhere Rosie the Riveter is shouting, “About time!”
****Miss Todd (12:53 minutes) was magnificent! Inspiring story, captivating heroine, marvelous singing, humor, wit and brilliant animation that put every penny on the screen. Memo to Disney: There’s a full-length animated feature in this tale of a pioneering (1910!) aeronautical engineer with the Wright stuff for showing the world how to fly.
***Flor de Toloache (3:30 minutes) is a red hot, all female mariachi band. Que bueno!
***A Good Match (13:00 minutes) highlights an often-neglected dilemma of relationships past and present. What happens when you break up with the boyfriend but you really got along with his mom? Breaking up is very hard to do indeed.
****Viva (7:39 minutes) is a documentary portrait of Cornwall’s grandmother of punk, now in her ninth decade. Betty White, meet your rebel twin.
The best LunaFest yet.
The Zonta Club of Burbank raised $2,000 in net proceeds from tickets and sponsorships. Every dollar of these funds will benefit the Breast Cancer Fund (breastcancerfund.org) and the Zonta Club of Burbank Area Foundation (zontaburbank.org), which provides grants to individual women and funds projects that empower women.
“We were proud to be hosting our 3rd annual LunaFest and each year, this event has been gaining momentum,” said BRITTANY VAUGHAN, President of the Zonta Club in Burbank. “LunaFest is a wonderful example of how Zonta is working to empower women through service and advocacy.”
“I really appreciate the strong support from Charter Business FiberSolutions, Burbank Optometric Center and Alisa Cunningham Properties,” said LunaFest chair NICKIE BONNER.
LUNA, “the makers of the Whole Nutrition Bar for Women.” established LunaFest in 2000. LUNA wanted to “promote women filmmakers, raise awareness for women’s issues, and support women’s nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada.” Thanks to organizations like Zonta, LunaFest will be traveling to over 150 cities and screen in front of an estimated 25,000 people.
For more information about LunaFest films and the stories behind them, please visit lunafest.org.
