The Social Justice Film Festival, sponsored by Cal Poly’s Interdisciplinary Studies in Liberal Arts department (ISLA), is set to return this month. This year, the festival’s theme is “Policing Women’s Bodies,” according to ISLA assistant professor and event coordinator Emily Ryalls.
The idea of the film festival came after Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity on campus, was vandalized with anti-semitic graffiti in 2021. Out of frustration, Ryalls said she wanted to find a way to address social issues outside of sending an email in solidarity.
“As an interdisciplinary studies department, we were particularly well suited to kind of do more with these issues,” Ryalls said. “So I suggested a social justice film festival.”
During its first year, Ryalls said the department wanted to screen uplifting films that center on race like Black Panther and The Farewell. The festival’s theme the next year focused on reproductive rights following Roe V. Wade being overturned.
Unlike previous years where the festival was solely organized through the ISLA department and the Science, Technology and Society program, students had a hand at curating the films this year. The Mustang Film Society, which started this last fall quarter, is slated as an organizer.
Prior to the festival, Ryalls had seen one of this year’s featured films, the Netflix documentary Victim/Suspect. The film focuses on multiple women who are charged with crimes after reporting that they had been sexually assaulted, according to IMDb. Ryalls said she thought the subject matter of the film was important to showcase.
“I think it highlights a really disturbing pattern that most of us are unaware of,” Ryalls said. “I guess that I see something, and I think ‘How can I get other people to see this?’”
After selecting Victim/Suspect, Ryalls had the Mustang Film Society choose a topic focused on the movie as well as another corresponding film to screen. They selected “Policing Women’s Bodies,” and later chose to screen Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things. According to IMDb, the film follows the character Bella Baxter, as she is brought back to life after dying and evolves as she learns more about the world around her.
Poor Things is set to play on Thursday, April 23 at 4 p.m., accompanied by commentary from ethnic studies professor Christina Kaviani, according to Ryalls. Rachel De Leon, an investigative journalist featured in Victim/Suspect, will talk about the film at 5 p.m. on April 24.
Ryalls said she is set to host the welcome ceremony, while students in the Mustang Film Society will introduce each speaker. After both of the speaker’s talks, there will be a Q & A session audience members can participate in.
Both films will be screened in the Advanced Technologies Lab (Bldg. 07). Admission to the screenings is free, according to an STS newsletter.
According to Ryalls, the Social Justice Film Festival works as a way to get people to think about social justice issues on a deeper level.
“I have found popular culture to be a really useful tool to getting students to talk about seemingly difficult issues,” she said. “In talking about these films, we can kind of make connection to the real world.”
She said in the future, the festival will be completely spearheaded by the Mustang Film Society, including selection of the films, speakers and they will fully take on the Em-Ceeing roles.