Queer Women of Color Film Festival at the Brava Theater

Ruth Villaseñor, who owns Paws and Claws, a pet store in Oakland, never planned to make a film.

“I’m in my fifties,” she said. “I’d never picked up a camera before or worked on a Mac.”

But after taking the 16-week filmmaking class at the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Center, Villaseñor had made Traditional Indigenous Values, a short that will be part of the screening, "Reclaiming Remembrance," on Saturday, June 12 at 7 pm at the Brava Theater. 

She said it was Proposition 8, the state’s ban on gay marriage, which inspired her.

“My wife and I were married in 2008,” she said. “Then when Proposition 8 started it was just so painful. I couldn’t believe the hate that came out. As a native person, I just really felt it was about colonization.”

In the workshop, taught by Madeleine Lim, the executive director of QWOCMAP, Villaseñor said she learned all about making a film, from the technical aspect to how to write a script and how to tell a story.

“She condensed into 16 weeks what you learn in two years of film school,” she said about Lim. “She always said, ‘If we don’t tell our stories, who will?’”

The focus at the festival this year is gay Native Americans, or Two-Spirit people, says T. Kebo Drew, the managing director of QWOCMAP.

“We’ve had great response from Two-Spirit people and from straight native folks as well,” Drew said.

Drew says along with the screening on Saturday night focused on indigenous filmmakers, the will be a performance at 4:00 on Saturday with dancing, music and blessings.

Another short film screening Saturday along with Villaseñor’s is Killing the Seventh Generation, about forced sterilization of American Indian women. Esther Lucero, who works at the Native American Health Center, studied public policy at Mills College. She says she wanted to make the film as a visual element to go along with policy.

Lucero says she and Mills professor Dr. Melinda Micco, who worked on the short with her, would like to make a feature film on the subject, interviewing women who were sterilized without their consent, but they want to wait to have more resources, such as mental health services to offer the women.

“In Native culture, there’s the concept of reciprocity,” she said. “We can’t just take the stories and not give anything. We have a responsibility to that person.”