NOW Women's Film Festival: 2025

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

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Lovers of inclusive cinema unite! There is reason to cheer for this year’s season of films in the NOW Film Fest at the Tropic Cinema. Films will show every Wednesday in March at 6 PM.

This year they are overlapping with Black History Month, beginning on March 5, with a showing of “Selma” (2014) by the master Ava DuVernay.

This film details the emotional and compelling three marches on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by John Lewis and Martin Luther King in 1965. King and John Lewis (David Oyelowo and Stephan James) are pitted against the right-wing status quo personified by George Wallace (Tim Roth). King attempts to convince a reluctant LBJ (Tom Wilkinson) to give black people the right to vote in 1965. The film in 2014 was snubbed by the Academy without proper screeners and protocol.

Consequently, the Oscars were labeled as “Too White” by insiders, noting the Academy had a distinctive lack of diversity.

The film highlights a fine performance by Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, the calm woman of forceful empathy alongside the great peacemaker.
“Selma” is a rich, comprehensive and stirring film that has many striking parallels to today’s political divisiveness and our national challenges with inclusion and compassion.

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Next on March 12, from the eclectic Lena Dunham, “Catherine Called Birdy” (2022) is a no holds barred send up of male confinement in the Middle Ages.

Birdy, a fourteen-year-old British girl (Bella Ramsey) is under the rule of her father (Andrew Scott) and her mother (Billie Piper). Birdy resolves to be her own person, outsmarting suitor after suitor including an overzealous man from Kent (played by the comic Russell Brand) and an animalistic brute (Paul Kaye).

Bella Ramsey gives a wild and unrestrained performance, and she is a wonder to behold, in turns innocent, and sarcastic at others, pointed and pained. Birdy reflects upon the spirit world, but primary importance belongs to her personal independence. She is altruistic at first, and then she is anarchistic. Birdy is a product of Nature, unrestrained and unbound, free of male labels.

The episodic story recalls Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles as one salacious, controlling man after the other attempts to take advantage of Birdy.

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On March 19th, “La Pointe Courte” (1954) is a first film by French New Wave’s Agnès Varda.

Blending naturalism with surrealism and depicted in black and white, the film is piercing in contrast, possessing the cinematic melancholy of a film noir.

Located in Sète, Lui (Phillipe Noiret) goes to pick up his estranged wife Elle (Sylvia Monfort). They have not seen each other in four years. Elle is poker faced, while Lui is enervated as if someone has just died. Elle wonders if they have a connection. Lui replies that it does not matter. Lui looks as if he is looking for a ghost, while Elle is transfixed, frozen and far away.

Both are listening to different oceans, alternate stations of the sea.

Day after day, the saturnine couple walk together on a desolate, pockmarked beach, while locals cast the evil eye and complain about marriage and seashore bureaucracy.

Fishermen drown struggling cats in water.

This is a searing portrait of a frayed couple decades before “Kramer versus Kramer” and “Possession” (1981). Sylvia Monfort is wondrous, and Phillipe Noirette is in a perfect state of anhedonia.

Varda is a master of portraiture. Her camera is a laser that always reveals and illuminates.

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Then last but not least, on March 26th, “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985) by Susan Seidelman is quirky, colorful and fun.

The film is a time capsule of New York City in the 80s. Starring Roseanne Arquette and Madonna. The plot showcases New York City when it was daring, full of neon and unapologetically exciting.

Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is married to conservative bathroom-spa installer Gary (Mark Blum). Roberta sees a personal ad in the paper and becomes fascinated by Susan (Madonna).

Susan lives as a bohemian from one apartment to the next, and Roberta is curious about her vagabond life.

When Susan gets unwittingly mixed up in a crime involving a gangster, Roberta has an accident, hits her head and gets mistaken for Susan.

The film illustrates both Susan’s and Roberta’s independence. Gary is dense and insensitive while Roberta dreams of a black-laced neon life free and unencumbered.

Madonna is alluring in her debut film as a video age wanderer moving thru the quaint sloppiness of Battery Park—a Betty Boop for MTV.

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With this group of diverse and kaleidoscopic films, the 2025 NOW Women’s Film Festival is—once again—not to be missed. Let us watch bravely and boldly! EVERY Wednesday in MARCH at 6 PM at the TROPIC CINEMA.

Write Ian at ianfree11@yahoo.com