Acting Like Women

A child survivor of the Holocaust receives a packet of beads in a Displaced Persons camp after the war. Her mother tears off a piece of her skirt and the child embroiders a goose. Thus begins her life-long journey with thread and needle not knowing that someday this simple act will save her life again. Based on the life and art of Holocaust survivor Trudie Strobel.

The film was created by teens who worked with an artist mentor over Zoom, using their phones as cameras and cardboard boxes as animation stands. It is a production of The Righteous Conversations Project, a collaboration of Holocaust survivors and teens, based in Los Angeles and founded in 2011.

A survivor of the Holocaust shares personal testimony of being one of a hundred or so children to survive Theresienstadt, the concentration camp for children.

An animated film that chronicles the extraordinary saga of Holocaust survivor Eva Brettler – a child facing brutality and profound loss who finds sustenance in faith and her own dreams for the future. From the loss of her parents to a forced death march across Europe, young Eva survives Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camps, the destruction of her family, and the near destruction of European Jewry to emerge, with a tender heart and faith intact, crediting the goodness and decency of helpers and caretakers she encountered along the way.

Dutch sisters, born on the same day but years apart, are separated by the Holocaust and raised in hiding by two very different families. They couldn't be more different but once reunited they form a bond that can’t be broken.

Hand-drawn animation illustrates Holocaust Survivor Erika Jacoby’s memories of surviving Auschwitz. Produced by students aged 12-17 in a Righteous Conversations Project summer workshop at Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles.

Muslim and Jewish teens come together to animate the story of two men, Abdol Hossein Sardari and Ibrahim Morady, a Muslim and a Jew in Paris during the Holocaust. Their friendship and advocacy saved Jewish lives and the generations who would follow them. Created by NewGround MAJIC Changemakers and The Righteous Conversations Project – teens, mentors and filmmakers who are inspired by this story to celebrate the life-saving power of relationship and partnership. To learn more about NewGround: mjnewground.org. To learn more about The Righteous Conversations Project - righteousconversations.org/

I Am A Traister: The Sarah Moskovitz Story is an animated film made by teens that tells the story of an unsung hero now in her 90s. In 1980s Los Angeles, Sarah Traister Moskovitz and her colleague Flo Kinsler founded the first Child Survivors of the Holocaust therapy and support group which went on to be a worldwide phenomenon. For the first time this generation of child survivors, then in their 40s and 50s, could name their experience, find community and begin to heal. Now in their 80s and 90s, these survivors consider themselves to be "phantom siblings" with Sarah as their "mother." The film was created by teens who worked with an artist mentor over Zoom, using their phones as cameras and cardboard boxes as animation stands. It is a production of The Righteous Conversations Project, a collaboration of Holocaust survivors and teens, based in Los Angeles and now in its tenth year.

Alma W. Thomas lived a life of firsts: the first Fine Arts graduate of Howard University (1924), the first Black woman to mount a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1972), and the first Black woman to have her paintings exhibited in the White House (2009). Yet she did not receive national attention until she was 80.

SHE IS US: THE STORY OF JUDGE SONGHAI ARMSTEAD is an animated film that chronicles the extraordinary story of social justice warrior Songhai Armstead who was system impacted, faced systemic obstacles, and found purpose in empowering others. After a challenging childhood in foster care, Songhai embarks on a remarkable journey that shows the importance of creating opportunities. The film is a production of The Righteous Conversations Project and Second Nurture, a non-profit organization that mobilizes communities to support foster families and help children thrive. She is Us was directed by Samara Hutman & C. Lily Ericsson and animated by an extraordinary team of young people who know the potential of art and story to shape our world.

A by-the-people, for-the-people approach to queer youth video, the 1995 short documentary Out Loud provides a forum for an age group which often receives short shrift. What is it like to be gay bashed? Does your sexual orientation really matter? In nine installments, LGBTQ teens discuss their hopes, fears, challenges, and achievements in their own words, and with their own vision.

Peter and Katherine Witner are Southern California super-yuppies with great jobs but no center to their lives. When they both lose their jobs and begin marital infidelities, their solution is to start their own business together. In order to find meaning to their empty lives, they follow various New Age gurus and other such groups. Eventually, they hit rock bottom and have to make some hard decisions.

In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. This short film uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure. Now more than 40 years later, award-winning Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic and pioneer scholar of women in Surrealism and ecofeminism in the arts. Her delightful tale brings alive an often unseen history of women in the arts.

Stolen art, cigarettes, and love describe Heartless, a short film that emulates the style of Godard's Breathless.

When Susan Rennie retired from academia, she returned to her first love – photography. With humor and wit, Rennie’s photographic interventions offer a feminist critique of the conventional canon of art history, and an unabashed embrace of her elder, queer identity. The results are juicy, eye-opening, and often hilarious.

Enter a pastel dreamland of 3,000 vintage beauty artifacts in the desert community of Joshua Tree, California and meet “America's hairstorian” Jeff Hafler as he struggles to keep his roadside attraction afloat during a remarkable year that changes his life and the lives of his husband and son.