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  • Corporate Philanthropy, College Students, and The LUNAFEST® Film Festival
  • Kelly Hankin (bio)

In 2001, Clif Bar & Company, makers of LUNA: The Whole Nutrition Bar for Women, debuted LUNAFEST®, an international touring film festival that showcases short narrative and documentary work of female filmmakers and raises money for the Breast Cancer Fund and other nonprofit women’s organizations. A pre-packaged film festival with clear and easy instructions for every stage of the event—from publicity to ticket sales—LUNAFEST® is a user-friendly fundraiser that simply asks its host organizations to stage and promote regional festivals. Since its inception, LUNAFEST® has made significant inroads into university settings. Though the majority of LUNAFEST® programs are currently organized by nonprofit women’s organizations, the number of LUNAFEST® events on college campuses is noteworthy. Between July 2010 and July 2011, of the 125 LUNAFEST® events across the country, 25 percent of the events took place on college campuses. And while LUNAFEST® has not yet made major inroads to high schools, during this same period of time, students at six high schools were able to participate in the planning or screening of a LUNAFEST® program.1

As a professor of feminist media and women’s cinema, and a former curator of lesbian and gay and women’s film festivals, I am on the one hand pleased by the emergence and success of the LUNAFEST® enterprise.2 As feminist film scholars, feminist activists, and women film-makers have long demonstrated, female directors are an under-represented and under-funded group (Lauzen; Hankin; Guerilla Girls).3 Like other marginalized filmmakers (particularly gays and lesbians and people of color), women filmmakers often depend on film festivals to support and bring attention to their work. Although national and international film festivals continue to grow at exponential rates, festivals dedicated solely to women directors remain a scattered and fragile enterprise.4 LUNAFEST® should be applauded for encouraging and supporting the work of women filmmakers and for bringing their projects to regions and communities that otherwise might not have access to non-industrial cinemas.

The LUNAFEST® enterprise is also a welcome addition on college campuses because it enables students to take part in the production and circulation of alternative [End Page 229] media. As Leandra Preston writes in a recent issue of Radical Teacher, in a time of increased student dependence on technology, student-created media is an important pedagogical component of contemporary education. Contributing to cultural production, she rightly argues, “reminds students that they are not only consumers of culture and media, but also participants who play a role in the proliferation and outcomes of contemporary media” (15). Though Preston specifically refers to the student creation of social justice–oriented MySpace pages, the creation and promotion of alternative exhibition spaces is likewise an invaluable form of cultural production in which students can participate. While access to digital camcorders and editing programs in academic environments currently makes student moviemaking a commonplace practice, it is far less common for students to understand the value of creating and participating in alternative media communities. Though it is true that many festivals have strictly commercial agendas (e.g., Sundance and Telluride), an overwhelming number of film festivals in the U.S. exist to screen works unsupported or marginalized by the mainstream commercial industry, as well as to provide a space for under-served audiences to watch, reflect, and debate images.5 When festivals revolve around social justice issues, the value of alternative exhibition spaces becomes all the more imperative. Thus, LUNAFEST’s® ability to put students at the helm of a film festival revolving around disadvantaged filmmakers is an important and valuable component of their media awareness and education.

On the other hand, having integrated LUNAFEST® into two classes at my small liberal arts university, I am troubled by its place in higher education. In a 2006 seminar titled “Film Festivals and Social Change,” students spent the entire semester working on various components and concerns of film festival exhibition (Appendix A), while in a 2007 introductory seminar on “Women Filmmakers,” students moved from learning about the history and politics of female directors to working as exhibitors of their work (Appendix B). While both classes...

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