Ladies perform for charity LadyFest South has come to Atlanta this year. Weaving their feministic ideas in a series of events, the organization is trying to generate money for two charities “Fund for Southern Communities” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls”. The festival, runs from January 25-28, 2007, consists of concerts, spoken word, poetry, independent films, meeting artists etc. Being a feministic event, there are all girl bands (one included a transexual), female poets and female directors. Most of the performers have agreed to perform for free and volunteered to drive down to Atlanta for the event. The 27th consists of 2 sessions: films in the afternoon and a number of performances in the evening. The venue is a restaurant in Little Five Points, Grandma Luke’s, which is a quaint little place with one row of tables. The atmosphere is laidback and the films are being played in the backroom using a laptop along with a projector that displayed on an un-plastered wall. Initially there are about 6-7 middle aged women who greet us and then the performers start trickling in. Karen Garrabrant is one of the organizers who mentions the significance of the event and that it had taken them more than 2 years of planning to have it in Atlanta. Around 254 artists had entered to participate in it out of which 54 were selected. All the proceeds from this will go towards the two charities. According to Karen, Fund for Southern Communities “uses funds to support long term sustainability in Southern Communities, spend several months in rural communities, and [they] are working in New Orleans right now.”. The other group “Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls” helps girls learn sound recording. Being a male dominated field, “few girls are encouraged in this way because it is intimidating…” The three movies are women centric. We only manage to see one of them that compared people to airplanes and involved two girls who had a fling for a short while. That particular movie is actually was a superimposition of two films, one is a color film probably shot by the director and the other is an older B&W film that provided a lot of the commentary and sudden changes in the shots. By this time the crowd size increases and everyone claps when the film ended. Most of the audience though is quite fickle, and besides a few women, everyone is pretty much walking around, seeing clips here and there and going about their own activities. During the movie we manage to interview the band Giddy-up, helicopter!, an all girls band who secured this gig through a contest that they had entered using Sonicbids. The band members look like kids and they came all the way from Florida admitting that this festival gave them all a good reason to get out of the state. Corey Houlihan, a spoken word artist, believes that this is a great event: “it’s pretty cool to have an event with a majority of female performers since there is such a lack of that, more so because of the walls that have to be pushed in normal festivals.” She came across this particular event through myspace.com and word of mouth. Melissa Gordon is a spoken word artist who is also an author and a social worker. She talks to us about her recent book, her brain injury fund that she started after surviving a trailer hit, and her recent travels. She too feels that male dominance is prevalent in all disciplines and seems very happy to be part of Ladyfest. Unfortunately we are unable to attend the events later in the day at The Five Spot, a bar in Little Five Points and actually feel the energy of the performances. by Nirmal Thakker and Jill Donnelly About LadyFest Ladyfest is a community based, not-for-profit global music and arts festival for female artists which features bands, musical groups, performance artists, authors, spoken word and visual artists, workshops, and is organized by volunteers. The origins of Ladyfest developed from the DIY ethic Riot grrrl movement from Olympia, Washington combined with inclusive feminist philosophy. The first ever Ladyfest was conducted in Olympia, Washington in August 2000 with over 2000 people attending. Prime motivators in the event were Sleater-Kinney, Cat Power, and Neko Case. Since the first Ladyfest, the event has branched out into other urban centers such as Amsterdam, Atlanta, Belgium, Berlin, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Brooklyn, Columbus, Chicago, Cardiff, Dublin, Lansing, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Orlando, Ottawa, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego, Toronto, Washington DC, and more. Each new festival is organized locally and independently of other Ladyfest events in other states or countries, primarily by volunteers, and most proceeds are donated to non-profit organizations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladyfest Fund for Southern Communities: The Fund for Southern Communities provides the financial resource to help move groups from thought to action. FSC supports small community groups working for environmental justice, anti-racism, women's rights, youth development, LGBTQ rights, worker's rights, civil rights and disability rights and other varied issues that address social change through community organizing. Grantees not only benefit from financial support, but they are also given technical assistance. |
Videos                          |