After reviewing over 1,000 submissions, the 2^nd Annual St. Francis College Women's Film Festival screened 60 films from 27 countries over two days in the College's Founders Hall.

The festival offered two days of thought-provoking panels and workshops with industry professionals. On Tuesday morning, the first panel discussed Why Women's Media Making Matters and featured Ally Acker (author, Reel Women), Debra Zimmerman (Executive Director, Women Make Movies), as well as filmmaker Isabel Sandoval.

(Watch Why Women's Media Making Matters)

"The outpouring of talent, creativity, and meaning in the films that were submitted was almost overwhelming," said Festival Co-Founder and St. Francis Professor Augusta Palmer, a director of multiple documentaries including her forthcoming film, The Blues Society, about the historical Memphis Country Blues Festivals of the late 60's. "By bringing together all these works and the female college and professional filmmakers who made them, we are building a bridge that will become a real pipeline for talent moving into the film industry."

(Watch Making It Happen: Filmmaking as Entrepreneurs)

This mission was made possible through the support of several partners of the festival, including The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP); Cinematcher, a new app that brings together producers and the people looking for jobs in film, TV, and digital media; Screening Room.org, a platform for filmmakers to showcase and get feedback on their work; The Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn's City Point; and Seed and Spark, an innovative crowdfunding platform for female filmmakers.

(Watch Crowdfunding: Financing Your Film)

The festival is a cross-disciplinary collaboration between the Communication Arts Department, the Women's Studies Center, and the Center for Entrepreneurship. "It really takes a village to create a film festival," added Professor Palmer. "Faculty from many disciplines helped us in reviewing the submissions."

"One of our other goals of the festival is to inspire discourse among women regarding the expression of women's image in film, as well as to explore the role of women in the history and evolving art of filmmaking," said Professor Magaly Colimon-Christopher, co-founder of the festival and also a Communication Arts faculty member at St. Francis. "This year, in order to facilitate this discussion, the festival will include panel discussions examining the historic and the emerging contributions of women in the film, filmmaking as entrepreneurship, as well as a crowdfunding workshop."

The Festival began Tuesday, March 28th, 2017 at 9:30am with an opening address and continued with screenings of the first round of short films. Another panel on Wednesday, Filmmaking as Entrepreneurship, featured Stacey Holman (Producer, Tell Them We are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities and Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band), Lauren Magura (Cinematcher), and Lisa Russell (Governess Films, StoryShifter).