Announcing Scholar Salon 4
Scholar Salon 4: "La Frontierra Chingada"
Join us for the Salon with filmmaker Emily Packer
Wednesday, February 22
2:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Association for the Study of Women and Mythology is inviting you to a film screening and a follow-up Zoom meeting.
"La Frontierra Chingada" is a poetic film about mythic motherhood and transformation at the US-Mexico border.a
Then join the discussion with Filmmaker Emily Packer!
Wednesday, February 22
2:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Scholar Salon: Filmmaker Emily Packer’s Vision of Mythic Motherhood on the Border
February 22, 2020
2pm Eastern Standard Time
ASWM Online Scholar Salon with Filmmaker Emily Packer
La Frontierra Chingada is a 2015 poetic non-fiction film about motherhood on the US-Mexico border. Mythic figures like Tonāntzin, the Virgin Guadalupe, la Llorona and la Chingada, manifest themselves at Friendship Park–a space where families on either side of la frontera can come together, but meet there under extreme conditions of surveillance. Guided in part by conversations with the filmmaker’s matrilineal family, the film concerns itself with relationships betweenwomen’s bodies, space, and the shared land and history in the San Diego-Tijuana region.
Emily Packer is an experimental non-fiction filmmaker with an interest in border culture and border theory. She says, “A huge part of my trepidation in making this film was about not wanting to presume to be able to make a relevant film about the border as an Anglo American filmmaker. But I think it’s incredibly important for white artists to make reflexive work about the border, given that we are implicated in its existence, and that our understanding and perspective shift is necessary to improve the situation (which includes death, dehumanization, and forced separation of family). At some point I gave myself permission to trust that I could make meaningful art about the border, and that the story I had to tell was important.”
See the one-hour film, available now in ASWM’s member-only resource library, and join us for a conversation with Emily about crossing and transforming borders that separate us. The Salon discussion will be moderated by Natasha Redina, a filmmaker and ecotherapist who is a member of ASWM’s advisory board.
2020 Conference Presentation by Judy Grahn: “Living in a Sentient World”
Judy is unable to attend the conference. We are hoping to Skype in her presentation. Please check the updated conference schedule.
“For forty years I’ve been thinking and writing about the intense psychic connections we can experience with creatures, including insects, that live around us, incorporating them in my poetry and my novel, Mundane’s World, as well as in stories. This paper will discuss how to recognize and induce these connections of inter-species consciousness (shared sacred space), how to record and believe the experiences, and then how to write them. My goal is to share these accounts with more skeptical humans in order to reduce both cynicism and romanticism, to strengthen bonds between people and creature life, to encourage recognition of shared minds, and to amplify the value we place on beings who share space with us. I’ll illustrate the topic with selections from my current work in progress.”
Judy Grahn is internationally known as a poet, author and cultural theorist. She has published fourteen books, with two more forthcoming. Judy holds a Ph.D. in Integral Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies, where she often teaches. She is retired co-director and core faculty of the Women’s Spirituality MA program at New College of California, and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and Sofia University.
2020 Conference: Vicki Noble, “Women’s Blood: the Sacred Waters of Life”
“It cannot be an accident that the first act of so many women in the Goddess movement was to reclaim and resacralize the menstrual cycle. In fact, menstruation may be a root cause for the so-called “leap” into the human species—one of the breakaway events that allowed human evolution to take place, distinguishing us from all other primates.
I hope to show that it was this lunar menstrual cycle that gave rise to the first collective human rituals and community celebrations, as well as whole systems of ancient mathematics and scientific understandings that led to the building of stone circles, medicine wheels, and eventually the temples and churches of the modern era.”
Vicki Noble is a feminist artist, healer, writer, and wisdom teacher, co-creator of Motherpeace and author of numerous books including Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess, Shakti Woman: Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World, and The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power. For decades she has traveled and taught internationally; her books are translated and published in various languages. Retired from teaching, Vicki facilitates private intensive tutorials and master classes for students and individual clients who come from around the world to study Motherpeace Tarot, learn Tibetan Buddhist Dakini practices especially adapted for them, or to simply deepen their understanding of ancient civilizations of the Goddess in prehistory and contemporary matriarchal cultures.
You must be logged in to post a comment.