Top off your 2021 Festival experience with our Closing Night Live special event! Feature film Women Is Losers sets the tone for this feminist, femme-centric evening of film and performance. Your ticket includes a screening of Women Is Losers, a live discussion with filmmaker Lissette Feliciano, and an all-Baltimore Virtual Variety Show with the best femme performers Charm City has to offer, streamed live from the main stage at the SNF Parkway Theatre.
This is the special one-night-only event screening of Women Is Losers. To watch the film after the special event has ended, visit the film page here.
Virtual Variety Show Performers
Like Water, Host
Like Water seamlessly blends electronic and acoustic instruments with transcendent vocals leaving listeners in a state of euphoria! This Baltimore native allows the audience to watch as she masterfully layers unique sounds creating an experience you never want to end.
Liz Downing, Visual/Performance Artist
Liz Downing's newest project is "Curving Tooth", a "techno-Appalachian" surrealist folk collaboration with Greg Hatem, employing Downing's songbook and Hatem's musical direction. Hatem sampled various iterations of Downing's vocals and banjo, then processed them to create environmental arrangements for Downing's dream-inspired lyrics depicting shape shifting animals, Dirt worship and the Reptilian Brain.
Downing is a painter, puppet maker, writer and performer, who also works with "Old Songs", creating translations of Archaic Greek poetry and putting them to music, and with Allison Cendaniel, creating experimental vocal compositions called, "In the Womb of the Everywhere Room". Hatem is an arranger, songwriter, producer, and performer in bands Natural Velvet (post-punk) and Moth Broth (psych-folk).
Isabella, Musician
Isabella is from Baltimore, MD. They create songs inspired by their daydreams, nightmares and all things inbetween. Using a flute and their voice as an avatar, they explore various sonic realms conjured through a digital audio workstation. They have made contributions to various local projects (past and present) including Blud, Rest, Sword Prom, and most recently, Tear Sponsor.
Betty O’Hellno, Drag Artist
Betty O'Hellno is a queer drag artist and burlesque performer. She believes whole-heartedly in the incredible healing power of rhinestone sparkle, entrancing nipple tassels, and the positive celebration of the human body in all of its beautiful forms. Follow her on Instagram @bettyohellno for more sparkle!
Becca Brooks Morrin, DJ
Becca Brooks Morrin (DJ Book of Morrin) is a part time DJ and full time Production Designer splitting her time between Baltimore and Brooklyn. She production designed this year's Opening Night film Strawberry Mansion and this is her 5th year DJing the Maryland Film Festival.
Set in a hyper-stylized bubblegum pop version of 1960’s America, Women Is Losers opens with a bang as it tells the politically charged, feminist story of a Latinx single mother negotiating the intersection of mysogyny, racism, and classism as she struggles to make a life for her and her child.
Two teenage Latinx girls are excitedly navigating the world of dating and sexuality, when the unthinkable happens: they both get pregnant. After a traumatic experience attempting to get an abortion prior to Roe vs. Wade, the lead character, Celina Guerrera (played by Lorenza Izzo) carries her baby to term and is forced to drop out of high school and work. With an unsupportive father and an absent partner, Celina must find a way for her and her son to live in a world that makes it very difficult for women, and especially women of color, to seek a career and success independently of a husband. Women Is Losers takes an energizing, elegant look at gendered political issues which are as relevant today as they were in the 1960’s.
—Emily Eddy, Guest Festival Shorts Programmer, MdFF 2021
Content Considerations: Depictions of harassment and abuse, implied sexual situations, implied violence, racist language.
After the screening there will be a live virtual Q&A with Writer/Director Lissette Feliciano moderated by MdFF Artistic Director, Christy LeMaster.
- Year2021
- Runtime85 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, Spanish
- CountryUnited States
- NoteIn English and Spanish with English subtitles, English closed captions also available
- DirectorLissette Feliciano
- ScreenwriterLissette Feliciano
- ProducerAndrea Chung, Lissette Feliciano, Luis David Ortiz
- Executive ProducerLorenza Izzo, Cecilia Ramos, Brooks Robertson, Ghalib Datta, Ted Chung
- Co-ProducerLee Loechler, James Yi
- CastLorenza Izzo, Bryan Craig, Chrissie Fit, Simu Liu
- CinematographerFarhad Ahmed Dehlvi
- EditorJohn-Michael Powell
- Production DesignSusan Alegria
- Sound DesignAaron Bartsch
- MusicFrederik Wiedmann
Top off your 2021 Festival experience with our Closing Night Live special event! Feature film Women Is Losers sets the tone for this feminist, femme-centric evening of film and performance. Your ticket includes a screening of Women Is Losers, a live discussion with filmmaker Lissette Feliciano, and an all-Baltimore Virtual Variety Show with the best femme performers Charm City has to offer, streamed live from the main stage at the SNF Parkway Theatre.
This is the special one-night-only event screening of Women Is Losers. To watch the film after the special event has ended, visit the film page here.
Virtual Variety Show Performers
Like Water, Host
Like Water seamlessly blends electronic and acoustic instruments with transcendent vocals leaving listeners in a state of euphoria! This Baltimore native allows the audience to watch as she masterfully layers unique sounds creating an experience you never want to end.
Liz Downing, Visual/Performance Artist
Liz Downing's newest project is "Curving Tooth", a "techno-Appalachian" surrealist folk collaboration with Greg Hatem, employing Downing's songbook and Hatem's musical direction. Hatem sampled various iterations of Downing's vocals and banjo, then processed them to create environmental arrangements for Downing's dream-inspired lyrics depicting shape shifting animals, Dirt worship and the Reptilian Brain.
Downing is a painter, puppet maker, writer and performer, who also works with "Old Songs", creating translations of Archaic Greek poetry and putting them to music, and with Allison Cendaniel, creating experimental vocal compositions called, "In the Womb of the Everywhere Room". Hatem is an arranger, songwriter, producer, and performer in bands Natural Velvet (post-punk) and Moth Broth (psych-folk).
Isabella, Musician
Isabella is from Baltimore, MD. They create songs inspired by their daydreams, nightmares and all things inbetween. Using a flute and their voice as an avatar, they explore various sonic realms conjured through a digital audio workstation. They have made contributions to various local projects (past and present) including Blud, Rest, Sword Prom, and most recently, Tear Sponsor.
Betty O’Hellno, Drag Artist
Betty O'Hellno is a queer drag artist and burlesque performer. She believes whole-heartedly in the incredible healing power of rhinestone sparkle, entrancing nipple tassels, and the positive celebration of the human body in all of its beautiful forms. Follow her on Instagram @bettyohellno for more sparkle!
Becca Brooks Morrin, DJ
Becca Brooks Morrin (DJ Book of Morrin) is a part time DJ and full time Production Designer splitting her time between Baltimore and Brooklyn. She production designed this year's Opening Night film Strawberry Mansion and this is her 5th year DJing the Maryland Film Festival.
Set in a hyper-stylized bubblegum pop version of 1960’s America, Women Is Losers opens with a bang as it tells the politically charged, feminist story of a Latinx single mother negotiating the intersection of mysogyny, racism, and classism as she struggles to make a life for her and her child.
Two teenage Latinx girls are excitedly navigating the world of dating and sexuality, when the unthinkable happens: they both get pregnant. After a traumatic experience attempting to get an abortion prior to Roe vs. Wade, the lead character, Celina Guerrera (played by Lorenza Izzo) carries her baby to term and is forced to drop out of high school and work. With an unsupportive father and an absent partner, Celina must find a way for her and her son to live in a world that makes it very difficult for women, and especially women of color, to seek a career and success independently of a husband. Women Is Losers takes an energizing, elegant look at gendered political issues which are as relevant today as they were in the 1960’s.
—Emily Eddy, Guest Festival Shorts Programmer, MdFF 2021
Content Considerations: Depictions of harassment and abuse, implied sexual situations, implied violence, racist language.
After the screening there will be a live virtual Q&A with Writer/Director Lissette Feliciano moderated by MdFF Artistic Director, Christy LeMaster.
- Year2021
- Runtime85 minutes
- LanguageEnglish, Spanish
- CountryUnited States
- NoteIn English and Spanish with English subtitles, English closed captions also available
- DirectorLissette Feliciano
- ScreenwriterLissette Feliciano
- ProducerAndrea Chung, Lissette Feliciano, Luis David Ortiz
- Executive ProducerLorenza Izzo, Cecilia Ramos, Brooks Robertson, Ghalib Datta, Ted Chung
- Co-ProducerLee Loechler, James Yi
- CastLorenza Izzo, Bryan Craig, Chrissie Fit, Simu Liu
- CinematographerFarhad Ahmed Dehlvi
- EditorJohn-Michael Powell
- Production DesignSusan Alegria
- Sound DesignAaron Bartsch
- MusicFrederik Wiedmann