Curated by Cathy de la Cruz, filmmaker and co-curator of the first ever Ladyfest Film Festival in Olympia, WA. Basic Needs was put together especially for the Ms. Films Festival and includes some of the original Ladyfest filmmakers as well as a slew of others who are breaking boundaries by destroying genres through experimental storytelling.


* Films will not necessarily screen in this order. Please check back for program order and location.

Floods, Ghosts, Contamination: Stories of Terror from South Central Texas , Jenny Stark, 15min, 2004, 16mm, Sacramento, CA
An eerie documentary that juxtaposes natural disasters, Mexican folklore and national tragedies. 

Heavy and Warm , Mendi Menefee, 2min, 2004, DV, Los Angeles, CA
Hand drawn animation exploring aspects of queer lesbian identity that the media often overlooks.

Knuckle Down , Sarah Marcus and K8 Hardy, 8 min, 2000, 16mm and DV, Portland, OR
The filmmakers don't give a straight answer but instead evoke madness and irony around the issues typically important to feminists and queers alike.

Good Dog, Carl…. 2 min 30 sec, 1998, Hi-8 and Nude Ascending Staircase , 2 min 52 sec, 2001, Hi-8, Bridget Irish, Olympia, WA
Performative video pieces involving snapping dogs and pushing heavy furniture, naked, up a flight of narrow stairs...

Instructional Portuguese Gay Dance Video , Elliot Grainey-Sauke, 3 min, 2004, DV, Seattle, WA
Queer youth marching to the beat of a different drum.

Tammytown , Phoebe Owens, 10 min, 2003, Super 16mm, Olympia, WA
A film about teen girls that beat the odds of living in a small town that is a suburb to the freeway and become bad-asses along the way.

Strike Through , Sara Zia Ebrahimi, 10 min, 2004, DV, Philadelphia, PA
An obsessive need for to-do lists fills the void of the blank page of this woman's uncertain future.

Motion Sickness , Kat Asharya, 10 min, 2002, DV, San Francisco, CA
Delayed flights cause three young women to have three very different experiences over the course of one night stuck in an airport.  A present day look at the betrayal between young women in the coming-of-age films of the 1980s.

Hot Autism , Keren Richter, 3 min, 2004, DV, Brooklyn, NY
An animated music video for the Joggers; a creation myth inspired by equal parts Yellow Submarine and psychedelic substances.

Darling , Cathy de la Cruz, 3 min 20 sec, 2002, Super-8, Athens, GA
A young couple cannot escape repeating the same cycles.

Hippolytus , Holly Hinson, 8 min, 2001, 16mm, San Antonio, TX
A suspense film about art and a game of cat and mouse where it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the cat and the mouse.

The Unhappy Medium , Chelsea Spears, 4 min 5 sec, 2004, 16mm, Boston, MA
Tensions mount during a séance held to contact the daughter of a well-to-do couple, in which a boy exposes the ways in which his aunt truly speaks with the dead.

Replacing Delphine , Kasia Kowalczyk, 10 min, 2003, 16mm, Atlanta, GA
Twenty-five years after losing his daughter in a house fire, a Professor begins to lose his way in this haunting fairytale about love, loss and taxidermy.