Zoom-in Online

Pray the Devil Back to Hell, is a powerful documentary about the courageous women of Liberia who stood up and said no more to war and through their sheer determination and grit were able to transform a country. The film premiered this week at the Tribeca Film Festival where it was just awarded the prize for best documentary feature. In awarding the prize the jurors said: “In a relentless pursuit of peace, the women of Liberia show us how community, motherly love and perseverance can change the fate of a society.

Most women who work in the film business in any capacity absolutely hate the term "chick flick." They all wish the term had never been invented (who should we blame for this?) since it seems that even films made before the term was coined in the late 1980s with this definition -- "a motion picture intended to appeal especially to women" (Webster's On-line Dictionary) -- have been shoved into this category. And let's make no mistake about this: the chick flick is a pejorative and demeaning.

One of the things that I have been concerned about for some time is the "tabloidization of the media" and its detrimental affect on women.

Documentarian Lisa Jackson went to the Congo to take the testimony of women and girls being raped and sexually assaulted for the last decade in her new film, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, which premiered at Sundance this week. It will air on HBO in April.

Lisa spoke to me from Sundance on the eve of her world premiere.

Melissa Silverstein: Why did you want to make this movie?

New Zealand director Pietra Brettkelly was in the Darfur region of Sudan working on a documentary when she happened to meet international renowned artist Vanessa Beecroft. Little did she realize that this chance meeting would lead to her next film - The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins.

Welcome to Sundance 2008. My name is Melissa Silverstein and I am joining the folks at Zoom in online to help cover the Sundance Film Festival. I'll be bringing you interviews with some of the exciting female filmmakers who will be featured in this year's program on both the dramatic and documentary competitions. Check back later in the week for a list of the directors and dates we will have the interviews posted.