The Gaze: Wild Diamond

For this year’s program at IFFO, Tish invites St. John’s-based filmmaker Jamie Miller to discuss the featured film Wild Diamond and the pressures young women face in a social media-based world of judgement and performance. Liane lives for her likes, comments, and followers. Her online persona feels far from her real life where she has to steal to pay for her breast implants. But if she gets her shot on a reality show, it will all be worth it.

Centred around Wild Diamond, Tish and Jamie, along with the audience, will discuss the pressures and expectations put on young women, the extremes they’re willing to go to, the patriarchal misogynist system that created it, and how we see this portrayed in films.

Ebony, Blood, and Snow

Available for pre-order

Inspired by familiar fairy tales, author Tish Black’s debut short story collection takes the tales in new directions and rewrites history: Little Red hunts wolves, Gretel helps the witch, and Bluebeard’s wife gets revenge. These transgressive stories challenge readers’ ideas of what the tales could mean to them. There’s more to learn from fairy tale heroines than how to be eaten, rescued, or married. These unconventional heroines fight the patriarchy with no time for romance; instead, readers will find tales of revenge, sisterhood, political revolt, and independence. Conveying the radical feminism of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and the defiance of Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch, Black’s collection of thirteen tales redefines the fairy tale heroine.