The Royal Starr Film Festival, an international four day movie gala celebrated in downtown Royal Oak, Michigan, kicks off its third season this October featuring more than 115 screenings of shorts, features, & documentaries from Michigan, the United States and around the World. [F-b01-s09]

Pole (Stefanie Woodburn / United States) A rising financial analyst steps out of her comfort zone to partner with her best friend in a pole dance competition.

Emma in the Woods (Allegra Givena / United States) An orphan girl spends her birthday searching for her run-away sister.

Born Wrong (Kaisa El Ramly / Finland) Do we have to accept our siblings?

Born Wrong depicts a moment in the lives of two adult sisters in which they have to face one another in a shared taxi ride. The interdependently addictive relationship formed as children re-emerges as they take a psychological journey back to their childhood. The film raises the questions: Do we have to accept a person supposedly close to us? Can a relationship between siblings that was molded in childhood be changed in adulthood?

Left on Pearl (Susan Rivo / United States) Documentary about the 1971 takeover of a building owned by Harvard University in Cambridge MA by hundreds of women demanding a women’s center.

LEFT ON PEARL is an award-winning 55 minute documentary about the Women's Liberation Movement of the late 60's and early 70's, focused on the 1971 women's takeover and occupation of a building owned by Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. On March 6, 1971, International Women's Day marchers turned left on Pearl Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, seizing a Harvard University building at 888 Memorial Drive, and declaring it a Women's Center. Hundreds of women, veterans of the antiwar and civil rights movements, demanded that Harvard provide affordable housing for the Riverside community being displaced by the university’s expansion. The occupation led to the founding of the Cambridge Women’s Center - still going strong today - and contributed to the ongoing local struggle against gentrification and for tenants' rights. This action and the Women’s Center that came out of it, sparked other progressive organizations: the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, Transition House, Elizabeth Stone House, the Women's Community Cancer Project, among others. The film is profoundly relevant today. Many are unaware of barriers that restricted the lives of women at the time of the takeover. For example, classified employment ads were still listed according to gender, shelters for victims of domestic violence did not exist, and abortion was illegal. Many of the women’s demands, such as access to child care, reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, and affordable housing and healthcare, are still unrealized.

See all of the films being screened at http://BoxOffice.RoyalStarr.org

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