â??If thereâ??s a story that needs to be told, people seem to be finding ways to tell it. I hope (the festival) encourages people to explore the medium themselves.â? â?? Annie Melchior, the UWM film department program manager â??If thereâ??s a story that needs to be told, people seem to be finding ways to tell it. I hope (the festival) encourages people to explore the medium themselves.â? â?? Annie Melchior, the UWM film department program manager â??If thereâ??s a story that needs to be told, people seem to be finding ways to tell it. I hope (the festival) encourages people to explore the medium themselves.â? â?? Annie Melchior, the UWM film department program manager â??If thereâ??s a story that needs to be told, people seem to be finding ways to tell it. I hope (the festival) encourages people to explore the medium themselves.â? â?? Annie Melchior, the UWM film department program manager â??If thereâ??s a story that needs to be told, people seem to be finding ways to tell it. I hope (the festival) encourages people to explore the medium themselves.â? â?? Annie Melchior, the UWM film department program manager Melchior hopes to inspire people in general, not just women, about documentary as a medium.

March is Women“s History Month, and one cannot think about women“s history without thinking about Gloria Steinem, one of the forefront feminists of the Women“s Liberation Movement, and founder of Ms. Magazine.

Steinem once said, “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”

One woman embodying this statement is Annie Melchior, who hopes to open up the possibilities for area women.

Her instrument of choice is the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Women Without Borders Film Festival (March 6 to 11). The festival will be held at the Union Theatre and is funded by the UWM Film Department, the Women“s Resource Center and the Union Theatre.

This is the festival“s third year. Melchior, the UWM film department“s program manager, is both the festival“s founder and its sole programmer. She was approached by the Women“s Resource Center to put together a film festival on conjunction with Women“s History Month.

Melchior was excited about the task because she thinks it is important that more work by and about women be shown in the area. The majority of the films being shown this year, and in past years, are documentary. The absence of a large number of fictional works is not intentional, however.

“A lot of the good, new work by women is being done in documentary,” Melchior said.

It was the content of the documentaries selected for the festival that drew Melchior to them. She chose each because of its subject matter, and tried to select films that would engage and incite discussion.

“I don“t have a particular agenda,” said Melchior, when asked about hot-button issue films like “Boy I Am,” about a transgender woman, “I Had an Abortion” and “Period: The End of Menstruation.”

“I think it“s important for women to have choices about their bodies,” Melchior said about “Period.”

“Boy I Am” was shown as part of the LGBT festival last fall, but Melchior decided to show the film outside of the context of the LGBT community. This is her way to let women who may not consider themselves part of the LGBT community, but are supportive and inquisitive, have a forum to discuss gender and sexual identity, she said.

Melchior tried to program the films so that each night has a thematic thread. Friday“s program, for example features the films “I Was a Teenage Feminist” and “I Had an Abortion,” two of the festival“s more topical films. Melchior was limited by a select number of days on which to show the films, and in hindsight, she said pairing such topical films together may not have been the wisest decision.

“It might have been more productive if I had broken up the films “ they are about different communities,” Melchior said. “But I want to get them all together.”

Each of the films will be followed by a discussion. For example, “Period: The End of Menstruation?” was suggested by Laura Stewarts of Norris Health Center, and Melchior hopes that they will be able to lead discussion on that film. Planned Parenthood will be on hand to facilitate discussion following “I Had an Abortion.”

While she realizes that the topic is one of heated debate, Melchior is quick to defend the merits of the film.

“The piece is really good “ the presentation is an incredible spectrum of experiences,” Melchior said.

The majority of the documentaries in the festival are distributed by Women Make Movies, an independent New York production company that distributes work by women about women.

Melchior hopes to inspire people in general, not just women, about documentaries as a medium.

“If there“s a story that needs to be told, people seem to be finding ways to tell it,” Melchior said. “I hope (the festival) encourages people to explore the medium themselves.”

One of Melchior“s personal missions is the desire to bring more women into the film department.

“I make it a point of mine to encourage female students in the department,” she said.

Melchior sees the film department as being disproportionately male. She has seen an increase in female students recently, but the numbers are still skewed. Melchior said the ratio is about four males to every one female, something that is reflective of the real world.

“It“s important for us (women) to make inroads,” Melchior said.

Melchior hopes the festival encourages women and men alike to discuss questions like: Have the goals of the 1970s been accomplished? Have they degraded beyond recognition? Are we really achieving something if women just become men?

One statement resonates throughout Melchior“s description of the festival and the meanings behind and surrounding it: The importance of having films by women about women.

This is what allowed Melchior to move past her hesitations to show some of the more controversial films of the festival.

“I have to provide a forum for women to talk,” she said. “I have to not be afraid.”

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