Director BIO: Lisa Donato (FOXY TROT)

Director Biography

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Lisa Donato is a writer, director, and activist from Billings, Montana and based in Austin & Los Angeles. The first feature film that she co-wrote, Signature Move, world-premiered at SXSW and won the grand jury prize for Best U.S. Narrative Feature at Outfest (2017). It can be found on Amazon Prime, Google Play, and iTunes. Her short films have won many awards on the festival circuit, including best LGBTQ short at Cannes: Emerging Filmmaker Showcase (Spunkle, 2017) and the Ron Kovic Peace Prize at My Hero (Reclaiming Pakistan, 2017). She was one of 35 short film directors short-listed for the UK Iris Prize (The News Today, 2017).

Her magic-wand wish is to bring queer and marginalized stories to mainstream audiences around the world. Other story and directing credits include shows for National Geographic Wild, Oprah Winfrey Network, PBS, published personal essays in the LA Times, Self Magazine, Curve Magazine, Austin Women, Whole Life Times, 5280 Magazine and multiple short films and music videos.

By femalefilmfestival

The irony of this festival is that its goal is to not be around in 5 years time. To eventually not be relevant because there is zero need to have a festival geared for female talent and female stories because the stories presented in Hollywood and around the world are a balanced showcase of the human experience from both sexes. Our goal is to achieve a lot of success and then fold into oblivion simply because there is no need for this festival. This festival was created by the FEEDBACK Film & Writing Festival as a simple reaction to a strong need to showcase female talent from around the world in a more profound way. When putting together the weekly festival, the administration noticed a lack of a female presence in the stories being shown at the festival. A classic example and analogy to the frustration is how the festival noticed that even the smaller roles in a screenplay were written for a man to play. There was zero reason for this in many stories. How a police officer, or a political campaign manager, for example with 3-4 lines in a screenplay was a "HE" character. Why? And these are the screenplays written by the winners! The talented one who have obtained agents and have began/beginning their careers as a writer.

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