Centre Film Festival
Hourly Schedule
The State Theatre - Thursday, November 3rd
- 6:00pm - 6:31pm
- No Siren Left Behind
- Featured Documentary Short Film (Shirin Barhi and Martine Granbin in attendance)
- 6:32pm - 8:00pm
- Art and Pep
- Featured Documentary Film (Mercedes Kane, and Art Johnston and Pepe Peña attending)
Art and Pep
ART JOHNSTON and PEPE PENA (Art and Pep) and Director MERCEDES KANE (Art and Pep) in attendance.
About The Film
Art and Pep are the owners of the iconic bar Sidetrack, Chicago. And they’re also civil rights leaders who have been fighting for LGBTQ+ equality for decades, their activism is the focus of their struggle to live and love freely.
About The Directors
Mercedes Kane
As a storyteller, Mercedes Kane is forever fascinated by the human experience and the many ways to explore and express that experience. She most recently directed WHAT REMAINS: THE BURNING DOWN OF BLACK WALL STREET (director, 2021) about th1921 Tulsa race massacre. Her third feature length documentary, the award-winning BREAKFAST AT INA’S, premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival before being acquired by American Public Television. It has screened at 50+ film festivals and educational screenings nationwide, garnering a number of high honors, including audience awards and Best Documentary Feature.
Mercedes’ other previous films include BANANA SEASON (producer, 2018) TODAY WE SAW THE FACE OF GOD (director, 2012), HEARTS OF HOPE (director, 2009) CHICAGO HEIGHTS (associate producer, 2010), named “One of the Best Art Films” of the year by Roger Ebert.
Mercedes has spent the past two years bringing the story of ART & PEP to life during a pandemic, while also co-parenting two children, which has led her to believe she can accomplish almost anything. She resides in Atlanta with her spouse and two children.
Martine Granby
No Siren Left Behind
Directors MARTINE GRANBY and SHIRIN BARGHI (No Siren Left Behind) in attendance.
About The Film
A fascinating and affecting chronicle of the pioneering Sirens motorcycle club, the oldest and largest women-run motorcycle club in New York City, from its humble beginnings in 1986 to the present. The history of the club, its place within NYC’s queer culture, and the impact it’s had on the lives of its members—now intergenerational and inclusive of trans women—is told largely in the members’ own voices and reflects the power of sisterhood within a chosen family.
About The Directors
Shirin Barghi
Shirin Barghi is an Iranian journalist, audio producer and documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. She currently works as a Senior Producer for BRIC TV, where she covers issues of social justice, immigration, inequality and more.
Her character-driven short documentaries have received four NY Emmy nominations, and her passion for bringing communities directly into the conversation have led her to produce or co-produce a number of town hall forums on topics including Women’s Rights, Islamophobia, the #MeToo movement, school segregation and police accountability. She was a producer on the team that won a 2018 NY Emmy in the Education/School Program Category for Class Divide: Breaking the Pattern of School Segregation.
Most recently, she is a producer of Brooklyn, USA — a bi-weekly audiovisual magazine series that blends short documentary, hyperlocal journalism, personal narratives, sound art and audiovisual experimentation.
A graduate of New York University and The New School, her writing and visual work have appeared in the Guardian, Souciant Magazine, The Huffington Post, Aljazeera, Vox and beyond. She is currently co-directing a documentary about The Sirens, the longest running womens’ motorcycle club in New York.
Martine Granby
Martine N. Granby is a nonfiction filmmaker, producer and video journalist. She is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut, with a focus on documentary filmmaking. She holds a joint appointment in the Africana Studies Institute, and is an affiliate of UConn’s Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.
She has worked as a documentarian, producer, editor, video journalist, and educator for The New York Times, Kartemquin Films, The DocX program at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, The New School, City Bureau, UnionDocs, and BRIC TV. As a fellow with Kartemquin Film’s Diverse Voices in Docs program and recipient of their 2019 Diverse Voices Accelerator Grant, she started production on her current film feature THE MASK THAT GRINS AND LIES; a personal meditative documentary unveiling a triptych portrait of intergenerational silence tied to the mental health stigma shrouding the women in her family.
Granby produces films that weave between documentary, experimental non-fiction, hybrid, and essay forms. Her creative research focuses on interrogations of and material experimentation with family and collective moving image archives, ethical considerations of found footage usage, and discourses around mental health in BIPOC communities.
She attended Mount Holyoke College where she received her bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Film Studies. She holds an M.A. from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
From Oct. 31 – Nov. 6, 2022, The Centre Film Festival will return for a weekend of the finest offerings in contemporary cinema at the State Theatre in State College and the Rowland Theatre in Philipsburg. In addition to internationally recognized films, we will highlight the work of Pennsylvania filmmakers and Penn State alumni.
Save the date and get an early bird discount on your All Access passes which includes all films, events, and discussions throughout the entire festival as well as special perks from local businesses. Early bird pricing will be available until October 7th!
Check centrefilm.org for more information.