What’s new in the arts

Women’s Film Festival San Diego back for second year

Less than a week after America elected the first woman — and a woman of color at that — to the vice presidency, the work of other women breaking the glass ceiling will be showcased thanks to the Liberty Station-based Women’s Museum of California. The second Women’s Film Festival San Diego began virtually Friday with 23 offerings from woman filmmakers and continues screening through today.

■ “It’s a boutique, very focused festival with a purpose,” said Felicia Shaw, executive director of the Women’s Museum of California. That focus, she said, “is on women as filmmakers who want to tell a story.”

Shaw emphasizes that while some of the films’ themes lean on issues especially pertinent to women, the festival “transcends the ‘women’s film’ category,” emphasizing instead “filmmakers who happen to be women.”

“We want to give women an opportunity to make films. This platform is so crowded right now. Can we carve out just a little real estate for them?”

The nearly two dozen festival films were curated from among over 300 submissions and include short documentaries and one animated work. Shaw was particularly drawn, she said, to filmmaker Ana Laura Calderon’s

“Mezquite’s Heart,” which tells the story of a young girl who dreams of playing the harp, in her culture the domain of men.

“It combines,” Shaw said, “into this one small film so many opportunities for people to go on an adventure. You get to understand what the life of an Indigenous girl in Mexico might be like. The film addresses all the ways women are marginalized, even down to the instrument they get to play.”

A festival pass to view all but one of the films (tickets for “The Fight” are sold separately) is $25. womensmuseumca.org/wffsd