UnSlut: A Documentary Film
Vermont Premiere
Friday, October 9
Social hour 6PM – 7PM
Screening 7PM – 7:40PM, followed by Q+A with director
The film will begin promptly at 7:00pm, followed by a Q&A with director Emily Lindin and one of the women featured in the film, Gina Tron. Presented by Burlington City Arts and TheUnSlut Project.
FREE
Directed by Emily Lindin
2015, USA, 40 minutes
In 2013, seventeen-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons took her own life. The Halifax teenager had been gang-raped a year and a half earlier by her classmates and labeled a “slut” as a result. Despite transferring schools many times, she could not escape constant cyber harassment and in-person bullying. Rehtaeh’s is not the only story like this to make headlines in recent years. Why is the sexual shaming of girls and women, especially sexual assault victims, still so prevalent in the United States and Canada?
UnSlut: A Documentary Film features conversations with those who have experienced sexual shaming, including the family and friends of Rehtaeh Parsons. We also spoke with Samantha Gailey Geimer, who was publicly shamed by the media after being sexually assaulted by director Roman Polanski at the age of thirteen in 1977; Gina Tron, who was shamed by defense attorneys out of pursuing charges against a serial rapist in Brooklyn, New York; N’Jaila Rhee, who coped with her sexual assault and the subsequent loss of support from her family and church by reclaiming her sexuality; and Allyson Pereira, who was ostracized in her New Jersey town after texting a photo of her breasts to an ex-boyfriend.
Through interviews with sexuality experts, advocates, and media figures, UnSlut: A Documentary Film explores the manifestations and often tragic results of sexual shaming in North America and offers immediate and long-term goals for personal, local, and institutional solutions.