MCA Screen: The Ladies Almanack

About the Speakers

Daviel Shy (writer, director, cinematographer) has written and directed nine short films. Her chapbooks, Grammar Rulse and No City For A Young Soul, are published by Dancing Girl Press & Studio and WALLS DIVIDE PRESS respectively. She has taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago and is currently working on a novel-length epic poem called Fantasizing the Amalfi Coast. Shy runs L.M.N.O.P., a screening series of lesbian movies, now in its fifth consecutive year. The Ladies Almanack is her first feature film.

Stephanie Acosta (producer/art director/second editor) is a multidisciplinary artist focused on the exploration of the experiential, incorporating concrete objects, created environments, solo and ensemble performances, along with experimental and documentary filmmaking as modes of inquiry. Acosta recently presented the evolving soloI AM A POTTED PALM, for IN>TIME2016 {bio: (Chicago). Her upcoming exhibition,Aqui y Alla, in collaboration with J Soto, at Vox Populi (Philadelphia) focuses on contradicting Latinx experiences and the failures of translating our selves and our bodies. Acosta is the proud inaugural scholarship recipient forLANDINGwith Miguel Gutierrez, for her choreographic research at Gibney Dance. She is profoundly proud and grateful to have producedThe Ladies Almanack.

Deborah Bright’s (Radclyffe Hall) groundbreaking collection of images and writings on photography and sexuality, The Passionate Camera: photography and bodies of desire (Routledge, 1998)} was a finalist for the 1999 Lambda Book Award in Visual Arts. In addition, her essays on photography and cultural issues have appeared in Art Journal, Afterimage, exposure, Views, and Michigan Quarterly. Bright's works can be found in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Cambridge, MA, and many more. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally. Since 1989, she has been a professor in the Photography and Art History Departments at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her photographic works are represented by the Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston.

LeCiel (soundtrack, score) is a self-taught musician and vocalist from St. Louis. Her genre-defying sound blends digital and analog styles with a powerful message. LeCiel produced, recorded and engineered all of the songs in The Ladies Almanack and composed and performed the original score. Her album Dawn of A Woman will be released at the end of the year.

Brie Roland (Natalie Clifford Barney) is an actor, sommelier, and restaurant manager living in South Minneapolis, MN, with her husband, Dustin, and their two cats. The Ladies Almanack is Brie's first foray into the art of film and she hopes that it becomes the first of many. She is so thankful to the wonderful cast and crew of this production for making it an awe-inspiring journey.

James Tate (assistant director/editor) is a filmmaker in New York and Chicago, and editor of The Ladies Almanack. James works with dancers, performers, and musicians to give an unexpected perspective to ephemeral work. Tate is cofounder of Intrinsic Grey, producing works with partner Stephanie Acosta, in New York and abroad. He is proud to have been a part of The Ladies Almanack since it began in Shy's 2013 ten-piece suite The Tyrant.