With the ever-changing diplomatic landscape, putting out a call to action throughout the United States to encourage positive change is a vital step in uniting the various political parties. The new politically-themed traveling film festival, Resistance of Vision, is poised to help bring citizens of varying views back together. The event will feature movie screenings that will include discussions and panels highlighting community organizing efforts in each host city.

Resistance of Vision was created by San Francisco IndieFest founder/director Jeff Ross and veteran film curator, documentarian and cinema exhibition consultant, Anna Feder. The latter is also serving as the Director of Programming on the festival.

As the first of its kind theatrical exhibition of movies, Resistance of Vision will launch its first screening events in San Francisco, Boston, Wichita and Birmingham later this week, between May 1-3. The political film festival will also visit several other major American cities throughout the rest of 2025 and into the first few months of 2026.

Resistance of Vision is committed to showcasing stories of resilience and the fight for liberation that are often excluded by corporate-controlled exhibition channels. The four short film programs announced for the inaugural festival are Fight the Power (Racial Justice), Our Bodies, Our Choice (Gender and Reproductive Justice), This is an Emergency (Environmental Justice) and Which Side are You On? (Labor and Housing Justice). Discussions with activists, organizers and academics local to each community will be included after every program.

Feder generously took the time recently to talk about helping launch and program Resistance of Vision during an exclusive clip over Zoom. She shared that she hopes the festival can help make sense out of living within the current political climate and start vital conversations that will inspire change.

Film Factual (FF): You helped launch the new politically-themed traveling film festival, Resistance of Vision, along with San Francisco IndieFest founder and director, Jeff Ross. What was the inspiration in helping Jeff create the festival?

Anna Feder (AF): Jeff Ross, who’s my collaborator, approached me back in November after the election and really wanted to start something new. He already runs SF Indie Film Festival, and under that umbrella is Doc Fest, Shorts Fest and a Green Film Festival.

He’s actually now living on the East Coast and has some time in his schedule, so he really wanted to start a traveling film festival. So he reached out to me to see if I wanted to help him do so.

He also reached out to me because the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which had been going for 30 plus years, had just closed. So he wanted to create a new festival that in part resembled that festival.

Jeff was also looking at Wild & Scenic Film Festival, which is the traveling festival of environmental films. So he decided that he wanted to do something like that.

So he approached me and I thought it was a really good idea. I was really interested in getting people together into spaces for movement building. A lot of films talk about having a call to action, so this whole festival is one giant call to action. So the idea is to get people who are organizers and activists connected to people who want to get plugged in.

FF: Once you and Jeff decided to move forward in creating Resistance of Vision, had did you work together to launch the festival?

AF: Jeff and I have been collaborating in one way or another for probably about 15 years. I want to say I met him in a conference at a film festival summit years ago. After that, he invited me a few times to program for San Francisco Indie Fest. I also worked with him in programming Another Hole in the Head, which is a genre festival that he works with.

But Resistance of Vision was different though. In the past, he hired me to do a program or two. But on this one, the two of us collaborated on from the beginning.

It’s a really good collaboration. We complement each other really well. I’m very interested in talking to people, so that’s why I’m the one doing the interviews, audience building and creating the program.

Jeff, meanwhile, prefers to do the behind the scenes. So he’s managing the website. the submissions and the tech side of things, which are the things that I’m less interested in and less skilled at doing. So we work really well together.

FF: Speaking about the programming, how did you decide which movies to screen during the festival, and which selections to include in the different programs?

AF: Well, I started with the four programs, knowing the programs that I was looking to construct. So racial justice, environmental justice, labor and housing, and gender and reproductive justice are the programs I started with.

That’s how we announced the call for entries. But it was a very sort of truncated call for entries; it was only about a month.

So I want to say we got maybe 70 films, which is traditionally not a lot to choose from. So I was also looking at films that were submitted to two of Jeff’s other festivals – SF Doc Fest and the Green Film Festival. I then invited a few other films that I found in my research.

So it was not an entirely untraditional way of programming a festival, but it was on a very short timeline. So I was watching a lot of films in a short amount of time, and I saw a lot of really amazing films.

So I could have put together another three or four programs. There will be one more that we’ll most likely announce in the next few weeks. But we’re launching with these four programs.

FF: How did you decide which of the social issues that are prevalent today to include in the festival?

AF: Well, was I wanted to include categories that would touch on the issues that are the most pressing right now. So for example, with racial justice, I knew that I wanted to find a film talking about immigration and ICE. So we have ‘Expanding Sanctuary’ in that program.

I also knew that I wanted disability to be a topic that came into play in some of these programs. There are numerous films across the different programs that do so.

I also wanted to talk about Palestine. I initially thought that I was going to include a film about Palestine in each program. But that just didn’t work programmatically.

So that’s the fifth program that we’re launching. It’s going to be a program on films made in Palestine. It’s also going to include films about Palestinian advocacy and activism outside of Palestine. So that’s a program where I’ve locked a few of the films, but I’m still looking for a few more.

FF: Resistance of Vision will also include discussions after the screenings with activists, organizers and academics local to each community. How did you decide who to include in the discussions?

AF: Well, pitching filmmakers was an interesting process. There were the filmmakers who submitted to the festival, so they understood what they were submitting to.

But there were a lot of other films that we invited, so we had to explain this non-traditional festival to them. We also had to explain that we were trying to essentially have their film available for two years, which is a long period of time.

But we also shared that each time the film screened, the filmmaker gets money. So we split the license fee between us for our overhead, and then the other half gets split amongst the filmmakers.

Then in terms of engaging the filmmakers, it’s up to the hosts whether they want to involve filmmakers. That will be based in part if they have the budget to bring in filmmakers and if filmmakers are local.

But the focus is really more on getting activists and organizers into conversation. So the screening that I’m hosting in Cambridge is going to include activists on the panel, talking about their work. There aren’t going to be filmmakers speaking at that event.

So it’s really up to the hosts whether they want to engage the filmmakers or not. They’re going to have the contact information for all the filmmakers.

So the hosts can invite the filmmakers, but they don’t necessarily have to. It’s not a traditional festival in that we’re trying to host conversations on filmmaking. We really want to encourage people to have conversations with folks in their community who are doing work on these issues.

FF: Also speaking about working with the activists and different organizations in supporting the movies, how have you approached collaborating with the activists and organizations as you prepare to launch the festival?

AF: This is work that I’d already been doing. I ran a film series at Emerson College for 12-and-a-half years called Bright Lights (which focuses on social justice). During that time, I built partnerships with the local film festivals, including the Boston Asian American Film Festival, Wicked Queer, Sinefest Latino and Boston Underground.

So I was tapping into those relationships I already had, while also building new ones, including Extinction Rebellion, Sunrise and Warm Up Boston. I looked to work with organizations that are doing this work in the communities.

So that’s one of my favorite parts – finding all of these collaborators and finding ways that we can promote each other right. So we asked all of these organizations to promote the screening, while also thinking about how we we make this useful for the organizers.

We’re inviting them to say something before the film. We’re also inviting them to be part of the panel.

We’re also inviting them to bring information on the things they’re working on. We’re going to have handouts with a QR code that’ll take the audience to all of the co-presenters’ websites or social media.

So trying to make sure this is also a platform for all of these organizations that we’re working with is very important. So it’s not just us telling people to come to the screening; it’s also about how can we make this useful for everyone and the work that they’re doing?

FF: Resistance of Vision’s debut screenings, discussions and panels will be held in Boston, which you just mentioned, as well as Wichita, Birmingham and San Francisco next month. How did you decide where you would launch the festival’s initial edition?

AF: We knew we were launching in San Francisco and Boston because that’s where Jeff’s festivals are based and he has all the relationships. I’m based in the Boston/Providence area, and all my relationships are there.

We also knew we wanted to screen in places outside of the coasts. We wanted to have somewhere in the Midwest and the South.

So for the Midwest, we’re both very fond of, and I’ve collaborated with, Leland O’Connor, who runs Mama Film in Wichita. So she was a natural for us to reach out to.

Then in terms of finding a space in the South, everyone I spoke to recommended Sidewalk in Birmingham, Alabama. I’ve not been. When we reached out to them, they were instantly on board, interested and engaged. So that’s been a really good collaboration.

From here, it’s up to where people invite us to, and wants to host us. We’re happy to go anywhere in the country.

So we’re going to be reaching out to national organizations to pitch them on coming on board and sharing with their chapters. But we haven’t really started on that process of finding all of the places that the festival is going to travel to yet. We’ve mainly been focusing on this in-person launch.

FF: After Resistance of Vision visits its initial four cities and you decide what other areas where you’re going to bring the festival to, what does the future of the festival look like? When will you switch the films and programs?

AF: Well, the plan was to make these films and programs available for two years. People can book a whole program. They can pick and choose from the programs and create their own.

There’s also an opportunity to watch these films virtually between May 1-May3, when the first three screenings are happening. So you don’t have to be in those cities to see the festival during the launch.

We have an Eventive platform online (which can be visited here). People can book and watch the films that way, as well.