Movie enthusiasts gathered at the Nickelodeon on Main Street last month, laughing and exclaiming at films ranging from The Bigamist to Morvern Callar.

Despite each movie being starkly different from the last, they shared one thing: They were all directed or influenced by women. 

“Taking up space” was the theme of the Femme Film Festival’s program, which was reflected in the choice of movies included in the second-annual event.

“I wanted to select films, directed by women, working in genres that women don’t work a lot in, or that are not typically associated with female filmmaking,“ said Nickelodeon employee and filmmaker Fiona Schreier. 

A film lover through-and-through, Schreier picked noir-mystery movie The Bigamist, action-surfer movie Point Break, punk-feminist film Born in Flames and sci-fi franchise hit Matrix Resurrections to be featured in the festival.

Her picks were accompanied by a handful from other co-workers. One movie selected was Goody, produced by Columbia’s own Local Cinema Studios and worked on by Schreier herself.

“I was a costume assistant, so I had a very small part in that movie, but it was cool to watch it with an audience,” Schreier said. “I was like, wow, that was two years ago, and that was like a whole summer of my life.”

Aside from bringing attention to local projects, The Nickelodeon used the film festival as an opportunity to speak on current events.

“We showed on Friday, Persepolis, which is an animated film about a girl who grew up in Iran,” said Madeline Walshe, a member of USC’s Film Archive, the Moving Image Research Collections.

“I think it comes back to providing the space for a lot of voices that aren’t presented in a lot of, like, commercial or Hollywood spaces,” Walshe said.

The event highlighted a string of films produced by American experimental filmmaker and animator Jodie Mack. The theater showed six to seven long films and five short, which were shown on 16-millimeter film from the projection booth.

Mack also made an appearance on a Zoom call for a Q&A session with the audience. 

“We asked her some really great questions,” said Laura Major, a manager at Moving Image Research Collections. “She was really generous with her time and her answers.”

Schreier, Walshe and Major worked together to create the film festival’s program. Major said having the perspective of women who love film was a game-changer in showcasing a range of women’s stories from different lifestyles and timelines.

“It was great to have Fiona and Madeline just be, like, we need to show these movies,” she said. ”These ideas that they came up with, I was just so proud of them, because, like, they were just not on my radar.”

The choice of movies is an aspect that sets The Nickelodeon apart from chain movie theaters, connecting viewers who are passionate about certain genres.

Schreier said she loved this about The Nickelodeon.

“I feel like there are conversations that can be started in a place like this that you kind of can’t get out of Regal,” she said. “It’s just a community approach to watching movies that I think is really special.”