A film festival highlighting women athletes is showing in Laramie this week. The No Man's Land Film Festival started in Carbondale, Colorado and now travels around the world with the goal of making the adventure and sports film genre more diverse.
Tour Coordinator Kathy Karlo said the festival was founded by Aisha Weinhold after she became disgruntled by mainstream sports films.
"She would go to a lot of these film festivals, and she would walk away with that feeling of 'that was great, but a lot of the inspiration was coming from male athletes only.' Being an athlete herself she thought she could do something to change that," Karlo said.
Karlo said the festival does its best to support women filmmakers as well. At their flagship festival in Carbondale, they host a pitch-fest where they award grants to filmmakers who want to make diverse adventure films.
The festival is in its fourth year. Karlo said the first year it only featured ten films, but this year there are over 40. The festival has branched out in subject matter, too.
"This year and last year especially we've been focusing a lot on less conventional sports, a lot of hula hooping, skateboarding, ballet basically anything where a woman would move their body," Karlo said.
Karlo said she is especially excited about the film Mothered by Mountains that follows two women motorcycling across Kathmandu, Nepal.
No Man's Land Film Festival is screening for free at 6 p.m., Friday, March 8 at the University of Wyoming Education Auditorium. It is open to the public.
