Jennifer Townsend's CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE to Compete at 13th Annual LA Femme International Film Festival

Praised for its unique premise, "Catching Sight of Thelma & Louise" from director Jennifer Townsend, will be entered into competition at this year's LAFemme International Film Festival, to be held Oct. 19-22 at the Regal Cinemas at LA Live in downtown Los Angeles.

The acclaimed film, which recently competed in the San Antonio Film Festival, DOCUTAH and the CATE Festival in Santa Monica, is a powerful, intimate, and timely film that dives off the edge into the truth of women's experience in the world.

Director/producer Jennifer Townsend was not in the film business at all when she first encountered the now-classic road movie "Thelma & Louise" in 1991. Profoundly moved by what she'd seen, she wondered if others had been similarly affected by the film. Originally setting her sights on writing a magazine article about its cultural impact, she sent out a series of press releases to newspapers across the country in search of volunteers to fill out a questionnaire regarding their feelings about the cinematic landmark. Their responses were enlightening and disturbing.

More than 20 years later, the 75-year-old Townsend realized that if she was going to do something with the information she'd accumulated, now was the time, and "Catching Sight of Thelma & Louise" began to take shape.

Critic Kurt Gardner of Arts Beat LA praised the film's insightful and often passionate interviews, calling the results fascinating. "Most all of the interviewees felt liberated by the film," he wrote, "responding to the notion of female empowerment, which was something they hadn't experienced in the cinema before."

Brian Passey of The Spectrum was impressed with the process Townsend employed to tell her story, but commented that "...the most impactful elements of Townsend's film occur when her subjects begin making comparisons between events in the film and incidents in their own lives, including numerous stories of sexual harassment and sexual assault."

The film will be shown at LAIFF on Thursday, October 19th at 2PM at the Regal Cinema Complex at LA Live in downtown Los Angeles, 1000 West Olympic Blvd. Tickets are available at the box office or on the festival's website at www.lafemme.org/festival.

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