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St. John's International Women's Film Festival

Film festival screening works by women, takes place in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ63618744 ↗
Source-derived summary

St. John's International Women's Film Festival (SJIWFF) is an annual film festival based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, highlighting films by women. It is one of the longest-running festivals focusing on films made by women in the world. Established in 1989, the festival includes a year-long program of film screenings, workshops, and other events promoting women filmmakers. The main event is a five-day Film Forum in October with several thousand attendees and hundreds of submissions.

History

In 1989, the festival began as a single night of screening. Established as a non-profit organization, The St. John's International Women's Film Festival adopted the mission to support and promote women filmmakers. Since its inception, the festival and organization have grown to include year-round workshops, feature and short film screenings, panels, and outreach activities, culminating in a five-day Film Forum, which attracts attendees and submissions from around the world.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “St. John's International Women's Film Festival” as film festival screening works by women, takes place in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around John's, International and Women's.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1989—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1989. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with John's, International and Women's providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “St. John's International Women's Film Festival”, the useful work is to connect “film festival screening works by women, takes place in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q63618744. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “St. John's International Women's Film Festival”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow St. John's International Women's Film Festival primary sources, St. John's International Women's Film Festival archive and John's research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “St. John's International Women's Film Festival”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “St. John's International Women's Film Festival” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.