The fourth week of Painting the Spectrum 5: SASOD’s Film festival continues at the Sidewalk Café on Monday with a special evening of poetry and prose readings, musical tributes and readings from the play Beautiful Little Lies by Judith Rudakoff.

On Tuesday, the documentary Straightlaced : How Gender’s got us all tied up, will be screened. This film takes a fearless look at a highly charged subject, and unearths how popular pressures around gender and sexuality are confining teenagers. Their stories reflect a diversity of experiences, demonstrating how gender role expectations and homophobia are interwoven, and illustrating the different ways that these expectations connect with culture, race and class. From girls confronting media messages about culture and body image to boys who are sexually active just to prove they aren’t gay, this fascinating array of students opens up with brave, intimate honesty about the toll that deeply held stereotypes and rigid gender policing have on all our lives.

On Wednesday, Samin Sharif’s film The World Unseen will be screened. Set in Cape Town, South Africa during apartheid in 1952 the film stars Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth as two Indian South African women who  fall in love in a racist, sexist, and homophobic society. This film has a background of beautiful music from that period.

All films start at 7pm and Admission is free.