DIRECTOR: Susie Rivo
Q/A with Susie Rivo

PRODUCER: Susie Rivo
EDITOR: Iftach Shavit
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Lynn Weissman

Tired of being silenced, underrepresented and sexually harassed, women today are speaking up on social media and at the polling booth. But almost 50 years ago, women’s protests took another form. Left on Pearl depicts a highly significant, but little-known event that took place on March 6, 1971 as International Women's Day marchers turned left on Pearl Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, seizing a Harvard University building and declaring it a Women's Center. Hundreds of women, veterans of the antiwar and civil rights movements, demanded that Harvard provide affordable housing for the Riverside community being displaced by the University’s expansion. The ten-day occupation that ensued embodied within it many of the hopes, triumphs, conflicts and tensions of Second Wave feminism.

Susie Rivo holds an MFA in Cinema Production from San Francisco State University. Her award-winning short film, Amy screened at numerous film festivals, including Sundance and SXSW and was broadcast on several PBS stations. She received a Massachusetts Cultural Council finalist award for filmmaking.