One Registered Student Organization is using popular culture to highlight gender issues.

Cinethesia, a student organization that looks to promote feminism by seeking ways to bring gender equality to film and other media, hosted its first feminist film festival Saturday at The Varsity Center for Arts. State artists presented their works, which ranged from photography to art to film.

Shaheen Shorish, Cinethesia president and a senior studying cinema and photography, said the imbalance between male and female cinema students makes it more difficult for female students to get their hands on video equipment.

“We wanted to create a place where women can get together and learn and not feel like they have to fight their way over other male students for equipment,” she said.

Shorish said Cinethesia was created to encourage women who want take on more technical media jobs, such as directing or working cameras for film — fields mostly populated by men. The organization sponsors workshops to give women experience working with media equipment, she said.

However, Shorish said these opportunities are also available for male students who are interested in producing feminist works. The organization is also for male students, she said and the film festival was open to male directors but none submitted their works.

Cade Bursell, Cinethesia advisor and an associate professor of cinema and photography, said her goal is to make sure all students have an equal opportunity to succeed after college. Bursell said she believes Cinethesia is a step toward achieving that.

One reason for the film festival was to encourage female directors to pursue their careers by showing the successes of other film industry females, she said.

Allie Lee, a graduate student in media arts from Boston, said she participates in the organization to learn how to handle media field anxieties, like the false assumptions male students who think she can’t handle technical equipment place on her.

She submitted a web-designed video that focused on a ’20s Hollywood trend to make causain women look Asian by taping their eyes back and speaking in an accent. The process was called “yellow facing,” and Lee said it really offended her. Lee’s art piece displayed a lady going through the “yellow facing” process as Lee herself was seen going through the process in her video.

Sanglim Han, a senior from Chicago who attends The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, submitted a film for the festival. She has shown her short films at various film festivals, including the West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, she said.

Her short film “Bloom” showed at Cinethesia’s film festival. The movie depicts a woman lying down while she gets splashed with a variety of paint colors. By the three-minute film’s end, the actress is completely drenched in paint, which makes her face hard to see.

Han said she submitted her film to the festival because she supports the RSO’s equality vision. Her university’s stance on gender equality isn’t as serious as Cinethesia, and the fact that SIU students took the initiative to put on a feminist film festival is very encouraging, she said.

“I’ve presented my work in many film festivals, but I think it was really meaningful to present my work in this program,” she said.