Barbara Zecchi, professor of film studies and Spanish and Portuguese studies, has won the 2026 Montreal Women Film Festival award for Best Experimental Film for “The Rhythms of Rage,” a video essay she created that explores representations of women’s anger in global screen media.

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The award is the latest of a number of recognitions that the work has received, having been voted Best Video Essay of 2024 in the British Film Institute’s “Sight and Sound” poll, screened at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image as part of its “Video Essay as the New Avant-Garde” series, and selected by international festivals in Europe, Asia and North America.

“I was already very happy to be included in the official selection of the Montreal Women Film Festival,” says Zecchi, who is also director of the Film Studies Program at UMass Amherst. “Winning the award is particularly meaningful because it extends that recognition and affirms the relevance of videographic scholarship within a wider international festival landscape.”

“The Rhythms of Rage” can be viewed below. To read more about the work, visit https://intransition.openlibhums.org/article/id/20293/.