Outside the Ring Documentary Will Screen in NYC’s Shadowbox Festival – Dec. 6th and 7th!

(NOV 13) ‘Outside The Ring’ will screen in NYC’s Shadowbox Festival on both Saturday December 6th and Sunday, December 7th. What a great idea for a festival—-there will be ALL boxing Films!

Through the lens of a unique violence recovery program in Toronto, this documentary provides a glimpse into the lives of women and transgendered survivors of violence and the impact Boxing has had in their healing.

The film follows the ways in which participants challenge social constructs that dictate that women must not experience their own feelings of aggression. The Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club is the first all-women’s boxing club in North America.

In 2007 a small group of women boxers active in social justice created Shape Your Life, a project designed for women and trans survivors of violence.

The goal of the project was to assist participants to use their bodies to explore healthy aggression to heal the violence that they had experienced.

The film shows project participants unpacking the myth of women’s powerlessness, engaging their bodies and encouraging, celebrating and supporting their own healthy aggression.

It demonstrates the impact when you normalize rather than attempt to extinguish women’s aggression.

Outside the Ring explores what happens when you bring survivors of violence together into a real-life boxing gym.  ‘I’ve spent my life fighting crazy. When I got into the ring and tried to fight crazy, that’s when I realized I was going to keep losing in life. Boxing was about learning when not to fight and taking back control of my own body.’