Witchy Boots is coming to Cleveland!
The Jolly Scholar will be hosting a matinee showing with special guest Tara Nurin in attendance. Q&A and book signing to follow the film!
There is limited space, and tickets preordered online receive a discount.
Featured on Cleveland.com and Ideastream!
Witchy Boots is a spirited and empowering indie documentary by Emmy award-winning filmmaker J.S. Phillips* that plays like a raucous Happy Hour at your favorite pub, exploring both historical and modern women that shape craft beer industry. From trailblazing medieval alewives accused of witchcraft (maybe), to modern brewers staking claim in this male-dominated field, the film captures the movement toward inclusion,
creativity, and sisterhood inside the brewhouse.
Watch the first 5 minutes here!
Based off of industry insider Tara Nurin’s A Woman’s Place Is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs—with Nurin also credited as producer—the film's producers worked directly with Pink Boots Society to help showcase a mosaic of voices, including queer, BIPOC, and otherwise underrepresented women, whose passion for fermentation becomes a lens for empowerment and community. Between bursts of laughter and a soaring rock n' roll soundtrack, viewers witness how these “witchy” innovators are brewing change and joy in equal measure.​ At once a celebration and a call to action, Witchy Boots raises its glass to equality, passion, and the women who refuse to stay on the sidelines.
Nurin's expansive book on the subject of women in beer provides the inspiration and backbone for the film, and features passages quoted directly, or retooled by the film's writer, J.S. Phillips, for narrator Katie Burke.
Her résumé is expansive. In addition to A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse, Nurin was the regular beer and spirits contributor to Forbes and writes for other media like USA Today and Food Network. She's also worked as a TV news reporter and has hosted and appeared on broadcasts and live panels presented by entities like the Smithsonian, Molson Coors, and NBC Sports. She is frequently quoted as a beverage expert for outlets like the BBC and is currently launching a business to promote workplace wellbeing and retention in the food & beverage industry.
If you hadn't noticed, she's pretty freakin' awesome.
​​​​During the production of Witchy Boots, producers J.S. Phillips and Philip Leiter kept meeting more and more amazing women in the craft beer industry simply by word of mouth from one interview to the next.
What started as a quick shoot at a hops farm in Wadsworth, Ohio, with Leiter's longtime friend, brewer Jennifer Hermann, the team quickly learned just how tight-knit of a community women brewers are. It did not take long for the producers to get linked up with Nurin, and her book's expansive history on women and beer helped provide a guiding light for the filmmakers to hone in on during all phases of production.
Witchy Boots pub crawls its way through the Midwestern United States—with a quick but very special detour to Appalachia—including cities like Cleveland, Kent, Youngstown, and Columbus, Ohio, as well as Traverse City, Michigan and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Along the way the crew interviews badass women (and a few awesome dudes!) from multiple breweries as they pick hops and drop some yeast.
The film would be nothing without the amazing contributions of the people and their businesses below:
In addition to brewers, Witchy Boots interviews historians, beer judges, maltsters, and others for a well-rounded look at not only the history of women brewing beer, but the modern discipline as a whole.
Pink Boots Society, a nonprofit organization that supports women and nonbinary people in the fermentation industry, was instrumental in providing resources for the film—everything from media content to connections to talented people in their orbit.
​The film also received support from Ashe County Arts Council, based out of West Jefferson, North Carolina, and Beer 4 Boobs, a beer judging competition that raises money for breast cancer research. All of this and more is covered in the film!
*As Phillip Sieb, 2024 Emmy Award Central Great Lakes Chapter for Outstanding Lifestyle program for "The Master Craftsman"