Recommended Subject Areas
     Latina
     Central America
     Immigration and Exile
     Chicana

After the Earthquake
A film by Lourdes Portillo
This dramatic story follows a young Nicaraguan immigrant, Irene, as she faces the challenges of life in the U.S. and re-evaluates her relationships with her boyfriend and family. AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE explores the immigrant experience, particularly the cultural, political and economic differences between life in North and Latin America. Written with Nina Serrano, Lourdes Portillo was nominated for an Academy Award for her next film, LAS MADRES DE LA PLAZA DE MAYO, produced with Susana Munoz. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
        Cinema Studies
    Australia/New Zealand
    Film History
    Motherhood

The Audition
A film by Anna Campion
The filmmaker's sister, Jane Campion, journeys home to New Zealand to audition her onetime actress mother for a small role as a schoolteacher in her film adaptation of Janet Frame's autobiographies, AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE. The mother is somewhat resistant to the role, the camera and what she perceives as her daughter's manipulation. The daughter has her own resistance-to her mother's dark vision of the world. This deceptively simple drama, filmed with elegance and restraint, reveals nuances of mother/daughter roles while challenging the realist aesthetic. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
    Lesbian
    Young Women
    Experimental Film
    Sexuality
    Family Relations
 

Closer
Directed by Tina Gharavi
An experimental documentary which has at its heart a poignant character study of a 17 year-old lesbian living in Newcastle, England, CLOSER innovatively explores the process of documentary filmmaking and boldly challenges traditional forms of storytelling. Produced without a script and in close collaboration with the subject, Annelise Rodger, the filmmaker presents a hypnotizing array of montages and fictive sequences to introduce the day-to-day happenings of this extraordinary person. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
        African American
    Body Image
    Experimental Film
    Sexuality

Cycles
A film by Zeinabu irene Davis
Rasheeda Allen is waiting for her period, a state of anticipation familiar to all women. Drawing on Caribbean folklore, this exuberant experimental drama uses animation and live action to discover a film language unique to African American women. The multilayered soundtrack combines a chorus of women's voices with the music of Africa and the diaspora-including Miriam Makeba, acappella singers from Haiti and trumpetiste Clora Bryant. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
    Feature Films (Documentary)
    Latina
    Post-Colonialism
    Chicana
    Central America
    Latin America
 

The Devil Never Sleeps
A film by Lourdes Portillo
Academy Award nominated filmmaker Lourdes Portillo (LAS MADRES: THE MOTHERS OF PLAZA DE MAYO) mines the complicated intersections of analysis and autobiography, evidence and hypothesis, even melodrama and police procedure in this ground-breaking work. Early one Sunday morning, the filmmaker receives a phone call informing her that her beloved Tio (Uncle) Oscar Ruiz Almeida has been found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in Chihuahua, Mexico. The filmmaker returns to the land of her birth to investigate her uncle's identity and death. Finding clues in old tales of betrayal, lust, and supernatural visitation, Portillo blends traditional and experimental techniques to capture the nuances of Mexican social and family order. More.
 

Recommended Subject Areas
     Film History
    Experimental Film
    Caribbean

Divine Horsemen-The Living Gods of Haiti
A film by Maya Deren
A journey into the fascinating world of the Voudoun religion edited from footage shot by Deren in Haiti. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
     Lesbian
    Disabilities
 

Double the Trouble, Twice the Fun
A film by Pratibha Parmar
A rare and lively examination of disability and homosexuality as it affects both women and men, DOUBLE THE TROUBLE, TWICE THE FUN, advocates for acceptance rather than pity for the participants in this video. Interviews with a wide range of disabled lesbian and gay people are intercut with dramatic recreations and performances. Made for Channel Four Television by Pratibha Parmar (A PLACE OF RAGE, WARRIOR MASKS), this enlightening video dispels the myth that all disabled people are unhappy or have no sexual identity. It also looks at the difficulties of enduring prejudice as both a disabled and gay person. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
    Feature Films (fiction)
   Cinema Studies
   Eastern Europe
   Politics
 

Far From Poland
A film by Jill Godmilow
When denied visas to shoot in Poland, a filmmaker, steeped in the documentary traditions of the left, decides to construct her film in New York City. Over the barest bones of documentary footage she drapes dramatic reenactments of Solidarity texts, formal vignettes and swatches of soap opera to engage the audience in her personal definition of the Polish struggle. A deft dismemberment of documentary truth, from the director of WAITING FOR THE MOON. Made in collaboration with Susan Delson, Mark Magill and Andrzej Tymowski. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
    Young Women
   Population Studies
   South Asia/India
   Sociology
   Family Relations
 

Girls Around the World
Directed by Maria Barea, Kaija Jurikkala, Monique Mbeka Phoba, Pascale Schmidt, Sabiha Sumar and Yingli Ma
Produced by Brenda Parkerson, GIRLS AROUND THE WORLD is a collection of six extraordinary documentaries that examine the hopes, dreams and worldviews of a diverse group of 17-year-old girls from across the globe. This multidimensional series provides a critical cross-cultural perspective into the lives of young women, the concerns they share and the difficult decisions they face as they transition into adulthood. A compelling snapshot of global girlhood, GIRLS AROUND THE WORLD introduces young American women to the social and economic reality that shapes, and sometimes limits, the goals of their counterparts in the world. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
    Human Rights
   Young Women
   Islam
   Middle East
   Anthropology
   Arab
   Equity
    

Girls Still Dream
A film by Ateyyat El Abnoudy
In this engrossing documentary, award-winning filmmaker Ateyyat El Abnoudy realistically portrays the challenges facing girls in a country where one in four marries before age sixteen and one in five ever attends school. While girls both in and out of school share ambitions ranging from becoming a doctor to attaining basic reading skills, parents express mixed feelings about education's relevance. An affecting view of how Egyptian women still struggle for such basic human rights as education and the avoidance of compulsory marriage, GIRLS STILL DREAM highlights the cultural clash between traditional values and young women's growing self-awareness in the developing world.  More.

Recommended Subject Areas
    African American
   Music & Performance

Gotta Make This Journey
Produced by Michelle Parkerson 
Directed by Joseph Camp
This vibrant and engaging video profiles the a capella activist group, Sweet Honey in the Rock. Singing to end the oppression of Black people world wide, SWEET HONEY embraces musical styles from spirituals and blues to calypso, and concerns ranging from feminism to ecology, peace and justice. This dynamic video features individual portraits, powerful concert footage and commentary by Angela Davis, Alice Walker and Holly Near.  More.

Recommended Subject Areas
    History
    Reproductive Rights
    Health
    Women's Movement

    

Healthcaring
A film by Denise Bostrom and Jane Warrenbrand,
A classic chronicle of women's relationship to gynecology and healthcare, produced by Women Make Movies. In this bold and sensitive documentary, women of all ages and backgrounds speak candidly of their experiences with the healthcare system. HEALTHCARING documents the growing number of women who are questioning longstanding medical practices and working to implement alternative and more effective health care. The positive, warm style of the film encourages women to share their own experiences and gain a better sense of their right to receive better healthcare.  More.
 

Home Avenue
A film by Jennifer Montgomery
With commanding cinematic style, Montgomery retraces events of a night nine years ago when, between her boyfriend's dorm and her parent's house, she was raped at gunpoint. Super 8 camera in tow, she uncovers the psychology of the incident, relating how the authorities and her family tried to disavow her claims and the crime. Pondering the bland suburban landscape, her subsequent obsession with guns and the blurring of guilt, responsibility and betrayal, Montgomery boldly masters the trauma through memory, self-narration and artistic intervention. By the maker of ART FOR TEACHERS OF CHILDREN. More.
 

Recommended Subject Areas
Lesbian
   Native American
   Activism

Honored by the Moon
A film by Mona Smith
In this upbeat and empowering videotape, Native American lesbians and gay men speak of their unique historical and spiritual role. Within the Native American community, homosexuality was traditionally associated with the power to bridge worlds. Interviews with leading activists and personal testimony attest to the positive and painful experiences of being Native and gay. Produced by Smith (Dakota) for the Minnesota American Indian AIDS Task Force to raise issues of homophobia within the Indian community, this ground-breaking documentary is also an important contribution to culturally sensitive discussions of homosexuality. More.  
 

Recommended Subject Areas
   African American
   Gender
   Mass Media & Popular Culture
   Labor Studies

Killing Time/Fannie's Film
Two films by Fronza Woods
Part of the mediamaking movement that first gave centrality to the voices and experiences of African American women during the late Seventies and early Eighties, these two re-releases are no less groundbreaking today. KILLING TIME, an offbeat, wryly humorous look at the dilemma of a would-be suicide unable to find the right outfit to die in, examines the personal habits, socialization, and complexities of life that keep us going. In FANNIE'S FILM, a 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers' exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media's ongoing stereotypes of women of color who earn their living as domestic workers, this seemingly simple documentary achieves a quiet revolution: the expressive portrait of a fully realized individual. More.

Lady Lazarus
A film by Sandra Lahire
LADY LAZARUS weaves a visual response to Sylvia Plath's own readings of her work, including DADDY, ARIEL and selections from THE BELL JAR. Elegiac but unsentimental, this evocative film celebrates the legendary writer, her macabre humor and the resonance of her words. Drawn irresistably towards Plath's haunting voice-recorded during the final years before her death in 1963-the film's figurative Lady Lazarus is a young woman who acts as a spiritual medium for the writer during a seance. Set in Massachusetts and England, where Plath spent her life, LADY LAZARUS translates Plath's poetry into a carousel of stark, deeply poetic imagery. More.  

Love
A film collaboration between Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg
"The clinch that signals the fade-out in so many movies is just the beginning of Love, as Moffatt and editor Hillberg turn their energetic montage technique (introduced in Artist and Lip) to the cinema’s most obvious and most multifarious subject. As it turns out, Bette Davis and the Bond girls have a lot in common. A wealth of clips, from chaste black-and-white Hollywood classics to more full-flooded fare from the ‘60s and ‘70s, show women’s love, lust, longing and revenge. Without commentary or condescension, the film remakes the age-old story of a boy and girl in love with exhilaration and irony." -Patricia White, Associate Professor & Chair, Film and Media Studies Department of English Literature, Swarthmore College More.  

Recommended Subject Areas
History
Literature

Master Smart Woman
A film by Jane Morrison in collaboration with photographer Peter Namuth
From the award-winning director of THE WHITE HERON and THE TWO WORLDS OF ANGELITA, this loving portrait is a much deserved re-evaluation of Sarah Orne Jewett's contribution to American literature. Recently rediscovered by feminist literary scholars, Jewett was a fiercely independent woman, a critically acclaimed 19th century author, and an important role model for a generation of women writers. More.  
 

Recommended Subject Areas
     Latin America
     Body Image
     Anthropology
    Women's Movement

Miss Universe in Peru
A film by Grupo Chaski
Shot during the Miss Universe contest hosted by Peru in 1982, this documentary juxtaposes the glamour of the pageant with the realities of Peruvian women’s lives, while providing a critique of multinational corporate interest in the universal commodification of women. Grupo Chaski is a collective engaged in video production in Peru and is deeply committed to women’s equality and participation in society. More.  
 

Recommended Subject Areas Latina
    Mass Media & Popular Culture
        Motherhood

The Mother: Mitos Maternos
A film by Marta Bautis
This wry, self-reflective tape explores the mythical figure of the mother from multiple viewpoints-documentary and fiction, Spanish and English, theory and experience. The director interviews people on the street, views Hollywood stalwarts of maternal sentiment like Stella Dallas, reads what feminist thinkers have to say on the subject, and copes with life as a single Latina mother. A feminist telenovela for the 90s, THE MOTHER challenges popular beliefs about the mother's place and traditional representations of sacrifice and guilt. More.

My Heart is My Witness
A film by Louise Carré
MY HEART IS MY WITNESS, by renowed French-Canadian filmmaker, Louise Carré, investigates the status of women in Islam through interviews with men and women from Mali, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Though often caricatured in the Western media as a homogenous group of veiled subordinates, this documentary shows the diversity of Muslim women, informed by both religion and culture. This moving and stirring exploration of women’s rights and restrictions in Northern Africa and the Arabic peninsula helps us understand these women’s lives, struggles and dreams. More.

My Filmmaking, My Life
A film by Patricia Diaz
Matilde Landeta entered the flourishing Mexican film industry in the 1930s, working her way up from script girl to direct 110 shorts and, in the late 40s, to produce and direct three features, including LA NEGRA ANGUSTIAS. In this engrossing documentary filmed in Mexico City, a vibrant Landeta, now in her 70s, recalls those years. Interviews with Mexican directors Marcela Fernandez-Violante and Maria Novaro enrich this illuminating tribute. Produced by Jane Ryder.  More.

Recommended Subject Areas
        Asia
       Asian American
       Mass Media & Popular Culture
       Post-Colonialism
       Racism
 

On Cannibalism
A film by Fatimah Tobing Rony
King Kong meets the family photograph in this provocative experimental video exploring the West's insatiable appetite for native bodies in museums, world's fairs, and early cinema. Intertwining personal narrative about race and identity in the U.S. with layered footage, artifacts and video effects, ON CANNIBALISM looks back at anthropological truisms with outrage and irony. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
        Feature Films (Documentary)
        Gender
     Mass Media & Popular Culture
     Masculinity
     Sexuality
     Domestic Violence and Sexual 
        Assault

Rate It X
Directed by Lucy Winer and Paula De Koenigsberg
What do men really think of women? This provocative, highly acclaimed documentary provides an unflinching look at sexism in America. A series of disturbing though sometimes amusing portraits uncover obvious culprits such as advertising firms and porn shops as well as often overlooked pockets of sexist imagery which promote gender stereotyping and reinforce negative conceptions of women and sexuality. With great humor and compassion, the film reveals men's deeply imbedded attitudes, showing how sexism becomes rationalized through commerce, religion and social values. Hotly controversial upon its release, RATE IT X is a challenging, invaluable film that illuminates crucial issues of censorship, advertising, pornography and violence against women. More.

Sally's Beauty Spot
A film by Helen Lee
A large black mole above an Asian woman's breast serves as a metaphor for cultural and racial difference in this engaging experimental film. Offscreen women's voices and scenes from THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG parallel and counterpoint Sally's own interracial relationships and emerging self-awareness. A provocative and stylish meditation on Asian femininity. More.

Sari Red
A film by Pratibha Parmar
Made in memory of Kalbinder Kaur Hayre, a young Indian woman killed in 1985 in a racist attack in England, SARI RED eloquently examines the effect of the ever-present threat of violence upon the lives of Asian women in both private and public spheres. In this moving visual poem, the title refers to red, the color of blood spilt and the red of the sari, symbolizing sensuality and intimacy between Asian women.  More.

Selbe
One Among Many
Produced by Safi Faye
This revealing documentary offers a rare view of daily life in West Africa. Shot in Senegal, SELBE focuses on the social role and economic responsibility of women in African society. Because men often leave their communities to earn money in the city, women are left with the sole responsibility for their families. One woman’s personal struggle reflects the broader issues facing many women in developing countries. Safi Faye, an ethnologist, is the most important woman director of documentaries in West Africa. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
Human Rights
Lesbian
Central America

Sex and the Sandinistas
A film by Lucinda Broadbent
Nicaragua is known for the Sandinista Revolution, an inspiring struggle for national liberation. What has never been told before is the story of how homosexuals, in the teeth of a machista Roman Catholic culture, battled for their own space inside the Revolution. What really happened when the Sandinistas found their soldiers and revolutionary comrades falling in love with the wrong sex? More.

She Wants to Talk to You
A film by Anita Chang
In October 1999 filmmaker Anita Chang befriended three 13-year-old girls – Monika Rasali, Sushma Sada and Vinita Shrestha – while living in Kathmandu, Nepal. Honestly presenting themselves in front of the camera, these girls share with the filmmaker their ideas on marriage, friendship and spirituality. Their recordings provide a complex and poignant framework for three Nepali women living in the U.S. to reflect on their own struggle, exile and quest for liberation. Through verite documentary, the film offers rare insight into the lives of girls and women from a society steeped in patriarchy, tradition and caste. More.

Some Ground To Stand On
A film by Joyce Warshow
Co-produced and edited by Janet Baus
This compelling documentary tells the life story of Blue Lunden, a working class lesbian activist whose odyssey of personal transformation parallels lesbians’ changing roles over the past 40 years. Starting with Blue’s experience of being run out of the 1950’s New Orleans gay bar scene for wearing men’s clothing, SOME GROUND TO STAND ON combines interviews, rare photos, and archival footage to trace her experiences: giving up her child for adoption and getting her back; getting sober; and coming into her own as a lesbian rights, feminist, and anti-nuclear activist. Now 61 and living in Sugarloaf Women’s Village, Blue reflects on aging, activism, and a life spent “doing what she wanted” in this touching, inspiring look at a generation’s struggle for a lesbian identity and consciousness. More.

Stephanie
A film by Peggy Stern Following the filmmaker's teenage neighbor through six pivotal years of her life, Stephanie documents her dreams and disappointments through adolescence. Bright and inquisitive, Stephanie becomes disaffected with high school and the narrow options available to her and ultimately fails to graduate. This award-winning film profiles a typical teenager while pointing to broader issues of socialization, sex-role stereotyping and self esteem for young women. More.

Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)
A film by Midi Onodera
Onodera's three-part reflection on contemporary sexuality and communication uses a split screen device with a new twist. In the first segment, two women awkwardly discuss their mutual attraction; the second depicts anonymous bathroom sex between two men; the third is an ironic episode of heterosexual phone sex. More.
 

Thank God I'm a Lesbian
A film by Laurie Colbert and Dominique Cardona
THANK GOD I'M A LESBIAN is an uplifting and entertaining documentary about the diversity of lesbian identities. Dionne Brand, Nicole Brossard, Lee Pui Ming, Becki Ross, Julia Creet, LaVerne Monette, Sarah Schulman, Chris Bearchell, Chris Phibbs, Christine Delphy and Jeanelle Laillou speak frankly and articulately about issues ranging from coming out, racism, bisexuality, and SM, to the evolution of the feminist and lesbian movements, outing and compulsory heterosexuality. Inclusive of various and often contradictory points of view, THANK GOD I'M A LESBIAN successfully proposes an alternate vision of self and community that is realistic and positive. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
    Asian American
    Racism
    Psychology

Who’s Going to Pay for These Donuts, Anyway?
A film by Janice Tanaka
A brilliant collage of interviews, family photographs, archival footage and personal narration, this videotape documents Japanese American video artist Janice Tanaka’s search for her father after a 40 year separation. The two reunited when Tanaka found her father living in a halfway house for the mentally ill. Telling the moving story of her search as well as what she discovered about history, cultural identity, memory and family, WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR THESE DONUTS, ANYWAY? is a rare look at connections between racism and mental illness. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
Psychology
Domestic Violence and Sexual  Assault

Why Women Stay
A film by Jacqueline Shortell-McSweeney and Debra Zimmerman
This documentary examines the complex reasons why women remain in violent homes and challenges the prevailing attitudes which accept domestic violence as well as the social structures which perpetuate it. Among the issues examined are the attitudes of battered women, the lack of funding for shelters and the support battered women find in a shelter environment. Although produced more than ten years ago in a low budget format, this video still offers a complex analysis of an enduring social problem. More.

Women Filmmakers in Russia
A film by Sally Potter
Since Lenin's fervent embrace of cinema in the 1920s, more women have worked in the film industry in Russia than in the west. This fascinating documentary - produced during glasnost and prior to the dissolution of the USSR - includes interviews with actresses, critics, technicians and leading directors Kira Muratova and Lana Gogoberidze. Clips from films such as Larissa Shepitko's WINGS are contrasted with more traditional representations of women in "Soviet" cinema. WOMEN FILMMAKERS IN RUSSIA (aka I AM AN OX, I AM A HORSE, I AM A MAN, I AM A WOMAN) was directed by Sally Potter (ORLANDO). A Triple Vision Production. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
History
Film History

Women Who Made the Movies
A film by Gwendolyn Foster and Wheeler Dixon
WOMEN WHO MADE THE MOVIES traces the careers and films of such pioneer women filmmakers as Alice Guy Blaché, Ruth Ann Baldwin, Ida Lupino, Leni Riefenstahl, Dorothy Davenport Reid, Lois Weber, Kathlyn Williams, Cleo Madison, and many other women who made a lasting contribution to cinema history with their films. Featuring clips from the films, rare archival footage and stills, WOMEN WHO MADE THE MOVIES brings to life the works of these remarkable women. Critical viewing for all those interested in the history of cinema. More.

Recommended Subject Areas
Feature Films (fiction)
Literature
Psychology
 

The Yellow Wallpaper
A film by Marie Ashton
This short dramatic film brings to life the classic Charlotte Perkins Gilman story of the same name, which has become an important addition to American literature course curricula. Set in the late 1800s, the story features Elizabeth, an aspiring writer who becomes ill and is forced by her doctor and her husband to take a "rest cure." Completely isolated, her mind creates a world inside the wallpaper in her room-a world in which a woman is trapped and unable to escape. More.