SARABAH

Broadcast on Link TV January 15, 2012


Rapper, singer and activist, Sister Fa is hero to young women in Senegal and an unstoppable force for social change. A childhood victim of female genital cutting (FGC), she decided to tackle the issue by starting a grassroots campaign, “Education Without Excision,” which uses her music and persuasive powers to end the practice. But until 2010 there’s one place she had never brought her message – back home to her own village of Thionck Essyl, where she fears rejection.
 

Fall 2011

PINK SARIS

Broadcast on HBO, November 30, 2011

"A girl's life is cruel...A woman's life is very cruel," notes Sampat Pal, the complex protagonist at the center of PINK SARIS, internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto's latest foray into the lives of extraordinary women. Sampat should know - like many others she was married as a young girl into a family which made her work hard and beat her often. But unusually, she fought back, leaving her in-laws and eventually becoming famous as a champion for beleaguered women throughout Uttar Pradesh, many of whom find their way to her doorstep. Like Rekha, a fourteen year old Untouchable, who is three months pregnant and homeless or fifteen year old Renu, whose father-in-law has been raping her. Both young women, frightened and desperate, reach out for their only hope: Sampat Pal and her Gulabi Gang, Northern India's women vigilantes in pink. More.

SIN BY SILENCE

Broadcast on Investigation Discovery, October 17, 2011

Since 1989, Convicted Women Against Abuse, the first inmate-initiated and -led group inside the US prison system, has changed laws for battered women, raised awareness for those on the outside, and educated a system that does not fully comprehend the complexities of domestic abuse. From behind prison walls, SIN BY SILENCE shatters misconceptions and reveals the extraordinary lives of women who have killed their abusers and now advocate for a future free from domestic violence.  More.

SISTERS IN LAW

Broadcast on ITVS, October 9, 2011

Festival favorite Kim Longinotto's latest work (co-directed with Florence Ayisi) is a totally fascinating, often hilarious look at the work of one small courthouse in Cameroon. With fierce compassion, the tough-minded state prosecutor Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba handle cases of abuse with wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair measure. A cross between Judge Judy and The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, SISTERS IN LAW has audiences cheering when justice is served. More.

Broadcast on POV, September 20, 2011

THE LEARNING chronicles an emotionally charged year in the lives of four Filipino women as they leave their homeland to teach in Baltimore’s inner-city schools. With their increased salaries, they hope to transform their families’ impoverished lives back home. But the women also bring idealistic visions of the teacher’s craft and of life in America, which soon collide with Baltimore’s tough realities.  More.

Summer 2011

FAR FROM HOME

Broadcast on the Doc Channel, July 21, 2011

While busing is a rapidly-fading memory in most American schools, it continues to be a reality for over 3,000 Boston students every year. Kandice is one of them, an African-American teenager who has been bussed to a predominantly white suburb since kindergarten. In this revealing doc, she takes us inside her triumphs, struggles, and conflicted feelings about traversing these two worlds. She also reveals her family’s long history of integrated education and activism. More.

Broadcast on KCET, Tuesday, June 14 at 10:00 pm.

Meet Georgina Beyer, the latest “it” girl of New Zealand politics. A one-time sex worker of Maori descent turned public official, Georgina stunned the world in 1999 by becoming the first transgendered person to hold national office. Born George Beyer, this unlikely politician grew up on a small Tarankai farm and later became a small-time celebrity on the cabaret circuit in Auckland. With charisma, humor and charm, Beyer unapologetically recounts her fascinating life story, shares how she overcame adversity and discloses the reasons she decided to run for office in a mostly all white, conservative electorate. More.

Broadcast on TV Ontario, June 22 at 9pm

"A girl's life is cruel...A woman's life is very cruel," notes Sampat Pal, the complex protagonist at the center of PINK SARIS, internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto's latest foray into the lives of extraordinary women. (SISTERS IN LAW, DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE, ROUGH AUNTIES) Sampat should know - like many others she was married as a young girl into a family which made her work hard and beat her often. But unusually, she fought back, leaving her in-laws and eventually becoming famous as a champion for beleaguered women throughout Uttar Pradesh, many of whom find their way to her doorstep. Like Rekha, a fourteen year old Untouchable, who is three months pregnant and homeless or fifteen year old Renu, whose father-in-law has been raping her. Both young women, frightened and desperate, reach out for their only hope: Sampat Pal and her Gulabi Gang, Northern India's women vigilantes in pink. More.

 

Spring 2011

PUSHING THE ELEPHANT

Broadcast on PBS – Independent Lens, March 29, 2011

In the late 1990s, Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo. She emerged advocating forgiveness and reconciliation. In a country where ethnic violence has created seemingly irreparable rifts among Tutsis, Hutus and other Congolese, this remarkable woman is a vital voice in her beleaguered nation’s search for peace. More.

MRS. GOUNDO'S DAUGHTER
Broadcast on Afropop, PBS,
February 9, 2011

Mrs. Goundo is fighting to remain in the United States. Threatened with deportation, her two-year-old daughter could be forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), like 85 percent of women and girls in Mali. Using rarely cited grounds for political asylum, Goundo must convince an immigration judge that her daughter is in danger. More.

Israel is the only country in the world where 18-year-old girls are drafted for compulsory military service. In this award-winning documentary, the frank testimonials of six female Israeli soldiers stationed in Gaza and the West Bank pack a powerful emotional punch. The young women revisit their tours of duty in the occupied territories with surprising honesty and strip bare stereotypes of gender differences in the military. The former soldiers share shocking moments of negligence, flippancy, immaturity and power-tripping as they describe atrocities they witnessed and participated in. More.


 

THUNDER IN GUYANA is the remarkable tale of Janet Jagan, a young woman from Chicago who married Guyanese activist Cheddi Jagan, and set off for the British colony to start a socialist revolution. For more than fifty years, the couple fought tirelessly to liberate the country from colonial rule and exploitation—despite battering by the international press, imprisonment and the intervention of world figures including Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. Free and fair elections were instituted in the early 90's, and Janet Jagan was elected president of Guyana in 1997, the first foreign-born and first woman to serve in the role. More.


 

Past and present collide in this extraordinarily well crafted documentary when filmmaker Natalia Almada (ALL WATER HAS A PERFECT MEMORY), winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s US Directing Award for documentary, brings to life audio recordings she inherited from her grandmother. These recordings feature Alicia Calles’ reminiscences about her own father—Natalia’s great-grandfather—General Plutarco Elías Calles, a revolutionary general who became president of Mexico in 1924. In his time, Calles was called “El Bolshevique” and “El Jefe Máximo”, or “the foremost chief”. Today, he remains one of Mexico’s most controversial figures, illustrating both the idealism and injustices of the country’s history. More.


 

Fearless, feisty and resolute, the “Rough Aunties” are a remarkable group of women unwavering in their stand to protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa. This latest documentary by internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto follows the members of this outspoken, multiracial cadre as they wage a daily battle against systemic apathy, corruption, and greed to help the most vulnerable and disenfranchised of their communities. More.


 

Fearless, feisty and resolute, the “Rough Aunties” are a remarkable group of women unwavering in their stand to protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa. This latest documentary by internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto follows the members of this outspoken, multiracial cadre as they wage a daily battle against systemic apathy, corruption, and greed to help the most vulnerable and disenfranchised of their communities. More.


 

Since 1993, more 400 young women have been raped and murdered in Juarez, Mexico. Authorities ignore pleas for justice, and evidence of government complicity remains uninvestigated as the killings continue to this day. SEÑORITA EXTRAVIADA is a haunting look at a heinous crime wave amid corruption in one of the world’s biggest border towns.  More.


 

So sacred was the bullfighter’s masculinity to Spanish identity that a 1908 law barred women from the sport. This new release reveals the surprising history of the women who made such a law necessary, and offers fascinating profiles of two female matadors currently in the arena, the acclaimed Maripaz Vega and neophyte Eva Florencia.   More.


 

When Australian filmmaker Poppy Stockell decides to “research” a look at the lesbian Internet dating scene, she forges an unexpectedly deep online connection with an English woman, Sandeep Virdi. This uniquely modern love story follows the couple’s tumultuous relationship across two years and three continents, and is a touching examination of sexuality, religion, globalization, and culture.  More.


 

Harrowing at one moment and heartwarming the next, this recent release by preeminent documentarian Kim Longinotto is set at England’s Mulberry Bush School, founded by Barbara Dockar-Drysdale who developed unique methods for working with children suffering through severe emotional trauma.  More.


 

Filmed by the first ever team of women video journalists trained in Afghanistan, this rare and uncompromising film explores the effects of the Taliban’s repressive rule and recent U.S.-sponsored bombing campaign on Afghani women. None of the fourteen journalist trainees had ever traveled outside Kabul. Except for one, none had been able to study or pursue careers while the Taliban controlled their country. More.


 

For filmmaker Marjan Tehrani and her brother Alex, growing up Iranian-American has always meant being caught between two worlds. With unique perspective and intimate storytelling, Tehrani brings to life a compelling examination of US-Iranian relations through the personal journey of her brother Alex and his fiancée Heather’s trip to Iran to hold a traditional Persian wedding—just as the filmmaker’s Iranian father and American mother did at a time when Iran and the US were close allies. More.


 

In 1969 Palestinian Leila Khaled made history by becoming the first woman to hijack an airplane. As a Palestinian child growing up in Sweden, filmmaker Lina Makboul admired Khaled for her bold actions; as an adult, she began asking complex questions about the legacy created by her childhood hero. This fascinating documentary is at once a portrait of Khaled, an exploration of the filmmaker’s own understanding of her Palestinian identity, and a complicated examination of the nebulous dichotomy between "terrorist" and "freedom fighter." More.


 

An important exploration of issues rarely touched upon by most films portraying female-to-male (FTM) transgender experiences, BOY I AM promotes understanding of transgender issues for general audiences, while also encouraging conversations heretofore unexplored among lesbian, feminist, and transgender communities. More.

Shot in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this extraordinary film shatters the silence that surrounds the shocking plight of women and girls who, caught in this country’s intractable conflict, are being systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. More.


 

After surviving a 14-year civil war and a government riddled with corruption, Liberia is ready for change. On January 16, 2006, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was inaugurated President – the first freely elected female head of state in Africa. As the filmmakers explore a historic transition from authoritarianism to democracy, the viewer is treated to a joyous, inspirational testimony of the political power of women's leadership and diplomacy. More.
 

 

Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary short, this charming and often outrageous documentary reveals a secret world in the powder room of the Staten Island Ferry – bringing together white-collar and blue-collar, sisters and socialites in the feisty “ferry clique.” Broaching divorce, single motherhood and domestic violence, the film exposes the realities facing working women today. More.


 

Beth Bird chronicles the struggles of the fiercely determined citizens of Maclovio Rojas, Tijuana, Mexico, as they battle the state government's attempts to evict them from their land to make way for corporate development. Over a three-year period, we follow the remarkably spirited and resourceful residents as they build a school by hand and persistently petition the state for such basic services as running water and pay for their teachers. More.


 

Following Madison during three years of her transition from male to female, heartwarming GIRL INSIDE highlights Madison’s loving relationship with her glamorous 80-year-old grandmother. Their conversations raise profound issues about the nature of gender, femininity, and sexuality. Sometimes funny, sometimes painful, this sweet coming of age story is both a portrait and an exploration of what it means to be a woman. More.


 

From Oscar and Emmy Award winning filmmakers Allie Light and Irving Saraf comes their latest film - an engaging portrait that sparkles with the courage, wit and humanity of Sister Jane Kelly, who combines her deep spiritual faith with her equally powerful commitment towards resistance and change. More.


 

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