With a Vengeance
This urgent and timely film is a history of the struggle for reproductive freedom since the 1960s, reflecting the wider history of the contemporary women's movement. WITH A VENGEANCE is an empowering look at the strength and breadth of the current women's movement which asks why current battles resemble those of the 60s. Rare archival footage and interviews with early abortion rights activists, including members of Redstockings and the JANE Collective, are intercut with young women who testify to the need for multi-racial grassroots coalitions. Flo Kennedy and Byllye Avery exemplify African American women's roles as leaders, making connections between racism, reproductive freedom and healthcare for the poor.
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A Spy in the House that Ruth Built
Vanalyne Green appropriates the all-male arena of professional baseball to create a visual essay about family, loss, and sexuality. Confronted with such a strange wonderland, devoid of women, Green is compelled to reinterpret baseball's symbolism-its womb-like landscape, cycles, and rituals-to construct an iconography that pays homage to the female. With humor and irony, Green creates a film that is both a personal revelation and a heretical portrait of America's national past-time.
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Positive Images
People with disabilities constitute nearly twenty percent of the American population. Sexism and often racism compound discrimination based on disability. Designed to provide positive, realistic pictures of the lives of women with disabilities and the social, economic, and political issues they face, POSITIVE IMAGES focuses on three strong and articulate women. Offering crucial role models for women and girls with disabilities, this powerful film also locates disability as a women's issue of concern to us all by discussing education, employment and careers, sexuality, family life and parenting, and societal attitudes.
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Peggy and Fred in Kansas
A few years older now, our boy and girl heroes mumble and chant their way through mid- America's wasteland. Thornton's interest in the line between language and thought becomes disturbingly apparent.
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A State of Danger
Shot in Israel and the Occupied Territories, this extraordinary documentary offers a unique, vital perspective on the Intifada seldom seen in U.S. mainstream media. Produced for the BBC, A State of Danger gives voice to Palestinian and Israeli peace activists, most of them women. Chilling testimonies to Israeli police brutality are supplemented by interviews with Israelis who support Palestinian self-determination. A STATE OF DANGER is a compelling, timely documentary that examines grassroots support, human rights, and the role of Arab and Jewish women in bringing peace to the region.
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...And Woman Wove It in a Basket
For the Klickitat Indians in Washington, basket weaving is a way of reclaiming native forms and heritage. This evocative portrayal of basket weaver Nettie Jackson Kuneki and her family explores Klickitat river culture within an investigation of documentary practice and cultural preservation. Capturing native life as experienced by a contemporary Klickitat woman, the film presents her daily activities through seasonal changes, the documentation of her craft and a visual history of Indian tales and legends. Voices of the filmmakers' own quest supplement Kuneki's reflections, creating a unique tapestry of personal memory and cultural collaboration that is invaluable for ethnographic film studies, Native American collections and women's studies.
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Eat the Kimono
EAT THE KIMONO is a brilliant documentary about Hanayagi Genshu, a Japanese feminist and avant-garde dancer and performer, who has spent her life defying her conservative culture’s contempt for independence and unconventionality. She denounced Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal, and dismissed death threats made against her by right-wing groups. “You mustn’t be eaten by the kimono,” says Genshu, making reference to the traditional Japanese dress designed to restrict movement for women, “You must eat the kimono, and gobble it up.” From the directors of THE GOOD WIFE OF TOKYO and HIDDEN FACES.
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Home Avenue
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.
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Can't You Take a Joke?
Can you fall in love and still have a sense of humor? This delightful, stylish comedy, in which boy meets boy and girl meets girl, uses the romantic music and visuals of Hollywood film noir to explore the ideal of love at first sight.
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Surname Viet Given Name Nam
Vietnamese-born Trinh T. Minh-ha’s profoundly personal documentary explores the role of Vietnamese women historically and in contemporary society.
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Rule of Thumb
A sensitive film which explores domestic violence through the perspective of women who have left abusive relationships. Five women from different backgrounds discuss their ordeals and the concrete steps they have taken to eradicate fear and violence from their daily lives. Supplemented by testimonies from a woman judge, a police officer and a former abuser, this empowering film offers clear, concise instructions on obtaining an order of protection and other support services.
"*** This thorough and well constructed work succeeds in informing the public about both prevention and intervention in regard to domestic violence. This project addresses its important and disturbing topic so well that it should be shown on every television station and in every schoolroom across the country." - Jury Comments, American Film and Video Association
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Color Schemes
An upbeat, ironic look at America’s multicultural society, COLOR SCHEMES uses the metaphor of “color wash” to tackle conceptions of racial assimilation. Challenging stereotypes, twelve writer/performers collaborate on four performance sequences—soak, wash, rinse and extract. Spinning through this tumble- jumble of America’s washload, the performers scheme to claim racial images that remain color vivid.
Digital preservation copy now available for exhibition! Please contact [email protected] for more information.
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Two Lies
Doris Chu, a recently divorced Chinese American woman, has plastic surgery to make her eyes rounder. From her teenage daughter Mei's perspective, her mother's two eyes equal two lies. When the family journeys to a desert resort during Doris' recuperation, a series of revelations and bitter confrontations erupt. This beautiful black and white drama is a poignant study of generational conflict and the struggle for identity in a world of hybrid cultures.
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Visions of the Spirit
This intimate and inspiring portrait of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker explores the compassion, insight and strength that have made her one of the most admired women in the United States. Filmed at Walker’s California home, in her Georgia hometown, and on location with the film crew of THE COLOR PURPLE, VISIONS OF THE SPIRIT shows us Walker as mother, daughter, philosopher, activist and of course, writer. Featherston’s film explores the roots of Walker’s southern African American feminist consciousness through in-depth conversations with the writer and members of her family. African American feminist literary scholar Barbara Christian places Walker in the history of African American literature, archival footage of the civil rights movement provides background for Walker’s political vision. A perfect introduction to the writer for literature, African American and women’s studies classes, libraries and general audiences.
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The Displaced View
THE DISPLACED VIEW is a film that movingly depicts the odyssey of an American-born Japanese granddaughter in search of her identity through her grandmother who is the last of the family born in Japan. The sense of isolation the granddaughter feels as a Japanese woman who cannot speak Japanese is skillfully evoked in a montage of images gleaned from old photographs, movies, animated puppets, and various experimental film techniques. Onodera focuses almost exclusively on Japanese women as preservers of the old traditions in a country where they have no meaning. By revealing the inconsistency of memory and the cultural erosion of assimilation, the fragile identity of the Japanese in North America is eloquently expressed, and the sense of alienation and displacement heightens as the old voices try to remember the past. The narrative shifts between English and Japanese, as well as between generations. Japanese subtitles are artfully displayed throughout. The focus on women makes this film ideal for women’s studies, but the historical overview would be important in other disciplines such as history and sociology. Highly recommended for academic libraries. -Roxanna Herrick, SUNY at Stony Brook Library
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Coffee Colored Children
This lyrical, unsettling film conveys the experience of children of mixed racial heritage. Suffering the aggression of racial harassment, a young girl and her brother attempt to wash their skin white with scouring powder. Starkly emotional and visually compelling, this semi-autobiographical testimony to the profound internalized effects of racism and the struggle for self-definition and pride is a powerful catalyst for discussion.
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From Here, From This Side
The relationship between Mexico and the United States has always been fraught. Using mostly stock footage, this collage-like documentary “stars” Robert Redford, John Gavin, and Superman in an exploration of the border separating the United States of Mexico from the United States of America. Incorporating texts by Octavio Paz and others, images from Mexican melodramas and Hollywood movies, this film forces U.S. viewers to consider the question of cultural imperialism from a non-dominant perspective.
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Perfect Image?
Bright and imaginative in its approach to its subject, PERFECT IMAGE? exposes stereotypical images of Black women and explores women's own ideas of self worth. Using two actresses who constantly change their personae, the film poses questions about how Black women see themselves and each other and the pitfalls that await those who internalize the search for the "perfect image"!
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Hell to Pay
A moving and politically sophisticated analysis of the international debt situation through the eyes of the women of Bolivia, the poorest country in Latin America. Although most directly affected by government austerity programs, peasant women are assumed not to understand the workings of international capital and foreign policy. HELL TO PAY poignantly contradicts such assumptions as teachers, textile workers and miners’ wives speak vividly and with great comprehension of the causes of the debt crisis and the burden they are forced to bear.
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Dreaming Rivers
From Sankofa Film and Video comes this bittersweet and nostalgic short drama illustrating the spirit of modern families touched by the experience of migration. Miss T., from the Caribbean, lives alone in her one-room apartment, her children and husband having left her to pursue new dreams. When she dies her family and friends gather at her wake. The tapestry of words that interweave the drama convey the fragments of a life lived, but only partly remembered.
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Her Giveaway
Carole Lafavor (Ojibwe), activist, mother and registered nurse, is a person with AIDS. In this candid and moving portrait, Lafavor relates how she has come to terms with AIDS by combining her traditional beliefs and healing practices with western medicine. HER GIVEAWAY is more than just basic information—it is an inspiring example of how we can all learn from the Native American philosophy of illness. Produced by Smith (Dakota) for the Minnesota American Indian AIDS Task Force, this film confronts the “official” invisibility of women, Native Americans and lesbians with AIDS.
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