The Passion of Remembrance
THE PASSION OF REMEMBRANCE (dir. Maureen Blackwood & Isaac Julien, 1986), the Sankofa collective's greatly influential first film and a landmark work in British avant-garde film and video, ambitiously explores themes of racism, homophobia, sexism, and generational tensions as embodied in the reality known by a Black British family over the years. Interweaves two narrative threads—one in which a man and a woman discourse on their own experiences living in the UK, another in which events from three decades in the lives of the Baptiste family are staged—Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien tease the accumulated fragments into a spellbinding, heterogeneous mosaic that powerfully evokes the multiplicity of Black experience and identity and critiques the British state’s treatment of its marginalized residents.
This 4K remaster by the BFI National Archive, undertaken in collaboration with the directors and cinematographer Nina Kellgren, is based on the original 16mm negative and magnetic soundtrack final mix. Available for exhibition. Please contact [email protected] for more information.
Learn more
Navajo Talking Picture
In NAVAJO TALKING PICTURE film student Arlene Bowman (Navajo) travels to the Reservation to document the traditional ways of her grandmother. The filmmaker persists in spite of her grandmother's forceful objections to this invasion of her privacy. Ultimately, what emerges is a thought-provoking work which abruptly calls into question issues of "insider/outsider" status in a portrait of an assimilated Navajo struggling to use a "white man's" medium to capture the remnants of her cultural past. Excellent for film studies as well as those interested in Native American culture.
Learn more
Update Brazil
Brazil, like most countries, has a high incidence of domestic violence and sexual assault. Too often, institutions set up to deal with these crimes are staffed by men who have little understanding or recognition of the needs of the women who are most often the victims. UPDATE BRAZIL looks at this country’s innovative solution: the establishment of police stations completely run and operated by plainclothes and armed women, offering legal assistance and emotional support. An informative, exciting, and empowering new perspective in dealing with sexual assault.
Learn more
A Word in Edgewise
"A truly articulate, unaffected statement about a basic human activity, this excellent film explains the role of language in shaping behavior. It is a good synthesis of all that has been explored by linguists about sex bias in everyday speech and writing. Scholarly, yet simple and believable, it is informative without being preachy, and cites illustrations of abuses as well as suggestions for improvement. This is a truly feminist film made by women. This film should be required viewing for all educators and can be used at all levels to improve awareness of our use and abuse of language in perpetuating sex bias in culture."-Choice
Learn more
Rate It X
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. Produced by Lynn Campbell, Claudette Charbonneau, Paula De Koenigsberg and Lucy Winer.
Learn more
Miss Universe in Peru
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.
Learn more
Stephanie
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.
Learn more
Gluttony
Eve discovers the rapture of the apple and offers it to Adam thus committing the original sin. Told in studio-bound cartoon style, this tale serves as an allegory for the plight of the contemporary male/female relationship.
Part of the SEVEN WOMEN-SEVEN SINS series which answers the question, " What constitutes a deadly sin in this day and age, and how do you approach such a subject?" Seven of the world’s best-known women directors produce their own version of celluloid sin in this omnibus film.
Learn more
Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)
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.
Learn more
Emergence
Common themes of identity, alienation and herstory in the context of the diasporan experience emerge in this powerful film. Four Black and Third World women artists, among them African American feminist poet Audre Lorde and Palestinian performance artist Mona Hatoum, speak forcefully through their art and writing.
Learn more
Prescription for Change
Nurses: traditionally female, underpaid, and underappreciated. PRESCRIPTION FOR CHANGE presents a rare behind-the-scenes look at nursing.
Learn more
Unfinished Diary
In this moving docudrama, Chilean emigre Mallet struggles to make a film about her experience of profound isolation. Her English speaking husband, a prominent filmmaker, criticizes her subjective approach to filmmaking; their young son, raised in Quebec, speaks only French. Interviews with Isabel Allende and other Chilean exiles reveal a deep bond in this powerful, resonant film about language and gender, exile and immigration.
Learn more
Naked Spaces
Shot with stunning elegance and clarity, NAKED SPACES explores the rhythm and ritual of life in the rural environments of six West African countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkino Faso, Togo, Benin and Senegal). The nonlinear structure of NAKED SPACES challenges the traditions of ethnographic filmmaking, while sensuous sights and sounds lead the viewer on a poetic journey to the most inaccessible parts of the African continent: the private interaction of people in their living spaces.
Learn more
Seventeen Rooms
Britain’s Channel 4 refused to broadcast this piece because of its subtitle: WHAT DO LESBIANS DO IN BED? The film looks into seventeen bedrooms to challenge the titillating promise of that question with home movie footage and texts such as “Sleep," “Read," and even “Sometimes Kiss." A light and humorous examination of visual representations of women, sexual terminology and the definition of deviance.
Digital preservation copy now available for exhibition! Please contact [email protected] for more information.
Learn more
Waking Up to Rape
"If I were to choose only one film on sexual assault to show to a class or to the general public, I would select WAKING UP TO RAPE. This is a powerful film that examines the personal trauma of rape, its long-term psychological effects, societal attitudes about sexual assault, and the problem of racism in the criminal justice system. Three rape survivors (Black, Chicana, and white) courageously describe their rape experiences (acquaintance rape, incest, and stranger rape). The film also features scenes with women police officers, counselors, and self-defense instructors. Unlike most films, it offers strong support for women viewers who are coping with their own sexual assault experiences. I highly recommend it for college classes, everyone who works with sexual assault survivors, and the general public." -Feminist Collections
Learn more
Trick or Drink
Vanalyne Green's childhood world, growing up with alcoholic parents, is recreated through crayon drawings, family albums, excerpts from her adolescent diary and her interpretation of subsequent events in her life-including her own bulimia and her relationships with men.
Learn more
Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza De Mayo
This Academy award-nominated documentary about the Argentinian mothers’ movement to demand to know the fate of 30,000 “disappeared” sons and daughters remains as extraordinarily powerful as when it was first released. As well as giving an understanding of Argentinian history in the ‘70s and ‘80s, LAS MADRES shows the empowerment of women in a society where women are expected to be silent. LAS MADRES provides a banner of hope in the international struggle for human rights.
Learn more
An Island Surrounded by Water
A beautiful and poetic account of a young girl's search for her mother, who left mysteriously to join a guerilla movement. The narrative combines her real and imagined journey through the landscape of Mexico with her passage into adulthood. This, Novaro's first film, won the best fictional short award from Mexico's Academy of Film Arts and Sciences.
Learn more
The Maids
Domestic service has long been branded as demeaning work: it involves long hours, menial toil and low pay. Historically, and not coincidentally, it has been one of the only occupations open to African American women in this country. As African American women have begun to move away from domestic labor into other jobs, white-owned entrepreneurial maid services employing primarily white women have arisen. This intriguing and articulate documentary looks at the history of domestic work since slavery and the ambivalence felt by African American women towards it. Offering a sophisticated analysis of the racial and sexual division of labor in this country, THE MAIDS! is an excellent resource for women's, African American and labor studies.
Learn more
The Practice of Love
"Valie Export's third feature is an anti-romance in which the heroine, oscillating between two relationships, gradually discovers that both are impossible, not because the subjective processes of "love" are defective, but because the objective, social matrix in which both her male lovers operate is corrupt, immoral, murderous: in this film, the male world and its power structures cancel the possibility of love beyond the matter of sexuality, that is the objectification of love. Export makes use of techniques drawn from her earlier experimental cinema, video and conceptual photography to expand the possibilities of narrative feature filmmaking and to disintegrate some of its overdetermined conventions." -Gary Indiana
Learn more