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.
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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.
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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.
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Peggy and Fred in Hell
The first installment of Leslie Thornton's ongoing epic follows two children, Peggy and Fred, through a densely cluttered, technological-consumer jumble of late 20th century icons.
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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.
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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
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From Bedside to Bargaining Table
This inspiring documentary looks at nursing from the nurse's point of view, encouraging healthcare professionals to work together to change their poor working conditions and gain self-respect.
With gratitude to the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program at NYU, a digital preservation copy of this film now available for exhibition! Please contact [email protected] for more information.
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Far From Poland
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.
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After Hours
A confronting and realistic short drama by Academy Award-winning director, Jane Campion, about sexual harassment in the office. A young office worker alleges her boss sexually harassed her when she worked late at his request. She loses her job as a result of the claim. The investigator for the case finds it difficult to gather evidence from the tight-lipped and uncooperative office workers. Delicately drawn, AFTER HOURS raises important questions about discrimination, sexual harassment, gender relations and the interpretation of events.
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Master Smart Woman
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.
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Women of Steel
For women who entered the nation's steel mills in the 1970s, the mill was a ticket out of traditionally low-paying "women's jobs" and in some cases, out of poverty. But any gains for women were short lived. WOMEN OF STEEL looks at a turning point in the history of American industry and the disastrous effects widesweeping layoffs and plant closings had on women and families, affirmative action plans, and the union movement. An important historical documentary which has an eerie relevance to women's place in the American economy today.
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Memory Pictures
A beautifully composed profile of gay Indian photographer, Sunil Gupta, and the way his work portrays issues of sexual and racial identity in relation to personal and familial history.
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Gotta Make This Journey
This vibrant and engaging film 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 film features individual portraits, powerful concert footage and commentary by Angela Davis, Alice Walker and Holly Near.
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Louder Than Our Words
A look at civil disobedience and women's rights in the U.S. from the suffragettes through the anti-war and disarmament movements.
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Adynata
A formal 1861 portrait of a Chinese Mandarin and his wife is the starting point for this allegorical investigation of the fantasies spawned in the West about the East, particularly that which associates femininity with the mysterious Orient. ADYNATA presents a series of oppositions-male and female images, past and present sounds-which in and of themselves construct a minimal and fragmentary narrative, an open text of our imaginations, fears and fantasies.
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She Even Chewed Tobacco
The Gold Rush. A new frontier. Nineteenth century California offered women the opportunity to pioneer new roles for themselves. Meet Babe Bean, the "trouser puzzle" who escaped the hot glare of tabloid headlines by disguising herself as Jack Garland and serving in the Spanish American War. Or Jeanne Bonnet who scored a record of 22+ arrests for wearing male attire, went to prison for her indiscretions and later organized a group of prostitutes into a shoplifting ring! "A fascinating eye-opening tribute to the stamina and chutzpah of some of yesterday's most notable pariahs!" —The Advocate
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The Gold Diggers
Now digitally remastered! Sally Potter’s ground-breaking first feature examining the relationship between women and capitalism.
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Illusions
This critically acclaimed drama from filmmaker Julie Dash (DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST) takes place in 1942 at a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio.
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What You Take for Granted
The tentative friendship of Anna, a feisty truck driver, and Diana, an upper middle-class doctor, provides the core for an unusual, intimate and moving look at women's experiences in jobs traditionally held by men. Based on actual interviews of forty working women, the film intercuts the story of Anna and Diana with fictionalized interviews of four other non-traditionally employed women.
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A Man, When He Is a Man
Set in Costa Rica and touched with dark humor, this stylistically imaginative documentary illuminates the social climate and cultural traditions which nurture machismo and allow the domination of women to flourish in Latin America.
"An amazing work that successfully reveals the genuinely funny elements of male posturing and its potentially serious consequences. It will be appreciated by general audiences as well as teachers interested in stimulating discussion on sex roles." -Malcolm Arth, Margaret Mead Film Festival
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A Different Image
A highly-acclaimed film, A DIFFERENT IMAGE is an extraordinary poetic portrait of a beautiful young African American woman attempting to escape becoming a sex object and to discover her true heritage. Through a sensitive and humorous story about her relationship with a man, the film makes provocative connections between racism and sexual stereotyping. The screenplay of A DIFFERENT IMAGE is published in Screenplays of the African American Experience, edited by Dr. Phyllis R. Klotman.
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