daddy & papa
Director Johnny Symons
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 57 minutes
Distributor New Day
Comments: Daddy & Papa is a one-hour documentary video that opens a
candid window on the personal, cultural, and political implications of gay
fatherhood. From surrogacy, foster care, and interracial adoption, to the
complexities of gay divorce, to the legal battle around gay parenting, Daddy
& Papa presents a revealing look at some of the gay dads who are breaking
new ground in the ever-changing landscape of the American family.
Dangerous When Wet
Subject Collected Shorts
Year 1999 Subject Anthology
Language English
Running Time 62 minutes
Distributor Water Bearer Films
Comments: Six highly original lesbian shorts from the award-winning
Frameline collection. In Sleep Come Free Me (Laurie Schmidt, 1998), a
disenchanted office worker's dream life is suddenly overwhelmed with unexpected
desire. This film won the Audience Award for Best Short at the San Francisco
International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. I'm Starving (Yau Ching) is an
erotic tale about the love between a woman and the ghost who shares her crammed
Chinatown apartment. Adam (Andrea Stoops, 1996) is a clever, animated account
of a playground contest directed by a butch baby. Badass Supermama (Etang
Inyang 1996) is a playful and personal contemplation of race, gender and
sexuality as seen in the image of "blaxploitation" goddess Pam Grier. Blue
Diary (Jeni Olson, 1997) is a study of urban love and loss that won the
Director's Choice Award at the Black Maria Film Festival. Lastly, Dangerous
When Wet (Diane Bender, 1992) is the humorous tale of a woman's first orgasm
and her difficulty describing the experience.
Daring to Resist
Directors Barbara Attie and Martha Goell Lubell
Year 1999
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 57 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: Why would a young person choose resistance rather than submission
during Hitler's reign of terror while her world was collapsing around her? In
this gripping documentary, three Jewish women answer this question by recalling
their lives as teenagers in occupied Holland, Hungary and Poland, when they
refused to remain passive as the Nazis rounded up local Jewish populations.
Defying her family's wishes, each girl found an unexpected way of fighting
back--as a ballet dancer shuttling Jews to safe houses and distributing
resistance newspapers; as a photographer and partisan waging guerrilla war
against the Germans; and as a leader in an underground Zionist group smuggling
Jews across the border. Enriched by home movies, archival footage, and
previously unpublished photographs, the women's varied and vibrant stories
provide a unique look at Jewish resistance to Nazism, a subject all too often
consigned to history's footnotes.
Dartmouth Asian American Conference 2006
Daughter Rite
Director Michelle Citron
Year 1979
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 53 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: In this remarkable and groundbreaking film, one of the most widely
used feminist films in cinema studies classes, Citron has produced a complex
and unsettling work exploring the psychological dynamics of the nuclear family.
As Citron describes it: "I wanted to make a film about women in families,
especially the mother/daughter and sibling/sister relationships. But I wanted
to do so in a provocative way, that is, create a narrative that did not offer
solutions or answers but instead motivated the audience to think, and possibly
change." Daughter Rite combines home movies, a dreamlike voice-over and
scripted cinema v?rit? sequences to extend the language of feminist
documentary.
Daughters of the Dust
Director Julie Dash
Year 1991
Subject Feature
Artists Cora Lee Day, Barbara-O, Alva Rogers
Screenplay Julie Dash
Language English
Running Time 113 minutes
Distributor Geeche Girls Productions
Comments: This movie tells the story of a large African-American family as
they prepare to move North at the dawn of the 20th century. Using this simple
tale, the film brings to life the changing values, conflicts and struggles that
confront every family as they leave their homeland for the promise of a new and
better future. In addition to this highly charged epic drama, this film
explores the unique culture of the Gullah people, descendants of slaves who
lived in relative isolation on the Sea Islands off the Georgia coast. As the
generations struggle with the decision to leave, their rich Gullah heritage and
African roots rise to the surface.
Dear Jesse
Director Tim Kirkman
Year 1998
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 83 minutes
Distributor New Yorker Video
Comments: Director Tim Kirkman's "open letter" to conservative Senator Jesse
Helms is an extremely personal, often quite funny and touching documentary that
examines the impact the North Carolina Republican has had on Kirkman's
hometown. Talking to friends, neighbors and others, Kirkman tries to find how
deep the currents of homophobia run in his community, and he contemplates how
Helms' long political career has shaped those feelings.
Dear Lisa: A Letter to My Sister
Director J. Clements
Year 1991
Subject Documentary
Screenplay J Clements
Language English
Running Time 45 minutes
Distributor New Day Films
Comments: Facing the realities of being female in the 90's. A discussion of
childhood play, the work place, motherhood, relationships, the "second shift,"
body image, sexual assault, and self-esteem.
Defying Gravity
Director John Keitel
Year 1997
Subject Feature Film
Language English
Running Time 93 minutes
Distributor Wolfe Video
Comments: A "coming out" drama set in the sexually conflicted world of a
college fraternity, where popular student Griff struggles with being honest
about his homosexuality. After a gay-bashing incident, the pressure is on for
Griff to come out. Winner, Best Narrative, at the 1997 Austin Gay and Lesbian
Film Festival.
Derrida; Jacques Derrida
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 39 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher credited with launching
the Deconstructionist movement, argues his theories on this program. Derrida
begins with a frank discussion on the ethical problems of Deconstruction,
especially in relation to human rights. He argues that Deconstruction is not a
disillusion of the subject, it is first and foremost a historical or
genealogical analysis of that subject and an attempt to focus on a universal
translation of it. Derrida points out that Deconstruction is mainly an
affirmation -- it goes further and changes the nature of the subject -- and is
neither "reconstruction" nor "destruction."
The Desert is No Lady
Director Shelley Williams
Year 1995
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 45 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: The idea for this film came from a book called: The Desert Is No
Lady: Southwestern Landscapes in Women's Writing and Art. The title of this
book came from a poem which questions the idea of a passive, feminine landscape
that simply awaits the western conqueror. Williams interviews several of
contemporary women artists living in the deserts of the southwestern United
States. She explores artistic expressions, ethnicity and place in relation to
contemporary women. The viewer is permitted inside the artists' studios, homes
or surrounding environment. Each setting forms the backdrop for the artist's
"self-portrait." The artists interviewed include: Sandra Cisneros, Harmony
Hammond, Pola Lopez de Jaramillo, Pat Mora, Nora Naranjo-Morse, Meridel
Rubenstein, Ramona Sakiestewa, Luci Tapahonso, and Emma Whitehorse.
Desire
Director Stuart Marshall
Year 1989
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 88 minutes
Distributor Water Bearer Films
Comments: Director Stuart Marshall chronicles the events leading to a
crucial chapter in the gay and lesbian movement's history: the imprisonment of
homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. His film examines
the "discovery" of homosexuality by the medical and psychoanalytic professions
in the 1890s, and the subsequent movements in Germany during the early Years of
this century demanding recognition of gay and lesbian rights.
Did They Buy It?
Director Robert Hercules & Frank Dina
Language English
Running Time 45 minutes
Distributor Media Process Group
Comments: Chicagoan Bob Hercules' documentary was filmed on location with a
crew of four. It concentrates largely on the U.S. media coverage of the
Nicaraguan elections. What emerges is not only a sharp piece of alternative
news coverage that helps to explain the outcome, but also a revealing and
multifaceted (and alternately funny and chilling) look at how the U.S. news
about Nicaragua actually gets "created."
Different For Girls
Director Richard Spence
Year 1996
Subject Feature Film
Language English
Running Time 101 minutes
Distributor Fox Lorber
Comments: When Paul (Rupert Graves) last saw his old school friend he
remembered a boy named Karl. Now, 15 Years later, he unexpectedly runs into him
again, but now she is Kim, a post-operative transsexual. Worlds apart in their
attitudes toward life, they no longer appear to have anything in common. But as
she teaches him to grow up and he teaches her to have fun, they accidentally
fall in love. With Steven Mackintosh as Karl/Kim.
Discovering Women: Earth Explorer, Geophysicist Marcia McNutt
Producers Muffie Meyer and Ellen Hovde
Subject WGBH Documentary
Year 1995
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: Geophysicist Marcia McNutt sees science as a giant jigsaw puzzle.
She is conducting a study of a critical juncture beneath Lake Mead, Nevada,
where the earth's geological plates are pulling away from each other. Our
continent is literally "falling apart before our very eyes," says McNutt, and
someday North America may split into two separate continents. The profile
follows McNutt as she studies these hidden forces, and it travels with her to
Tahiti where she and her colleagues examine xenoliths, rock fragments thrown up
from the earth's mysterious interior. The program also shows the human face of
a life in science. McNutt is a single parent, widowed five years ago when her
husband suddenly died, leaving her with three young daughters. Her life
involves a constant balancing of research and teaching at MIT, where she's a
tenured professor in the Earth Sciences Department, with children's piano
lessons and birthday parties.
Discovering Women: High Energy, Physicist Melissa Franklin
Producer David Sutherland
Subject WGBH Documentary
Year 1995
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: To Melissa Franklin, building a machine that zaps subatomic
particles is as much of a kick as staying up all night listening to Frank Zappa
albums. She is an eclectic innovator with a quirky sense of humor ? and she's
also the first woman to become a tenured professor in Harvard University's
physics department. In this profile, Franklin brings the cameras inside the
multi-million dollar, 140-particle detector at Chicago's Fermilab. The
detector, which Franklin helped build, accelerates "the smallest things in the
world," subatomic particles, and then smashes them together to produce data
that physicists can record and study. Out of this work, Franklin and her
colleagues have produced evidence of the top quark, the final, elusive particle
needed to complete the Standard Model of quantum physics. Franklin balances
this demanding work with a personal credo ?"One's role in life is to be
amusing"? that makes her provocative and funny.
Discovering Women: Jewels in a Test Tube, Biochemist Lynda Jordan
Producer Yvonne Smith
Subject WGBH Documentary
Year 1995
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: As a teenager growing up in a dangerous, low-income housing
project in Boston, Lynda Jordan was, as she puts it, "on the cusp of becoming a
delinquent child." Today she's a tenured associate professor in biochemistry,
working on an exciting project: unlocking the secrets of a key human enzyme
that's vital to one of life's most fundamental processes, giving birth. The
inspiring story of Jordan's journey towards that goal, and of her efforts to
encourage the next generation of African American scientists like herself, is
at the heart of this profile. She talks about the importance of her
undergraduate years at an historically black university, a place where she
could feel "strong, reinforced, affirmed," in her identity as an African
American woman while learning the skills needed to go on to a Ph.D. from MIT
and a fellowship at the prestigious Institut Pasteur in Paris.
Discovering Women: Secrets Underground, Archeologist Patty Jo Watson
Producer Deborah Shaffer
Subject WGBH Documentary
Year 1995
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: 4,500 years ago, barefoot adventurers crawled through dark, narrow
passages deep inside the earth, exploring their world with remarkable courage
and skill. In this profile, archeologist Patty Jo Watson follows their path and
views their footprints with awe. "It's one of the times when you can see the
past before you," Watson says. "It's about the closest you can get to a
prehistoric person." Watson's work in caves has uncovered intriguing new
information about the earliest North Americans, and has led to a re-evaluation
of our beliefs about them. Watson also travels to a rural Chinese village and
high into the Rocky Mountains as part of her study of early human activity, and
she talks about her provocative new theory about gender roles in early
societies. But the key to her work lies deep in the caves of Kentucky and
Tennessee, where research can often be hazardous. On one trip in this program a
fellow caver collapses in hypoglycemic shock, and Watson and her team must
scramble to alert rescue forces and guide them in, two miles underground.
Discovering Women: Silicon Vision, Computational Neuroscientist Misha
Mahowald
Producer James DeVinney
Subject WGBH Documentary
Year 1995
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: As a child, Misha Mahowald went on a ride at Disneyland where
visitors were "shrunk down" into "water molecules." Being only a child, she
thought what she was seeing was real. "The world suddenly was much more
interesting than I'd been led to believe, because there were all these things
that were normally invisible that were really there," she remembers. Today,
Mahowald brings the same delighted curiosity to her work as a young scientist
in a very young field, computational neuroscience, a combination of computer
science and biology. Although she is only 29 years old, she has already played
a major part in the development of a silicon retina, a tiny computer chip that
reacts to light as the eye's retina does. A ghostly , flickering image of
Mahowald as seen by this retina wavers on the computer screen as she works on
her next project: building a silicon neuron. It's the next step towards
building an entire visual network - and maybe, someday, a human brain - on
computer chips.
Divine Goddesses
Year 1995
Running Time 51 minutes
Distributor Time-Life Video
Comments: The gender wars we wage today merely echo those fought since the
dawn of mankind -- only then the battlefield was called religion. Exciting new
evidence sheds light on goddess cults that thrived in an age before men cried
heresy at any prayer not uttered to a single masculine God. Two parts: "The
Forbidden Goddess" and "Women of Lesbos"
Divorce Iranian Style
Director Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini
Year 1998
Running Time 80 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: Hilarious, tragic, stirring, this fly-on-the-wall look at several
weeks in an Iranian divorce court provides a unique window into the intimate
circumstances of Iranian women's lives. Following Jamileh, whose husband beats
her; Ziba, a 16-year old trying to divorce her 38-year old husband; and Maryam,
who is desperately fighting to gain custody of her daughters, this deadpan
chronicle showcases the strength, ingenuity, and guile with which they confront
biased laws, a Kafakaesque administrative system, and their husbands' and
families' rage to gain divorces. With the barest of commentary, Longinotto
turns her cameras on the court and lets it tell its own story. Dispelling
images of Iran as a country of war, hostages, and "fatwas", and Iranian women
as passive victims of a terrible system, this film is a subtle, fascinating
look at women's lives in a country which is little known to most Americans.
Directed by Kim Longinotto, the acclaimed Director of Dream Girls and
Hidden Faces, and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, author of Marriage on Trial:
A Study of Islamic Family Law.
Do The Right Thing
Director Spike Lee
Year 1989
Subject Feature (Comedy)
Artists Dany Aiello
Language English
Running Time 120 minutes
Distributor Universal City Studios
Comments: This powerful visual feast combines humar and drama with memorable
characters while tracing the course of a single day on a block in the
Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. It's the hottest day of the year, a
scorching 24-hour period that will change the lives of its residents forever.
Danny Aiello co-stars in this absorbing tale of inner-city life that heats up
with vivid images and unforgettable performances.
Double Happiness
Director Mina Shum
Year 1995
Subject Feature Film
Language English
Running Time 87 minutes
Distributor Fine Line Features
Comments: East clashes with West and generations collide in this comedy
about a young Chinese woman struggling to appease her old-fashioned father, and
at the same time purse her modern dreams. Jade's parents want to see her
happily married to a nice successful Chinese man, so they embark on a
matchmaking mission. But Jade wants to make up her own mind. The problem is,
telling them the truth about her secret romance with a caucasian man, would
break their hearts. For Jade, the choice between family and personal happiness
is about to change her life forever. "Double Happiness" is a funny and
bittersweet comedy that has something for everyone!
Dove; Poet Laureate Rita Dove
Subject Documentary
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: Rita Dove is a Pulitzer Prize-winner and the youngest poet to have
held the post of Poet Laureate of the United States. In this program with Bill
Moyers, Dove talks about her life and work, the relationship between poetry and
power, and her plans for taking poetry to the people. The program also features
Dove reading extensive selections from her works (including her Pulitzer
Prize-winning collection Thomas and Beulah) and in performance before and
audience.
Dream Girls
Director Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams
Year 1994
Running Time 50 mins
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: Dream Girls opens a door into the spectacular world of
the Takarazuka Revue, a highly successful theater company in Japan where all
roles are played by women. Thousands of young Japanese women apply to enter the
Takarazuka Music School each year . The few that are accepted will endure year
s of a highly disciplined and reclusive existence before they can join the
Revue. Once on stage these performers create a fantasy world-- a world in which
"men" are always handsome and sensitive, women are always glamorous, and love
is grand. Millions of Japanese women adore the romantic heros (played by
women), idolizing them like heartthrob pop stars "we'll never meet men like
this" say two young girls "but it helps you to forget the pain of life for a
while". A Japanese Paris is Burning with a twist, Dream Girls
offers a compelling insight into gender and sexual identity and the
contradictions experienced by Japanese women today.
Dreamworlds II
Year 1991
Running Time 56 minutes
Subject Documentary
Comments: By focusing on one of the most important aspects of popular
culture -- music video -- DreamWorlds raises critical questions, and
suggests new answers about the effect of music video. DreamWorlds II
powerfully illustrates the systematic representations of women in music video,
and how these representations tell a dangerous and narrow set of stories about
what it means to be female or male; stories which impact how women think about
themselves sexually, and how men think sexually about women. Shocking and
disturbing, DreamWorlds gives us a critical distance from images which
have become so ubiquitous, and normal, they are almost invisible.
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