Harlan County USA
Director Barbara Kopple
Year 1976
Subject Educational Documentary
Running Time 103 minutes
DistributorFirst Run Features
Comments: The movie is a great American document, but it's also
entertaining; Kopple structures her material to provide tension, brief but
vivid characterizations and dramatic confrontations. There are gunshots, and a
death, and many moments of simple warmth and laughter. The many union songs
provide a historical context, and also help Kopple achieve a fluid editing
rhythm. And most of all there are the people in the film, those amazing people,
so proud and self-reliant and brave.
A Healthy Baby Girl
Director Judith Helfand
Year 1997
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 58 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: In 1963 filmmaker Judith Helfand's mother was prescribed the
ineffective, carcinogenic synthetic hormone diethylstilbestrol (DES), meant to
prevent miscarriage and ensure a healthy baby. At twenty-five, Judith was
diagnosed with DES-related cervical cancer. After a radical hysterectomy she
went to her family's home to heal and picked up her camera. The resulting
video-diary is a fascinating exploration of how science, marketing and
corporate power can affect our deepest relationships. Shot over five years,
A Healthy Baby Girl tells a story of survival, mother-daughter love,
family renewal, and community activism. Intimate, humorous, and searing, it is
an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the relationship between
women's health, public policy, medical ethics and corporate responsibility
Hearts and Hands: The Influence of Women & Quilts on American Society,
Parts I and II
Director Pat Ferrero
Year 1988
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time Part I - 34 minutes, Part II - 30 minutes
DistributorHearts and Hands Media Arts
Comments: Hearts and Hands dramatically presents a vital part of
American history only now beginning to be told--the role played by women and
their textiles in the nineteenth century's great movements and events including
the Civil War, the abolition of slavery, westward expansion, the suffrage and
temperance movements. The film explores the astonishing lives and
accomplishments of ordinary, often anonymous women as well as chronicling the
lives of extraordinary individuals such as Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Keckley,
Frances Willard and Abigail Scott Duniway.
Heaven
Director Tracey Moffatt
Year 1997
Running Time 28 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: This playful video from famed director and photographer Tracey
Moffatt turns the tables on traditional representations of desire to examine
the power of the female gaze in the objectification of men's bodies. Heaven
begins with surreptitiously taped documentary footage of brawny surfers
changing in and out of bathing and wet-suits. While the soundtrack switches
between the ocean surf and male chanting, Moffatt moves closer to alternately
flirt with and tease her subjects, who respond with a combination of preening
and macho reticence. This witty piece is a potent and hilarious meditation on
cinematic and everyday sex roles, voyeurism, power, and the thin line between
admiration and invasiveness.
A Hero for Daisy
Director Mary Mazzio
Year 1999
Subject Educational Documentary
Language English
Running Time 40 minutes
Distributor 50 Eggs
Comments: An inspirational story about two-time Olympian, Chris Ernst, who
galvanized her rowing team to storm the Yale athletic director's office in
1976. In front of a reporter from The New York Times, the women stripped,
exposing the phrase "Title IX" emblazoned in blue marker Title IX referring to
legislation enacted in 1972 which mandated gender equity for institutions
receiving federal aid). The story was carried by all of the major international
news outlets and the Yale phones began ringing. The film contains interviews
with illustrios Yale graduate Senator John Kerry; legendary football coach and
former Yale athletic director Carm Cozza, a wide array of Yale administrators,
students, and graduates; as well as a number of Olympians.
Hidden in America
Director Martin Bell
Year 1996
Subject Drama
Artist Beau Bridges
Running Time 93 minutes
Distributor Showtime
Comments: Story of a man Bill Januson (Beau Bridges) whose pride in being
the head of his family won't let him accept help from his sick daughter's
doctor (Bruce Davison). He has to prove to his kids that even with the death of
his wife and the loss of his job that they can and will survive. After hitting
brick wall after brick wall comes a glimmer of hope.
Hidden Faces
Director Claire Hunt and Kim Longinotto
Year 1990
Running Time 52 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: Originally intended as a film about internationally renowned
feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi, Hidden Faces develops into a
fascinating portrayal of Egyptian women's lives in Muslim society. In this
collaborative documentary, Safaa Fathay, a young Egyptian woman living in
Paris, returns home to interview the famed writer and activist, but becomes
disillusioned with her. Illuminated by passages from El Saadawi's work, the
film follows Fathay's journey to her family home and discovers similar complex
frictions between modernity and tradition. Her mother's decision to return to
the veil after twenty years and her cousins' clitoridectomies reveal a
disturbing renewal of fundamentalism. This absorbing documentary broaches the
contradictions of feminism in a Muslim environment; a startling, unforgettable
picture of contemporary women in the Arab world.
High Tide
Director Gillian Armstrong
Year 1988
Subject Feature (Drama)
Screenplay Laura Jones
Artists Judy Davis, Jan Adele, Claudia Karvan, and Colin Friels
Language English
Running Time 102 minutes
Distributor Nelson Entertainment
Comments: What do you do if you're a backup singer for an Elvis
impersonator with a Napoleon complex, and he decides to fire you? Simple, if
you're Lilli, and you're stuck in a honky-tonk Australian beach town with a
broken down car, no money and even less talent, you become a stripper. What
follows is a crazy quilt of a story in which Lilli finds a spirit she didn't
know she had, a daughter she had given away and thought she'd never see again,
and the drive to go on and make herself a new life. All in the tim eit takes to
get her car fixed.
High School Football Hero
Director ABC News Home Video
Comments
ABC News 20/20 6-22-00
Hill; Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill: Public Hearing, Private Pain
(FRONTLINE)
Director Ofra Bikel
Year 1992
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 58 minutes
Distributor PBS Video
Comments: FRONTLINE explores how Clarence Thomas's bitter confirmation
battle reached deep into the psyche of black America, starkly exposing both the
divisions and dilemmas confronting black Americans and the racial psychology
underlying whites' perceptions of them. While the Thomas-Hill confrontation was
reported as a story about a rift between the sexes, producer Ofra Bikel finds,
after talking with black Americans, that the dynamics of race -- being black in
America -- was inescapably at the heart of the story. Drawing from the
mesmerizing public record of the televised hearings, together with candid
conversations with dozens of black Americans, Bikel probes how race was
misrepresented and used by the nominee and his supporters and opponents. This
program also details how little common understanding existed in the way black
and white Americans viewed the confirmation battle. What was riveting theater
to a global television audience of tens of millions was an often cruel,
humiliating experience for black Americans. This program charts the entire
course of events -- from Thurgood Marshall's resignation and the opening of the
"black seat" on the Supreme Court to the final emotional day when Thomas was
sworn in as associate justice.
History and Memory: For Akiko and Takeshi
Director Rea Tajiri
Year 1991
Running Time 32 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: This moving exploration of personal and cultural memory juxtaposes
Hollywood images of Japanese Americans and World War II propaganda with stories
from the videomaker's family. Ruminating on the difficult nature of
representing the past, the artist blends interviews, memorabilia, a pilgrimage
to the camp where her mother was interned, and the story of her father, who had
been drafted pre-Pearl Harbor and returned to find his family's house removed
from its site. A haunting testament to the Japanese American experience.
Hong Kingston; The Stories of Maxine Hong Kingston
Subject Documentary
Running Time 52 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: When Maxine Hong Kingston was growing up in California, she
listened to her parents' stories and memories of their native China. In her
highly acclaimed memoirs, The Woman Warrior and China Men, she linked those
tales of tradition to the story of her own American experience, blending
childhood memory, meditation, and magic. They are the most widely taught books
by a living American author on college campuses today. In this program with
Bill Moyers, Kingston discusses new images of America as a "melting pot" where
the dutiful notions of the Puritans blend with the Monkey Spirit of the Orient
to produce a new American consciousness.
Honoring Our Voices
Director Judi Jeffrey
Year 1992
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 33 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: Sharing their stories about recovery and healing, six Native women
of different ages and backgrounds talk about the choices they have made to
overcome the hardships of family violence and end the cycle of abuse and
silence. Through the far-reaching changes in their lives, they reveal the
rewards of empowering themselves and their families, as well as the strengths
of counseling based in Native healing strategies and traditions.
Hour of the Star
Director Suzana Amaral
Year 1986
Subject Feature
Artists Marcella Cartaxo and Jose Dumont
Language Portuguese with English Subtitles
Running Time 96 minutes
Distributor Kino on Video
Comments: Macabea is a young woman from the countryside of northeast Brazil,
who moves to the sprawling city of Sao Paolo. Her doomed quest for success amid
the desperate poverty around her is tempered by the happiness she finds in her
fantasies. The mixture of bitter reality and gentle, humorous fantasy has been
compared with the best work of Fellini, Chaplin, and DeSica, and earned Suzana
Amaral's first feature status as an instant cinematic classic.
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