Director: Lucinda Broadbent
Year:2000
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 26 minutes
Distributor:
Comments: Macho, a film by Lucinda Broadbent, provides an in-depth profile of Men Against Violence and its ground-breaking work towards eliminating attitudes of male chauvinism (known as machismo in Spanish) that have perpetuated violent acts against women in Nicaragua and Latin America. The film strongly demonstrates that despite living in one of the most destitute countries in Latin America, this group has succeeded in providing a model that is used by men worldwide to discuss issues of violence and advocate for the rights of women. Macho offers a rare glimpse at the methods used by Men Against Violence to discuss the abuse of power and the damage it causes families and communities. It also is a powerful film that challenges assumptions about machismo and its continued application to Latino culture. In the end, Macho demonstrates that violence against women and sexual abuse is a worldwide epidemic that needs to be addressed by all men in every country.
Director: Patricia Plattner
Year: 1999
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 55 minutes
Distributor: Women Make Movies
Comments: This powerful documentary is a portrait of SEWA, the now-famous women's organization in India that holds to the simple yet radical belief that poor women need organizing, not welfare. SEWA, or the Self-Employed Women's Association, corresponds to the Indian word sewa, meaning service. Based in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, a dusty old textile town on the edge of the Gujarati desert, SEWA is at its core a trade union for the self-employed. It offers union membership to the illiterate women who sell vegetables for 50 cents a day in the city markets, or who pick up paper scraps for recycling from the streets--jobs that most Indian men don't consider real work. Inspired by the political, economic and moral model advocated by Mahatma Gandhi, SEWA has grown since its founding to a membership of more than 217,000 and its bank now has 61,000 members, assets of $4 million and customers who walk in each day to deposit a dollar or take out 60 cents. Following the lives of six women involved in the organization, including Ela R. Bhat, its visionary founder, Plattner's documentary is an important look at the power of grassroots global feminism.
Director: Eve-Laure Moros and Linzy Emery
Year 1999
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 33 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: In Thailand, women make up 90 percent of the labor force responsible for garments and toys for export by multinational corporations. This powerful, revealing documentary about women factory workers and their struggle to organize unions exposes the human cost behind the production of everyday items that reach our shores. Probing the profound impact of the New World Order on the populations that provide the global economy with cheap labor, Made in Thailand also profiles women newly empowered by their campaign for human and worker's rights. Several of these women are survivors of the 1993 Kader Toy Factory fire, one of the worst industrial fires in history. Today they are highly effective leaders in the grass-roots movement mobilizing workers in their recently industrialized country.
Director Greta Schiller
Year 1998
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 54 minutes
Distributor The Cinema Guild
Comments Blending dramatic recreations with archival footage, home movies and contemporary interviews, this film shares an unusual chapter from South African history. Cecil Williams, a leading Johannesburg theater director and committed freedom fighter, helped Nelson Mandela travel incognito across the country in the early '60s so he could organize the armed rebellion against the apartheid regime. Disguised as the chauffeur of an elegant, impeccably dressed white man, Mandela was able to avoid suspicion as he moved about. Williams, a gay man who understood the nature of oppression, was an unknown hero to the freedom movement. This documentary from Greta Schiller (Before Stonewall, Paris Was a Woman) won Best Documentary honors at the Berlin International Film Festival. Corin Redgrave plays Williams in the dramatic portions of the film.
Director Leontine Sagan
Year 1931
Subject Feature Film
Language German with English sub
Running Time 90 minutes
Distributor Janus Films
Comments: Today considered on of the masterpieces of German cinemas, Maedchen in Uniform was originally banned in Germany and the U.S. Set in a strict boarding school, the tale of a lonely girl's crush on a female teacher proved too sensual for some, and its condemnation of Facist authoritanianism outraged the Nazis. With Eleanor Roosevelt's help, the U.S. ban was lifted, and the film was later named best film of the year by the New York press. Brilliant acting and direction sensitively depict the schoolgirl's yearnings in their frenzied whispers, hysterical lampoons of rigid teachers, and open adoration of one sympathetic teacher. Though the original negative was destroyed during the war, the film was restored from rediscovered prints years later. An early feminist classic, this all-female production is a tender portrayal of female bonding and love.
Director Muriel Jackson
Year 1985
Running Time 28 mins
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments
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.
Director Jonathan Demme
Year 1989
Subject Feature (Comedy)
Artists Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Modine, Dean Stockwell
Language English
DistributorOrion Home Video
Comments
Mafia princess Angela DeMarco wants out. Everything she owns is either stolen or permanently borrowed Her 7-year-old son is running petty cons in the backyard. And her husband, hitman Frank "The Cucumber" DeMarco is taking bubble baths with the boss's bimbo - an activity Tony "The Tiger" Russo pulls the plug on permanently. With Frank dead, Angela decides it's time to divorce the mob and start a new life. But what she doesn't realize is once you're married to the mob, it's until death do you part, usually yours.
Director Jyll Johnstone
Year 1995
Running Time 80 minutes
Distributor Columbia Tristar Home Video
Comments
Martha & Ethel is the story of two American families, and two very different women who raised them. Told through riveting interviews, vintage photographs, home movies and newsreel footage, Martha & Ethel chronicles the lives of two nannies and the upper-class families they served from the 1940's to the present. Stern Martha, a German immigrant, ruled by fear and intimidation. Ethel, a fun-loving Southerner, raised "her" children with gentle, unconditional love. Together, the nannies and their families represent the full spectrum of American life: black and white, rich and poor, native and immigrant. "Ambitious and emotionally deep...It deftly becomes a history of social change over 40 years and a meditation on motherhood and family. Martha and Ethel themselves are such rich screen presences."
Director Alan Berliner
Year 1997
Subject Feature
Language English
Running Time 89 minutes
DistributorColumbia Home Video
Comments
Ludovic is waiting for a miracle. With six-year old certainty he believes he was meant to be a girl and that the mistake will soon be corrected. But where he expects the miraculous, Ludo finds only rejection, isolation, and guilt as the intense reactions of family, friends, and neighbors strip away every innocent lace and bauble. As suburban prejudices close around them, family loves and loyalties are tested in the ever-escalating dramatic turns of Alain Berliner's critically acclaimed first feature.
Director --
Year 2000
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 56 minutes
Distributor: U.S. Committee for the United Nations Population Fund
Comments: This film documents gender relations throughout the world, turning especially to reproductive and population control issues.
Director Gil Portes
Year 1998
Subject Feature Film
Language In Tagalog with English Subtitles
Running Time 106 minutes
Distributor World Artists Home Video
Comments A Filipino family sends their son off to America, with the hope that he will make a lot of money and perhaps find a girl to marry. To their shock, he returns home not with, but as a girl, having undergone a sex change operation in the states. Now, the friends and family of Miguel have to reexamine their values completely if they are ever going to accept the glamorous Michelle. "Lively...a bright, humanist plea for tolerance for the transgendered, especially those with great wardrobes...sweet...entertaining" (Godfrey Cheshire, Variety).
Director Allison Anders
Year 1993
Running Time 100 minutes
Distributor: HBO Home Video
Comments
The streets are alive in Echo Park, Los Angeles. Alive with passion and anger, with casual moments of love and sudden acts of violence. Gang members Sad Girl and Mousie, once best friends, are now enemies as they have both become pregnant by the same man, Ernesto, a local drug dealer. But when Ernesto is murdered by a rival gang-leader, the balance of power on the street brutally changes and it's time to take sides. As the Echo Park boys deal with Ernesto's murder by searching for revenge, the Echo Park girls arm themselves for another kind of struggle--the struggle to survive.
Director Laurie Kahn-Leavitt
Year 1997
Running Time 88 minutes
Distributor PBS Video
Comments
Experience 18th century American life through the remarkable story of midwife and healer Martha Ballard. A mix of drama and documentary, the film is based on historian Laurel Ulrich's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, which chronicles Ballard's life using diary entries spanning 27 years. The seemingly mundane details of Ballard's experiences reveal the intense social and political turmoil of a new nation-profound social change, deadly disease, religious conflict, and domestic violence. A Midwife's Tale unfolds in a small Maine town during the turbulent decades following the American Revolution.
Director Helena Solberg
Year 1996
Subject Documentary
Language: English and Portuguese w/ English subtitles
Running Time 90 minutes
Distributor: Fox Lorber Home Video
Comments: The intimate saga of the star who captured the world's heart and imagination. The film reveals the lasting image of Latin American women Carmen Miranda created and serves as a celebration of her glorious talents. Using archival footage, film fragments, interviews and dramatic re-enactments, acclaimed director Helena Solberg goes behind-the-scenes to convey the true life story of the "Brazilian Bombshell."
Director: American Experience
Year: 2002
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 96 minutes
Distributor: WGBH Boston
Comments: Miss America tracks the contest from its inception in 1921 as an exuberant local seaside pageant to its heyday as one of the most popular and anticipated events in the country's cultural calendar. Among the many stories it uncovers are those of Vanessa Williams and her predecessor, Bess Meyerson, a Jew, who was crowned Miss America in 1945, the same year the Allies won World War II. It paints a vivid picture of the changing ambitions of the contestants and it describes how the pageant became the target of the first national protest by the women's rights movement. As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that the Miss America contest isn't just the country's oldest beauty contest. It is a powerful cultural institution that over the course of the century has come to reveal much about a changing nation -- the increasing power of the image, the rise in commercialism, the complexity of sexual politics, the important role of big business and the emotional resonance of small towns. It is, we learn, about winners and losers, getting ahead, being included and being left out. Beyond the symbolism lies a human story -- at once moving, inspiring, infuriating, funny and poignant. Using intimate interviews with former contestants, archival footage and photographs, the film reveals why some women took part in the fledgling event and why others briefly shut it down. It describes how the pageant became a battleground for the country's most conservative and progressive elements and a barometer for the changing position of women in society. It reveals how for women in the 1920s the pageant was an avenue to movie stardom and for women in the 1950s it paved the way to academic success. Miss America intercuts period film with contemporary footage of the 1999 and 2000 pageants that captures the glamour and excitement of the event, both on stage and in the wings. The documentary reinforces the pageant's continuing hold on the imagination of the American public.
Director Thomas Schlamme
Year 1989
Subject Feature (Comedy)
Artists Holly Hunter, Tim Robbins, Mary Steenburgen, Scott Gelnn, Alfre Woodard
Screenplay Beth Henley
Language English
Running Time 102 minutes
Distributor HBO Video
Comments: Being an orphan, Carnelle never really felt at home in Yazoo City, but now her time had come. Hilarious comedy ensues when this small town girl with big time dreams enters the local beauty competition to be crowned Miss Firecracker. Joining Carnelle, and supporting her all of the way (some of the time), there's Cousin Elain, southern belle and former Miss Firecracker; Cousin Delmount, back from a newvous breakdown to sell the family home; Popeye, local seamstress who learned her trade making clothes for bullfrogs; and Mac Sam, carnival worker and Carnelle's occasional beau. All these and many more Yazoo City citizens make this Miss Firecracker contest the one you won't want to miss. It's Carnelle's chance to shine.
Director Maria Luisa Bemberg
Year 1991
Artist Julie Christie
Language English
Running Time 100 minutes
Comments: Between pre-war Buenos Aires and the turbulence of Peron's Argentina are remembrances of things past. Amid the jarring war cries of the present and between the innocence and passions lies a story of love and family honor...and the woman that tore them apart. This is the story of Miss Mary, the cultures English governess whose only crime was compassion, and of the wealthy family that lives and dies by their inflated sense of tradition. And of the broad political events and intimate personal dramas that will carve their destinies.
Subject Documentary
Running Time 29 minutes
Comments: This program introduces one of the greatest contemporary American authors; winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, "a literary Moses stripping away the idols of whiteness and blackness that have prevented blacks form knowing themselves." Readings from Beloved and Jazz show how she returns to the pain of slavery and segregation to restore wholeness to the black psyche. "The past," Morrison says, "is more infinite than the future...It's avoiding it, deceiving ourselves about it, that paralyzes growth."
Director Marleen Gorris
Year 1997
Subject Feature Film
Language English
Running Time 97 minutes
Distributor Fox Lorber Films
Comments: From the director of Academy-Award winning Antonia's Line comes Mrs. Dalloway, the captivating and romantic story based on the critically-acclaimed Virginia Woolf novel of the same name. It's a lovely summer day and Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for an elaborate party. During the day of her party, she remembers another summer past, when she was a beautiful, vivacious, and much-courted young woman. Her preparations are interrupted, however, by the unexpected arrival of a former suitor from that long-ago summer a once dashing man she thought she would marry but ultimately rejected. As the day of the party unfolds, Mrs. Dalloway's life also becomes strangely intertwined with a young man she never meets but whose tragic fate strikes a chord of truth deep in her soul that she cannot deny.
Director Alan Rudolph
Year 1984
Subject Feature Film
Language English
Running Time 124 minutes
Distributor New Line Home Video
Comments Dorothy Parker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is a woman ahead of her time. A brilliant writer with a razor-sharp tongue, she sits at the center of the famous round table of the Algonquin Hotel. Here, the brightest lights of the literary world swap legendary stories that keep all of Broadway and Hollywood on their toes. Mrs. Parker also shares a professional but intimate relationship with comic genius Robert Benchley, but when she meets Charlie MacArthur, she falls hopelessly in love, a condition even literary genius can't seem to cure.
Year 1994
Subject Documentary
Running Time 60 minutes
Comments: Toni Morrison exists in two worlds: the visible world, bustling around her, and the world of her novels, whose characters tell about an interior reality hidden from the eyes of strangers. In her work, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison has transported millions of readers into the experience of being black in America and confronting the realities of race. In this program with Bill Moyers, Morrison discusses the characters in her work, the people in her life, the power of love, and how the invented world of fiction connects to life.
Running Time: 29 minutes
Distributor: Films for the Humanities & Sciences
Comments: This program introduces one of the greatest contemporary American authors; winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, "a literary Moses stripping away the idols of whiteness and blackness that have prevented blacks form knowing themselves." Readings from Beloved and Jazz show how she returns to the pain of slavery and segregation to restore wholeness to the black psyche. "The past," Morrison says, "is more infinite than the future...It's avoiding it, deceiving ourselves about it, that paralyzes growth."
Subject Documentary
Running Time 30 minutes
Distributor: Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: Bharati Mukherjee writes vivid, sensual, and troubling stories about America's newest immigrants, Asians like herself. Mukherjee's early novels spoke from India, the old world she left behind to marry an American. Upon arriving in America she set out to capture the New World experiences of Asian immigrants. "We've come to America," she says, "in a way, to take over. To help build a new culture." With Bill Moyers.
Subject: Book on tape
Running Time: ~3 hours
Author: Zora Neale Hurston
Producer?Date: Caedmon/1970s
Novel read by actress Ruby Dee. Other cassettes donated with this gift: Anne Sexton Reads Her Poetry and The Poetry and Voice of Margaret Atwood .
Studio Kulter Video
Year 2000
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor CD universe
Comments: The accomplishments of three seminal women of the arts are chronicled here. First up is Anna Sokolow, one of the century's greatest choreographers, who combined humanistic ideals with dance. Next is Alice Neel, a painter who chronicles various stages of her life in her work. Lastly, we get an intimate portrait of Muriel Ruckhauser, a New York poet whose subject matter deals with racism, sexism, and various wars.
Studio Kulter Video
Year 2000
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor CD universe
Comments: This film explores twentieth-century art by women, focusing on nine of thirteen artists whose works compose the Gihon art collection: Works by Women. The artists provide the dialogue, about artistic techniques employed, family background, philosophy of art, self-criticism, and success. Artists featured in the film are: Lynda Benglis, Nancy chambers, Clyde Connell, Janet Fish, Hermine Ford, Dorothy Hood, Mary McCleary, Gail Stack and Dee Wolff.
Director Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert
Year 1997
Subject Educational Documentary
Language English
Running Time 55 minutes
Distributor: Women Make Movies
Comments: In an era of anti-feminist backlash, this articulate documentary by the makers of Thank God I'm a Lesbian forcefully reminds us that the revolution continues. Powerful interviews with feminist leaders including bell hooks, Gloria Steinem, and Urvsahi Vaid are intercut with documentary sequences to engagingly explore the past and present status of the women's movement. Discussing the unique contributions of second wave feminism, they explore their racial, economic and ideological differences and shared vision of achieving equality for women. An essential component of women's studies curricula, My Feminism introduces feminism's key themes while exposing the cultural fears underlying lesbian baiting, backlash, and political extremism.
Director: Louise Carre
Year 1996
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 56 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: The film investigates the status of women in Islam through interviews with men and women from Mali, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Though often caricatured by Western media as a homogenous group of veiled subordinates, this documentary shows the diversity of Muslim women, informed by both religion and culture. In Mali, women speak of the comfort afforded by their religion, while at the same time recognizing that Islam is abused by men to thwart women’s development. In Morocco, while some put their faith and conviction in Islam and its proscriptions, others believe that only education and struggle can help women. This sentiment, that “Women’s rights are never given, they are always fought for,” is echoed by women from Algeria and Tunisia. This moving and stirring exploration of women’s rights and restrictions in Northern Africa and the Arabic peninsula helps us understand these women’s lives, struggles and dreams.
Director: Kay Rasool
Year: 1999
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 56 minutes
Distributor: Women Make Movies
Comments: My Journey, My Islam is an intriguing look at the questions that some Muslim women in the West ask themselves: what is Islam's relationship to me and my relationship to it, living in the West? Rasool's personal quest to answer these questions also introduces the viewer to the lives of several Muslim women (mostly non-Arab), including several Indian Muslims, a convert and a Lebanese woman marrying an non-Arab Muslim, as she journeys between the West and the Indian sub-continent where she was born. Rasool's portraits are particularly striking and well-fleshed out, accompanied as they are by visually compelling images of everyday Islamic life. While this is not an introductory guide to women in Islam, it is must see viewing for those who wonder how Muslim women reconcile and they interpret the requirements of their faith and the obligations of Western culture. In addition, it is refreshing to find a documentary on Muslim women which talks not about them, but to them. This documentary is particularly timely in light of the fact that there is a growing, highly visible second generation of young Muslims in the West who seek to combine their faith with busy, productive Western lives. This would be a wonderful video to use to initiate conversations on cultural and religious plurality as well as discussions on assimilation and dual identity." Rebecca Romani, Co-chair, Middle East Caucus, Society for Cinema Studies
Year 1992
Subject Documentary
Artist Maureen O'Hara, PhD
Language English
Running Time 46 minutes
Distributor Enicinitas Center for Family and Personal Development
Comments
Myths that Maim begins with alarming statistics on gender violence and exploitation. It then examines the role that art, films, advertisements and stories play in creating gendered identities. These "myths" set up women as victims and men as perpetrators. The myths of: woman , earth and nature, woman as a seductress, woman and magic, woman as a virgin, the fetishization of weakness...etc. are explored.
