Subject 3 documentaries on women's issues: Call it what it is: PTTV Looks at Domestic Violence & the Media; Sisterhood: Hyping the Female Market; Wired for Action: Women Activists Jammin' the Media
Comments: The first documentary explores the media's coverage of domestic violence as a spectacle or rare occurrence. Often, the words used by police and the media to describe incidents hide the reality of domestic violence. This documentary features Dorothy Allison, Sapphire and Christine Cobaugh speaking out about family experiences with domestic violence and sexual molestation. The second documentary chronicles advertising targeted at women from the 1950s to the present. It exposes sports apparel companies that advertise about women's independence and freedom, while oppressing their female workers. At their Asian plants, they pay their female workers below minimum wage and force them to live and stay in company owned housing. The third documentary introduces the viewer to several activist women's organizations. It includes interviews with their members and coverage of their rallies and political actions.
Director Jennie Livingston
Year 1991
Subject Documentary
Running Time 76 minutes
Distributor Fox Lorber Home Video
Comments: The award winning Paris Is Burning has been igniting audiences and critics across the country with record-breaking box office performances. An unblinking behind-the-scenes story of the young men of Harlem who originated "voguing"--and turned these stylized dance competitions into a glittering expression of fierce personal pride. A story of street-wise urban survival, gay self-affirmation and the pursuit of a desperate dream--to live for a brief, dazzling moment in a fantasy world of high fashion, status and acceptance.
Year 1996
Running Time 1 hour
Comments: Paving the Way profiles four women who wrestled out from under the stifling paternalism of the 50s. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who couldn't even get a job as a law clerk, is now a Supreme Court justice. Jeanne Holm had to deal with sexual harassment and calcified preconceptions on her way to becoming the first woman major general in the U.S. Air Force. Patsy Mink brushed aside racism and sexism to be elected a congresswoman from Hawaii. Union leader Addie Wyatt, who is black, battled the same things.
Director: Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez
Year: 2001
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 124 minutes
Distributor: The Center for New American Media
Comments: People Like Us: Social Class in America “tackles a question rarely addressed so explicitly in the popular media: Are all American created equal -- or are some more equal than others? Over the course of two hours, the documentary reveals that despite our country’s deeply-held ideals of egalitarianism and fairness, our citizens are in fact subject to sharp class distinctions and often insurmountable inequalities of opportunity. “
Director Ursula Biemann
Year 1999
Subject Video essay
Running Time 42 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: Set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas, this imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area. Looking at the border as both a discursive and material space, the video explores the sexualization of the border region through labor division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere. Candid interviews with Mexican women factory and sex workers, as well as activists and journalists, are combined with scripted voiceover analysis, screen text, scenes and sounds recorded on site, and found footage to give new insights into the gendered conditions inscribed by the high-tech industry at its low-wage end.
Director Jane Campion
Year 1993
Subject Feature
Running Time 121 minutes
Distributor Facets
Comments: Holly Hunter's Oscar-winning performance as a mute woman dedicated to her music takes center stage in this lush drama set in 19th century New Zealand. Harvey Keitel co-stars as the brutish but sensitive man who gives her back what seemed irrevocably lost. A young Anna Paquin more than holds her own with a performance that garnered this new star an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
Director Kayo Hatta
Language English and Japanese with yellow English subtitles
Running Time 95 minutes
Distributor Miramax Home Entertainment
Comments: Picture Bride is the 1995 Sundance award-winning movie directed by Kayo Hatta. What makes this film special is not just the luscious cinematography of the haunting beauty of Hawaii, but its depiction of how Asians gathered from across the globe to establish roots in America. This period romance follows the saga of a young Japanese girl who becomes a "picture bride" for a Hawaiian sugarcane worker following her parents' deaths. Arriving in Hawaii to discover her fiance has deceived her with an old photo, Riyo finds her married life and the surrounding environment vastly different from what she imagined they would be. Her struggles to cope with her new life present a wonderfully affecting drama and intriguing history lesson.
Director Pratibha Parmar
Year 1991
Running Time 52 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: This exuberant celebration of African-American women and their achievements features interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of the civil rights, Black Power and feminist movements, the trio reassess how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionized American society. A stirring chapter in African American history, highlighted by music from the Prince, Janet Jackson, the Neville Brothers and the Staple Singers.
Year 2001
Subject TV Documentary
Language English
Distributor HBO Plus
Subject: Book on tape/Literature
Running Time: 29 minutes
Producer/Date: Caedmon/1977
Produced by Caedmon for Harper Audio, Voices in Time is a series of distinguished authors reading their finest works to date. Other cassettes donated with this gift: Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men, and The Poetry and Voice of Margaret Atwood .
Year 1995
Subject TV Documentary
Language English
Director Todd Haynes
Year 1990
Subject Feature Film
Language English
Running Time 85 minutes
Distributor Fox Lorber
Comments: Part horror film, part drama, part expose, Poison is 1991's most controversial film, winner of the Grand Prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. A stylistically compelling epic, the plot brilliantly weaves together disturbing sensuality with an offbeat moral conscience. The disparate pieces fit together like one outrageous puzzle; it examines the motive behind a 7-year-old boy's murder of his own father, relates the intriguing story of a scientist who isolates the sex drive in liquid form, and graphically explores the sexually obsessive relationship between two prison inmates. As the pieces snap into place, the tension intensifies, culminating in an explosive climax of unsettled emotions.
Director Gloria Kaufman
Year 1986
Subject Documentary
Running Time 60:30
Distributor G. K. Video Productions
Comments: Feminist humor is the topic of this documentary. It demonstrates how humor is used to achieve political purposes by humorists such as: Florence Kennedy, Nicki Giovanni and Kate Clinton. However, it also explains that humor can have negative affects by perpetuating gendered stereotypes and degrading women.
Director Gloria Kaufman
Year 1986
Subject Symposium
Artists Eileen Bender, Mary Kay Blakely, Dolores Frese, Sharon Wildey, Dora Reynolds
Language English
Running Time 55 minutes
Distributor G. K. Video Productions
Comments: Edited segments of a lively symposium featuring Mary Kay Blakely (writer), Dolores Frese (professor), and Sharon Wildey (attorney). The speakers discuss pornography in the context of a society that is sexually immature. The tape is designed to stimulate class discussion rather than to supply answers to complex questions. It contains no visual examples of pornography. Rather, its emphasis is on analysis of the pornography problem.
Director Pastor Vega
Year 1979
Subject Feature
Artist Daisy Granados, Adolfo Llaurado
Screenplay Pastor Vega & Ambrosio Fornet
Language Spanish with English Subtitles
Running Time 103 minutes
Distributor New Yorker Video
Comments: Portrait Of Teresa is the second film in the Cuban Cinema series and is perhaps the most controversial film yet from Cuba. Teresa, vividly portrayed by Daisy Grenados, is a housewife and mother who works in a textile factory. Her involvement in political and cultural groups incurs the displeasure of her husband, who expects her to be waiting with a hot meal when he comes home at night. The resulting difficulty in their marriage is depicted with compassion and authenticity. Though center stage belongs to Teresa, it is the bond of sexual and emotional empathy between her and her husband that gives the film its intensity and anguish.
Director Jonathan Wacks
Year 1989
Subject Feature (Light Entertainment)
Screenplay Janet Heaney
Artists A Martinez, Gary Farmer, Amanda Wyss
Language English
Running Time 91 minutes
Distributor Cannon Video
Comments: Eager to receive his "warrior's vision", a mammoth, childlike Montana Cheyenne named Philbert hits the trail to enlightenment astride his trusty war pony: a derelict '64 Buick. Then he gets tangled up in the political vendetta of fiery renegade Buddy Red Bow And suddenly, Philbert's vision quest accelerates into a riotous montage of spirit guided tours, unintentional crime and blazing gun battles with the Feds.
Director George Butler.
Year 1985 Language English
Running Time 107minutes
Distributor CD Universe.
Comments: From George Butler, the creator of Pumping Iron- the film that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a household name- comes a film about blood, sweat, and beauty. Pumping Iron II focuses on five, top body-builders- Rachel McLish, Bev Francis, Lori Bowen, Lydia Chang, and Carla Dunlap- each armed with an iron determination and the courage of a lioness as they prepare for the 1983 Caesars Palace World Cup Championship.
