Rate It X
Director Lucy Winer and Paula De Koenigsberg
Year 1986
Running Time 93 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: What do men really think of women? This provocative, highly acclaimed documentary provides an unflinching look at sexism in America. A series of disturbing though sometimes amusing portraits uncover obvious culprits such as advertising firms and porn shops as well as often overlooked pockets of sexist imagery which promote gender stereotyping and reinforce negative conceptions of women and sexuality. With great humor and compassion, the film reveals men's deeply imbedded attitudes, showing how sexism becomes rationalized through commerce, religion and social values. Hotly controversial upon its release, Rate It X is a challenging, invaluable film that illuminates crucial issues of censorship, advertising, pornography and violence against women. Produced by Lynn Campbell, Claudette Charbonneau, Paula De Koenigsberg and Lucy Winer.
Reagon; The Songs are Free: Bernice Reagon and African-American Music
Artist with Bill Moyers
Subject Documentary
Running Time 60 minutes
Distributor Films for the Humanities and Sciences
Comments: In this program, Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of the musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock, and curator of the Community Life Division of the Smithsonian Institution, discusses with Bill Moyers how black music has shaped the African-American experience and identity. Reagon traces the role of early spirituals rooted in the black church to their inspirational use in the early Civil Rights movement. Live musical performances, educational workshops, and archival footage of Reagon and noted Civil Rights leaders are included. Reagon's work with Sweet Honey in the Rock is shown as continuing the tradition of black music as a source of resistance, courage, and pride, as well as determination and faith.
Real Women Have Curves
Director: Patricia Cardoso
Year: 2002
Subject: Feature film
Running Time: 86 minutes
Distributor: HBO
Comments: Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, this HBO Films comedy/drama tells the story of 18-year-old Ana (America Ferrera), a first-generation Mexican-American from East Los Angeles, who struggles to strike a balance between her mainstream ambitions and her more traditional cultural heritage as she attempts to forge her own path in life. Graduating from high school, Ana would like nothing better than attend college - a goal her teacher and mentor (George Lopez) wholeheartedly supports. But Ana's needy mother Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros) has other plans for her "baby," feeling that "it's her time" to contribute to the family and join her older sister at work at a sewing factory. Reluctantly, Ana agrees, and ends up learning lessons at the factory and with a young man (Brian Sites) that help her come to terms with herself, her body and her future - paving the way towards her ultimate independence.
Reassemblage
Director Trinh T. Minh-ha
Producer Jean-Paul Bourdier
Year 1982
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 40 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: Women are the focus but not the object of Trinh T. Minh-ha's influential first film, a complex visual study of the women of rural Senegal. Through a complicity of interaction between film and spectator, Reassemblage reflects on documentary filmmaking and the ethnographic representation of cultures.
Recovering Bodies: Overcoming Eating Disorders
Subject Documentary
Running Time 34 minutes
Distributor Media Education Foundation
Comments: In Recovering Bodies the stories and testimonies of seven college students show the wide range of pressures that can lead to disordered eating, as well as the variety of psychological and physical symptoms involved. The focus in this unique and informative educational program is not simply on students' problems with food, but on the renewed hope for a healthy life that the process of recovery provides. Full of useful information about successful strategies and with the expert commentary of professionals, Recovering Bodies should become a standard tool of health education in any curriculum.
Regret to Inform
Director Barbara Sonneborn
Year 1998
Subject Feature Film
Language English
Running Time 72 minutes
Distributor Sun Fountain Productions
Comments: Winner of seven major awards, and an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary, Regret to Inform ranks among the great non-fiction films of all time. Hailed by critics for its extraordinary power and beauty, it is a personal, haunting and redemption-filled journey that will forever change the way you think about war. Venturing to Vietnam twenty years after her husband was killed in a mortar attack, filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn finds a mesmerizing landscape filled with the psychic remnants of war. Getting beyond the physical and emotional devastation, she talks to those on all sides of the struggle, discovering a common bond in loss and ultimately understanding. Filled with extraordinarily archival footage, breathtaking visions of modern-day Vietnam, and heart-wrenching stories from American and Vietnamese women who lost their husbands to war, Regret to Inform takes the viewer on an unforgettable journey that begins with the phrase, "We regret to inform you..."
Repetition Compulsion
Director Ellie Lee
Year 1997
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 7 minutes
Distributor First Run
Comments: Repetition Compulsion is an animated documentary which explores how prolonged childhood abuse in the lives of homeless women has set the stage for further victimization on the streets. Many homeless women develop intimate yet ultimately destructive relationships with homeless men for companionship and protection. Weaving dark and violent charcoal imagery with actual interviews of homeless women, the film describes the crippling feelings of worthlessness, depression, powerlessness, paranoia, and terror as the women become more dependent on the homeless men who support yet continue to hurt them. Born directly out of the filmmaker's experience of working for four years with homeless women who had suffered long, unaddressed histories of physical and sexual abuse, Repetition Compulsion gives voice and vision to these women's stories of abuse and survival.
Right to Femininity
Director:
Year: 2005
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 46 minutes
Distributor: Women Make Movies
Comments: The custom of female circumcision faces growing opposition in Africa. This program presents multiple perspectives on the issue, interviewing health care personnel, professional circumcisers, women who have undergone the ritual, and men who are against it. Examining medical and emotional problems that follow genital mutilation, the video also features signs of positive change, including a Nigerian drama troupe that stages anti-circumcision productions and groups like UNICEF, CARE Austria, and the Girls’ Power Initiative that campaign in areas where the ritual’s effects are most profound. Includes graphic footage of births and circumcisions.
The Righteous Babes
Director: Pratibha Pamar
Year: 1998
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 50 minutes
Distributor: Women Make Movies
Comments: Pratibha Parmar explores the intersection of feminism with popular music, focusing on the role of female recording artists in the 1990s and their influence on modern women. Parmar argues that, far from being dead, feminism has thrived and expanded its reach through the direct, aggressive, and revolutionary medium of rock music, and through the role models of performers like Madonna and Ani DiFranco. Intercuting performance footage with interviews, Parmar explores her thesis with some of the most outspoken female musicians, feminist theorists, and journalists of the UK and US, including Sinead O’Connor, Skin (Skunk Anansie), Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, Camille Paglia, and Gloria Steinem. The Righteous Babes offers a searing and timely critique of the commercialization of feminism through 'Girl Power' Spice Girls style, ditzy Ally McBeal and her trans-Atlantic counterpart, Bridget Jones.
Ringgold; Faith Ringgold Paints Crown Heights
Director David Irving
Year 1996
Language English
Running Time 28 minutes
Distributor L&S video
Comments: An inspirational look by Faith Ringgold, an African American artist, at twelve cultures that have settled in Crown Heights. Through folktales and painting the documentary shows how these diverse cultures have contributed to the American spirit.
Ringgold; Faith Ringgold: The Last Story Quilt
Director David Irving
Year 1996
Language English
Running Time 28 minutes
Distributor L&S video
Comments: Share an insiders look at how one African-American woman, through patience, perseverance and education fulfilled her dream of becoming an artist. Every obstacle she faced reinforced her determination to reach her goal. A painter by profession, she has moved away from traditional framed canvases to "tankas," paintings on quilted canvas with frames of quilted fabric.
Rites
Director Penny Dedman
Year 1991
Subject documentary
Language English
Running Time 52 minutes
Distributor Filmmakers Library
Comments
Without resorting to sensationalism, this program explores the custom of female circumcision which has been commonplace throughout history. Today it is still practiced in many cultures, particularly in Africa. Rites shows the efforts of women throughout the world to stop the practice. Rites considers three major contexts in which female genital mutilation (FGM) occurs. The first is "cosmetic", and the second is "punitive". Medical historian Dr. Ornella Moscurri describes how women in the late 19th century and early 20th century were subject to FGM if they stepped out of line. The third context is as part of the cultural transition to adulthood and initiation into female life. Mutilation has been attacked by Western observers, although such attacks have been the subject of accusations of cultural imperialism.
Rites and Wrongs: Hazing in Sports
Year 2000
Subject TV Documentary
Language English
Distributor ESPN
Roseanne Arnold Live From Trump Castle
Director Roseanne Arnold and Louis J. Horvitz
Year 1992
Subject Stand Up Comedy
Language English
Screenplay Roseanne Arnold and Tom Arnold
Artists Roseanne Arnold
Running Time 55 minutes
Distributor Columbia Tristar Home Video
Comments: Free from the constraints of network TV, Roseanne delivers refreshing confessional comedy that's raw, honest, and right on target. Join Roseanne and her "favorite husband so far," Tom Arnold, as she skewers her latest victims; serial killers; moronic husbands; career women; impotent men; lawyers and more. See how women become 28 different people on each day of the month, find out what men really want.
Running in High Heels
Subject: Documentary/Interview
Running Time: 90 minutes
Distributor: 52women
A film about the difference between what women say and do in politics, Running in High Heels follows the campaign of a woman running for State Senate in New York City as women around her from the left and right of the spectrum try to explain how women can be the majority of the population at 52 percent but run nothing.
|
