Teena: The Brandon Teena Story
Director: Susan Muska and Gréta Olafsdótter
Year: 1999
Subject: Documentary
Distributor:Bless Bless Productions
Comments: To his girlfriends, he was the perfect boyfriend. To his killers,
he was a freak. Winner of best documentary awards at the Berlin and Vancouver
film festivals and the story upon which Boys Don’t Cry is based, the
film reveals how sparks from sexual ambiguity and individuality can ignite
incomprehensible violence. By the time she was 21, Teena Brandon had assumed a
new identity as a young man. There, Brandon dated several women. Forged checks
to pay for the courtships landed him in jail, and his true gender was revealed.
Featuring interviews with those who lived him, those who hated him and the
death row inmates who sealed his fate, the film is a horrific tale of prejudice
and hatred in America’s heartland.
Tell Me Something I Can't Forget
Year 1992
Running Time 23:06
Distributor Florentine Films
Comments: Female public housing tenants in Western Massachusetts (Chicopee)
join a writing club. They meet and read excerpts of their work.
Telling My Story
Director: WGST faculty
Year: 2005
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 59 minutes
Distributor: WGST Program
Comments: “Telling My Story” Project - inmates of the Southeast State
Correctional Service and WGST 10 students.
Ten Things I Hate About You
Director: Gil Junger
Year: 1999
Subject: Feature
Running Time: 97 minutes
Distributor:Touchstone Home Videos
Comments: A modern day, high school variation on Shakespeare's The
Taming of the Shrew, with Heath Ledger as a boy (last name Verona) who
takes a bribe to take the school's brainy outcast girl (last name Stratford,
played by Julia Styles) to the prom. What starts as a cruel hoax turns into
real love, of course, with plenty of comic confusion along the way. With Larry
Miller and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Their Own Vietnam
Year 1995
Subject Documentary
Running Time 23 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: A fascinating documentary about American women who served in the
Vietnam War. Spirited interviews with five veterans are intercut with rare
archival images and home movies to explore the day-to-day experiences of these
women as nurses and officers, as well as the war’s impact on their lives today.
Official Army depictions of Vietnam as an exciting career opportunity for women
are contrasted with the women’s personal feelings about the war, and reports of
their own battles within a mostly male work environment.
Thelma & Louise
Director Ridley Scott
Year 1991
Subject Feature
Artist Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis
Screenplay Callie Khouri
Running Time 130 minutes
Distributor MGM/UA
Comments: When unhappy housewife Thelma (Geena Davis) and her wise-cracking
waitress friend Louise (Susan Sarandon) decide to take a break from their lives
-- Thelma from her chauvinistic husband and Louise from her commitment-shy
musician boyfriend -- they embark on a trip that leads to a tragic incident at
a roadside honky-tonk. In an instant, their weekend "getaway" becomes just that
as they flee across the American southwest with the police a two-step behind.
Directed by Ridley Scott and set against breathtakingly beautiful scenery,
Thelma & Louise is a landmark film filled with truth, courage and
honesty.
There's No Such Thing as Woman's Work
Director Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor
Year 1987
Subject Documentary
Running Time 30 minutes
Distributor National Women's History Project
Comments: An upbeat portrayal in pictures and words of the role American
women have always played in the work of the nation. This engaging, upbeat video
uses period music, contemporary cartoon art, historical photographs and
newsreel footage to depict the changing nature of women's lives and their
participation in the labor force. Also discusses the historic and current role
of the Women's Bureau in documenting and addressing issues and concerns of
women workers. The presentation style will appeal to students and adults
alike.
Three Sovereigns for Sarah
Director Philip Leacock
Year 1985
Subject: Feature
Running Time: 180 minutes
Distributor CD Universe
Comments: A fine made-for-television production starring Vanessa Redgrave as
a woman accused of being a witch. Based on a true story, this program
dramatically recreates one of the most vile episodes in American history - the
Salem Witch Trials. Veteran actress Vanessa Redgrave delivers a moving
performance in this made-for-television drama centering on the aftermath of the
notorious 1692 Salem Witch Trials. Redgrave plays Sarah Cloyce, one of three
sisters accused of witchcraft. Of the trio, she alone survived. Now, the truth
about the trials has finally come out, and Sarah has decided to sue the
judiciary system of Massachusetts Bay Colony in order to clear her name, and
the names of her dead siblings.
Thunder in Guyana
Director: Suzanne Wasserman
Year: 2003
Subject: Documentary
Running Time: 50 minutes
Distributor: Women Make Movies
Comments: Combining biographical portrait with social and political history,
Thunder in Guyana. illuminates an overlooked corner of recent
history in a story packed with real drama. In her documentary, filmmaker
Suzanne Wasserman tells the story of her cousin, Janet Rosenberg Jagan, who was
elected President of Guyana, South America on December 15th, 1997. Janet, the
first American-born woman to lead a nation, is considered the mother of Guyana.
The film recounts this extraordinary woman’s life and her adopted homeland by
interweaving family threads, Jagan’s incredible life story and the complex
history of the little understood country of Guyana.
Tiny & Ruby Hell Divin' Women
Directors Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss
Year 1986
Subject Music
Language English
Distributor Videoactive Releasing
Comments: With International Sweethearts of Rhythm Tiny & Ruby Hell
Divin' Women gives a close-up look at legendary jazz trumpeter Tiny Davis and
her partner of over 40 years, drummer-pianist Ruby Lucas. Tiny was the heart of
the Sweethearts in the 1940's, and her energy remains as high as ever. She is
captured in several impromptu performances at home in the 1980's, still making
joyous music. Her love of music -- and of Ruby -- is clear, and the film is a
moving testament to the importance of following one's heart in all things.
To Empower Women: The Beijing Women's Conference
Year 1997
Subject Documentary
Running Time 28 minutes
Distributor Off Center Video
Comments: From the United Nations 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing,
China, a global movement led by women is captured on video. Here, women from
Zimbabwe, Germany, Papua New Guinea, Iran, the Philippines, Israel, the Solomon
Islands, China, and the United States speak out. They tell of actions they are
taking to address the problems of women in their countries and worldwide. The
Beijing Conference produced the strongest consensus on women's equality,
empowerment and justice ever endorsed by governments. Signed by 189 nations,
the Beijing Declaration is a vision of the world we all want to live in. The
Platform for Action is the practical, specific, and comprehensive directive for
bringing it about. Five planks from the platform -- poverty, education, human
rights, economics, and armed conflict -- frame the video. Narrated by feminist
Bella Abzug, the video is a glimpse of a future where all people are respected.
Videoed at the Nongovernmental Forum in Huairou, China.
Tongues Untied
Director Marlon Riggs
Year1991
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 55 minutes
Distributor Strand Home Video
Comments: Tongues Untied, by Emmy-Award-winning director Marlon
Riggs, is a tribute to the joy and complxity of Black gay life. Using poetry,
personal testimony, rap and performance, Tongues Untied describes the
homophobia and racism that confront Black gay men. Some of the tales are not
pretty: the man refused entry to a gay bar because of his color, or the college
student left bleeding on the sidewalk after a gay-bashing. Yet Riggs also
presents a layered work of astounding beauty, the rich flavor of the Black gay
male experience, from protest marches and smoky bars to the language of "snap
diva" and Vogue dancer.
Totally F***ed Up
Director Gregg Araki
Year 1996
Running Time 85 minutes
Distributor Strand Releasing
Comments: In his fourth and best feature, Totally F***Ed Up, provocative and
talented independent filmmaker Gregg Araki delves into the troubled world of
gay teenagers. Araki here addresses the disproportionately high suicide rate
among gay teens.
Tough Guise
Director Susan McGee Bailey
Year 1999
Subject Educational Documentary
Language English
Running Time 80 minutes
Distributor Media Education Foundation
Comments: Tough Guise is geared towards high school and college students,
systematically examining the relationship between images of popular culture and
the social construction of masculine identities in the United States in the
dawn of the 21st century. Jackson Katz argues that the widespread violence in
American society needs to be understood as part of an ongoing crisis of
masculinity.
Turnabout: The Story of the Yale Puppeteers
Director Dan Bessie
Year 1997
Subject Documentary
Language English
Running Time 55 minutes
Distributor videos.com
Comments: Dan Bessie crafted this documentary about the three gay puppeteers
who enchanted Hollywood for 25 years. Their musical extravaganzas, with puppet
replicas of celebrities, drew legends like Hitchcock to see their performances.
The sophisticated humor of their shows came from a unique camp sensibility, one
fostered by these three gay men in a time when being gay was extremely
difficult.
Two or Three Things But Nothing For Sure
Director Tina DiFeliciantonio and Jane C. Wagner
Year 1997
Subject Documentary
Artist Dorothy Allison
Language English
Running Time 12 minutes
Distributor Women Make Movies
Comments: Acclaimed author Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina) is
profiled in this moving, inspiring film. Combining poetic imagery with powerful
readings, it evokes Allison's childhood in the poor white American South of the
1950's, her birth as a writer and feminist, and her coming to terms with a
family legacy of incest and abuse. A beautifully realized portrait of an artist
and survivor, this stirring film provides important insights into the roots of
self-renewal, creativity.
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