Women Make Movies:
Women Changing The World
Women Make Movies: Women Changing the World! is a thirty-five-year anniversary celebration, featuring new acquisitions with visit by Women Make Movies Executive Director Debra Zimmerman, the world's leading distributor of independent films by and about women, with a focus on cutting-edge documentaries that give depth to today's headlines, as well as artistically and intellectually challenging works in all genres. Established in 1972 to address the under representation and misrepresentation of women in the media industry, Women Make Movies is a multicultural, multiracial, non-profit media arts organization which facilitates the production, promotion, distribution, and exhibition of independent films and videotapes by and about women. The organization provides services to both users and makers of film and video programs, with a special emphasis on supporting work by women of color. Women Make Movies facilitates the development of feminist media through an internationally recognized Distribution Service and a Production Assistance Program.
**Please Note: The screening of "Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker" on Thursday, March 11 will now be shown at 9:45 p.m. instead of 9:00 p.m. as previously scheduled.**
WMM SPECIAL EVENTS
THE GREATEST SILENCE film discussion with MEGAN WATSON
Megan Watson will conduct a discussion following THE GREATEST SILENCE following the film on Saturday, February 27. Megan Watson is a psychologist with experience working with torture survivors and refugees.
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WMM Executive Director DEBRA ZIMMERMAN
Debra Zimmerman will be at the Ross on Sunday, March 7 to conduct a discussion on women in the film industry and will be the speaker at the Leadership Luncheon on Monday, March 8.
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Filmmaker SANDRA HOCHMAN
Filmmaker, poet, playwright, and author Sandra Hochman will be at the Ross on Wednesday, March 10 with her film "Year of the Woman", at the Clawfoot Salon on Wednesday, March 10, and at the Women's History Month Banquet on Thursday, March 11. "Year of the Woman" and director Sandra Hochman's appearance are part of the UNL Women's Week 2010.
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A CRUSHING LOVE: CHICANAS, MOTHERHOOD AND ACTIVISM
A film by Sylvia Morales
US, 2009, 58 minutes, Color
A CRUSHING LOVE, Sylvia Morales’ sequel to her groundbreaking history of Chicana women, Chicana (1979), honors the achievements of five activist Latinas—labor organizer/farm worker leader Dolores Huerta, author/educator Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, writer/playwright/educator Cherrie Moraga, civil rights advocate Alicia Escalante, and historian/writer Martha Cotera—and considers how these single mothers managed to be parents and effect broad-based social change at the same time.
Questions about reconciling competing demands are ones that highly acclaimed filmmaker Sylvia Morales, a working mother of two herself, pondered aloud as she prepared this documentary. Historical footage and recent interviews with each woman reveal their contributions to key struggles for Latino empowerment and other major movements of our time. Both they and their grown children thoughtfully explore the challenges, adaptations, rewards, and missteps involved in juggling dual roles. Scenes of Morales at work and at home, often humorously overlaid with her teenage daughter’s commentary, bring the dilemma up to date. Chicana continues to be used in classrooms more than thirty years after it was made; A CRUSHING LOVE is a memorable sequel which offers us indelible portraits of unforgettable women, including one of Morales herself.
ANTONIA PANTOJA: ¡PRESENTE!
A film by Lillian Jiménez
US, 2009, 53 minutes, Color
Antonia Pantoja (1922-2002), visionary Puerto Rican educator, activist, and early proponent of bilingual education, inspired multiple generations of young people and fought for many of the rights that people take for granted today. Unbowed by obstacles she encountered as a black, Puerto Rican woman, she founded ASPIRA to empower Puerto Rican youth, and created other enduring leadership and advocacy organizations in New York and California, across the United States, and in Puerto Rico. Recognized for her achievements in 1996, Dr. Pantoja was awarded the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed upon civilians in the US.
In this important documentary, Pantoja’s compelling story is told through never-before-seen home movies, archival footage, and personal passionate testimony from Pantoja herself and some of her countless protégés, as well as her life partner. Highlighting major landmarks in Pantoja’s biography and long, productive career, the film shows her profound commitment to transforming society, her pivotal role in the Puerto Rican community’s fight to combat racism and discrimination, and her pioneering work in securing a bilingual voice in the US. An eloquent tribute to a remarkable woman, the film sheds new light on the Puerto Rican community’s far-reaching triumphs.
COVER GIRL CULTURE: AWAKENING THE MEDIA GENERATION
A film by Nicole Clark
US, 2009, 80 minutes, Color, English
*Showing with ARRESTING ANA
Being thin, pretty and sexy brings happiness. Style over substance. Young girls receive these messages hundreds of times each day. But who sets these impossible beauty standards—and how can they be changed? In this eye-opening documentary, filmmaker Nicole Clark, a former Elite International fashion model-turned champion for young girls and their self-esteem, calls for a necessary change: integrity and responsible media for our youth.
COVER GIRL CULTURE pairs images of girls and women in television and print ads with footage from the catwalks and celebrity media. Clark is given rare access to women editors from major magazines like Teen Vogue and ELLE, who provide a shocking defense of the fashion and advertising worlds. The film juxtaposes these interviews with revealing insights from models, parents, teachers, psychologists, body image experts and most importantly, the heartfelt expressions of girls themselves on how they feel about the media that surrounds them.
With an insider’s view, the film addresses issues like today’s increasingly invasive media, heightened advertising to tweens, the sexualization of girls, and how consumer culture serves to disempower young women. Not only examining how advertising and the cult of celebrity have deeply and negatively impacted teens and young women, COVER GIRL CULTURE also offers solutions for how to educate young women to think critically about the media.
ARRESTING ANA
A film by Lucie Schwartz
US/France, 2009, 25 minutes, Color, French, English subtitle
*Showing with COVER GIRL CULTURE
Sarah is a French college student who runs a “pro-Ana” blog, part of a global online community of young women sharing tips on living with anorexia. Valerie Boyer is a passionate French National Assembly legislator who is proposing a groundbreaking bill that aims to ban these online forums, issuing hefty fines and two-year prison sentences to their members. Complex, eye-opening, and extremely timely, ARRESTING ANA is the first film on a burgeoning movement that promotes self-starvation.
Pro-Ana websites are found in countries around the world, but France is the first to suggest regulating them. Combining in-depth interviews with medical and academic experts with video diaries by Sarah—to whom “Ana,” short for anorexia, is a friend, support system, and motivation to stay alive—ARRESTING ANA offers unprecedented access into anorexia’s hidden underground and looks for effective solutions to ending this serious disease.
EL GENERAL
A film by Natalia Almada
US, 2009, 83 minutes, Color/BW, English/Spanish, Subtitled
Past and present collide in this extraordinarily crafted film when filmmaker Natalia Almada (ALL WATER HAS A PERFECT MEMORY), winner of the US Directing Award: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, brings to life audio recordings she inherited from her grandmother. These recordings feature Alicia Calles’s reminiscences about her own father—Natalia’s great-grandfather—General Plutarco Elías Calles, a revolutionary general who became president of Mexico in 1924. In his time, Calles was called “El Bolshevique” and “El Jefe Máximo,” or “the foremost chief.” Today, he remains one of Mexico’s most controversial figures, illustrating both the idealism and injustices of the country’s history.
Through Alicia’s voice, this visually stunning and stylistically innovative film moves between the conflicting memories of a daughter grappling with her remembrances of her father and his violent public legacy. Combining meticulously edited audio, haunting photographs, archival newsreels, and old Hollywood films with an original evocative soundtrack, sweeping footage of modern-day Mexico City, and interviews with today’s working poor, EL GENERAL is a poetic and cinematic exploration of historical judgment and a complex and arresting portrait of a family and country living under the shadows of the past.
THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO
A film by Lisa F. Jackson
2007, 76 minutes, Color, French, Swahili, Lingala, Mashi, Subtitled
Winner of the Sundance Special Jury Prize in Documentary and the inspiration for a 2008 U.N. Resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war, this extraordinary film, shot in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), shatters the silence that surrounds the use of sexual violence as a weapon of conflict. Many tens of thousands of women and girls have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. A survivor of gang rape herself, Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson travels through the DRC to understand what is happening and why.
Produced in association with HBO Documentary Films and the Fledgling Fund, this film features interviews with activists, peacekeepers, physicians, and even—chillingly—the indifferent rapists who are soldiers of the Congolese Army. Harrowing moments of the film come as dozens of survivors recount their stories with an honesty and immediacy that is pulverizing in its intimacy and detail, but this powerful film also provides inspiring examples of resiliency, resistance, courage and grace.
MISS GULAG
Produced by Irina Vodar and Raphaela Neihausen
A film by Maria Yatskova
Russia, 2007, 62 minutes, Color, Russian, English subtitles
*Showing with AFRICA RISING
Through the prism of a beauty pageant staged by female inmates of Siberian prison camp UF91-9 emerges a complex narrative about the first generation of women to come of age in post-Soviet Russia. Shot inside the prison and the surrounding countryside, MISS GULAG traces the individual paths of three young women now at different points in their lives: Tatiana, whose parole hearing and early release are captured on film; Natasha, living in freedom with her family in a remote village; and Yulia, not yet twenty and facing still more prison time. Like their individual circumstances, the shared experience of long jail sentences has made them vigilant about their own destinies.
Incarceration and an environment of constant surveillance are harsh, but no less so than life outside. Yet all three women, their families, and loved ones are sustained by hope. Inspired by a news item that film director Maria Yatskova (born in Moscow and living in the U.S. since the age of five) discovered on the Internet, this is a compelling and moving story of survival told from both sides of the fence.
AFRICA RISING
A film by Paula Heredia
Kenya/Mali/Somalia/Tanzania, 2009, 62 minutes, Color, English/French/Somali/Swahili
*Showing with MISS GULAG
Every day, six thousand girls from the Horn of Africa to the sub-Saharan nations are subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). With little more than fierce determination and deep love for their communities, brave African activists are leading a formidable and fearless grassroots movement to end five thousand years of FGM. This extraordinary and powerful film is the first to focus on African solutions to FGM, presenting an insightful look at the frontlines of a quiet revolution taking the continent by storm.
Beautifully directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Paula Heredia, AFRICA RISING travels through remote villages in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Somalia and Tanzania, weaving together dynamic footage and the poignant stories of girls personally affected by FGM to show how African women and men are putting an end to this human rights violation. From working with circumcisers to lay down their knives and engaging the police to implement the law to honing leadership skills in girls, these determined activists have been working tirelessly for years to creatively and resourcefully conceptualize a broad-based but little-known anti-FGM movement. AFRICA RISING paints an intimate portrait of courageous individuals with dignity and strength, whose passion for justice shows that individuals can change the course of history.
Featuring shocking quotes and images from pro-Ana sites and an engrossing soundtrack,
this well-made documentary is crucial for not only students and teachers of media studies, but also provides important insight for psychologists, social workers, sociologists, and educators on who controls women’s body issues, how young people are interpreting eating disorders today, and how issues of legality and freedom of speech are contested in a new media landscape.
ROUGH AUNTIES
A film by Kim Longinotto
South Africa, 2008, 103 minutes, Color, English
Fearless, feisty and resolute, the “Rough Aunties” are a remarkable group of women unwavering in their stand to protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa. This latest documentary by internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto (SISTERS IN LAW, DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE) follows the outspoken, multiracial cadre of Thuli, Mildred, Sdudla, Eureka and Jackie, as they wage a daily battle against systemic apathy, corruption, and greed to help the most vulnerable and disenfranchised of their communities.
Despite the harsh realities of violence, poverty, and racism in the women’s work at the Bobbi Bear child welfare organization and in the heartaches of their personal lives, the portraits that emerge on screen are filled with grace, wisdom, friendship, and a deeply stirring conviction. Neither politics, nor social or racial divisions stand a chance against the united force of the women. Once again Longinotto has managed to bring us an intimate portrait of change from Africa, this time from post-apartheid South Africa, a nation being transformed with hope and energy into a new democracy.
THE SARI SOLDIERS
A film by Julie Bridgham
US/Nepal, 2008, 92 minutes, Color, Nepali/English, Subtitled
Filmed over three years during the most historic and pivotal time in Nepal’s modern history, The Sari Soldiers is an extraordinary story of six women’s courageous efforts to shape Nepal’s future in the midst of an escalating civil war against Maoist insurgents, and the King’s crackdown on civil liberties.
When Devi, mother of a 15-year-old girl, witnesses her niece being tortured and murdered by the Royal Nepal Army, she speaks publicly about the atrocity. The army abducts her daughter in retaliation, and Devi embarks on a three-year struggle to uncover her daughter’s fate and see justice done. THE SARI SOLDIERS follows her and five other brave women: Maoist Commander Kranti; Royal Nepal Army Officer Rajani; Krishna, a monarchist from a rural community who leads a rebellion against the Maoists; Mandira, a human rights lawyer; and Ram Kumari, a young student activist shaping the protests to reclaim democracy. The Sari Soldiers delves into the extraordinary journey of these women on opposing sides of the conflict and the democratic revolution reshaping their country’s future.
TIGER SPIRIT
A film by Min Sook Lee
Canada, 2008, 78 minutes, Color, Subtitled (Korean)
Korea is a divided nation. Millions of families were split apart in the 1950s when war broke out between the Soviet-occupied North and the American-controlled South. For more than a generation, families have not been able to visit, speak to, or even write one another. Tragically, the last survivors to remember a unified Korea are dying without ever having seen their grandchildren–nobody knew their good-byes would be forever.
Korean-Canadian director Min Sook Lee’s search for both the real and symbolic “Tiger Spirit” of Korea leads her on an amazing journey along the Koreas’ border where she encounters a wild-eyed tiger hunter, a courageous woman who defected from the North years ago, a young bus guide whose job it is to shuttle workers across the DMZ border everyday, and many hopeful families dreaming of the day they can once again see their lost loved ones. With unprecedented access and never before seen footage of North Korea’s industrial zone and state-sanctioned reunification centers, Lee brings us an emotion-charged journey into Korea’s broken heart, exploring the rhetoric and realism of reunification through the extraordinary stories of ordinary families.
WHO’S AFRAID OF KATHY ACKER
A film by Barbara Caspar
Austria/Germany, 2008, 84 minutes, Color
A multi-layered work featuring animation, archival footage and interviews with the likes of William Burroughs, Carolee Schneemann and Richard Hell, WHO’S AFRAID OF KATHY ACKER by Austrian artist Barbara Caspar and co-produced by Annette Pisacane (Nico Icon) and Markus Fischer, is a thoughtful and creative film biography/essay on the late outlaw writer and punk icon, whose formally inventive novels, published from the ’70s through the mid-’90s, challenged assumptions about gender roles, sexuality, and the literary canon.
A beguiling and intensely contradictory figure, Acker is best known for books which creatively appropriated texts from Great White Male writers, retelling them in an emotionally raw, sexually blunt, and politically questioning female voice. With her conceptual art videos in the ’70s, her close-cropped dyed blond hair, her tattoos, and her piercings, Acker was a performance artist, proto riot grrl, and living link to the transgressive authors of the ’50s and ’60s US and French experimental fiction scenes. Caspar has made a film that captures the essence of both Acker the writer and Acker the person while celebrating the avant-garde legacy of an artist who forever expanded the limits of self-expression. — Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine
YEAR OF THE WOMAN
A film by Sandra Hochman
US, 1973, 87 minutes, Color, English
“Year of the Woman” was filmed by an all woman crew at the First National Woman’s Political Caucus at the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami. Hochman describes “Year of the Woman” as a work of political history, “It is the only film in existence that has in it almost all the important activists of what would later be called the women’s movement. It is a piece of history that includes speeches or sightings of Germaine Greer, Shirley MacLaine, Betty Friedan, Coretta Scott King, Shirley Chisholm, Florence Kennedy, and many others who were at the convention. Many celebrity men of the era appear in the film, such as John Kenneth Galbraith, Pierre Salinger, Warren Beatty, and others.”