Color Schemes
An upbeat, ironic look at America’s multicultural society, COLOR SCHEMES uses the metaphor of “color wash” to tackle conceptions of racial assimilation. Challenging stereotypes, twelve writer/performers collaborate on four performance sequences—soak, wash, rinse and extract. Spinning through this tumble- jumble of America’s washload, the performers scheme to claim racial images that remain color vivid.
Digital preservation copy now available for exhibition! Please contact [email protected] for more information.
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Juxta
This beautiful drama observes the psychological effects of racism on two children of Japanese women and American servicemen. Thirty-one year old Kate, the daughter of a Japanese/white mixed marriage visits her childhood friend, Ted, a Japanese-Black American. Together they confront the memory of her mother’s tragic story in this telling, emotionally nuanced journey into the complexity of US racism.
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Two Lies
Doris Chu, a recently divorced Chinese American woman, has plastic surgery to make her eyes rounder. From her teenage daughter Mei's perspective, her mother's two eyes equal two lies. When the family journeys to a desert resort during Doris' recuperation, a series of revelations and bitter confrontations erupt. This beautiful black and white drama is a poignant study of generational conflict and the struggle for identity in a world of hybrid cultures.
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Home Avenue
With commanding cinematic style, Montgomery retraces events of a night nine years ago when, between her boyfriend's dorm and her parent's house, she was raped at gunpoint. Super 8 camera in tow, she uncovers the psychology of the incident, relating how the authorities and her family tried to disavow her claims and the crime. Pondering the bland suburban landscape, her subsequent obsession with guns and the blurring of guilt, responsibility and betrayal, Montgomery boldly masters the trauma through memory, self-narration and artistic intervention. By the maker of ART FOR TEACHERS OF CHILDREN.
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The Germans and Their Men
"If a woman doesn't have equal rights, is she equally responsible for the crimes of a nation?" Helke Sander's quasi-documentary turns a wry and revealing lens on German masculinity and national identity. This powerful critique offers popular sentiments and startling insights with biting wit and clarity, making provocative connections between feminism, fascism and the legacy of sexism in German history. Produced for ZDF (German television). "Still the best female helmer on the scene in Germany, Helke Sander takes her time between productions to pour as much personal philosophical reflection into her films as possible." -Variety
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Surname Viet Given Name Nam
Vietnamese-born Trinh T. Minh-ha’s profoundly personal documentary explores the role of Vietnamese women historically and in contemporary society.
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I Need Your Full Cooperation/Underexposed
In these two compelling films, Kathy High explores the relationship between women’s bodies and the medical institution. Now a classic, I NEED YOUR FULL COOPERATION (1989, 28 mins) is a critical commentary on the patriarchal medical world and the past experimental techniques used to control female sexuality and reproductive capacities. Combining drama and documentary, UNDEREXPOSED: THE TEMPLE OF THE FETUS, (1992, 72 mins) is a savvy and creative documentary probe into the high-tech baby-making market and emerging reproductive technologies.
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Can't You Take a Joke?
Can you fall in love and still have a sense of humor? This delightful, stylish comedy, in which boy meets boy and girl meets girl, uses the romantic music and visuals of Hollywood film noir to explore the ideal of love at first sight.
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...And Woman Wove It in a Basket
For the Klickitat Indians in Washington, basket weaving is a way of reclaiming native forms and heritage. This evocative portrayal of basket weaver Nettie Jackson Kuneki and her family explores Klickitat river culture within an investigation of documentary practice and cultural preservation. Capturing native life as experienced by a contemporary Klickitat woman, the film presents her daily activities through seasonal changes, the documentation of her craft and a visual history of Indian tales and legends. Voices of the filmmakers' own quest supplement Kuneki's reflections, creating a unique tapestry of personal memory and cultural collaboration that is invaluable for ethnographic film studies, Native American collections and women's studies.
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Peggy and Fred in Kansas
A few years older now, our boy and girl heroes mumble and chant their way through mid- America's wasteland. Thornton's interest in the line between language and thought becomes disturbingly apparent.
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Positive Images
People with disabilities constitute nearly twenty percent of the American population. Sexism and often racism compound discrimination based on disability. Designed to provide positive, realistic pictures of the lives of women with disabilities and the social, economic, and political issues they face, POSITIVE IMAGES focuses on three strong and articulate women. Offering crucial role models for women and girls with disabilities, this powerful film also locates disability as a women's issue of concern to us all by discussing education, employment and careers, sexuality, family life and parenting, and societal attitudes.
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Cycles
Rasheeda Allen is waiting for her period, a state of anticipation familiar to all women. Drawing on Caribbean folklore, this exuberant experimental drama uses animation and live action to discover a film language unique to African American women. The multilayered soundtrack combines a chorus of women's voices with the music of Africa and the diaspora-including Miriam Makeba, acappella singers from Haiti and trumpetiste Clora Bryant.
The 1991, 4-minute short film A PERIOD PIECE is also available for purchase. Please contact [email protected] for ordering information.
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Rule of Thumb
A sensitive film which explores domestic violence through the perspective of women who have left abusive relationships. Five women from different backgrounds discuss their ordeals and the concrete steps they have taken to eradicate fear and violence from their daily lives. Supplemented by testimonies from a woman judge, a police officer and a former abuser, this empowering film offers clear, concise instructions on obtaining an order of protection and other support services.
"*** This thorough and well constructed work succeeds in informing the public about both prevention and intervention in regard to domestic violence. This project addresses its important and disturbing topic so well that it should be shown on every television station and in every schoolroom across the country." - Jury Comments, American Film and Video Association
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Picking Tribes
“In a heartfelt, and often hilarious, attempt to be more than ‘ordinary,’ a girl growing up in the 1940s tries to choose between her African-American and Native-American heritages. It is only when her beloved grandfather dies that she is able to reconcile the power of both her heritages and realizes her own uniqueness." -Moving Pictures Bulletin
Sharp uses vintage photographs and Carlos Spivey’s watercolor animation to create a spirited portrait of a girl’s search for identity.
Now with Bonus Short Film: BACK INSIDE HERSELF 2009 Remix by S. Pearl Sharp (4min 45secs)
Originally released in 1984, this lyrical visual poem featuring Barbara-O urges black women to both discover and invent their own identities. The 2009 remix includes updated audio with vocals by Sharp and Dwight Trible.
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Love, Women and Flowers
At any time of year in the U.S., carnations of every color are plentiful and cheap – but the ready availability of these beautiful flowers comes at a global price. Thousands of miles away from the bright displays in U.S. stores, hazardous labor conditions endanger the 90,000 women who work in Colombia’s flower industry.
According to a 2007 report, approximately 60 percent of all flowers sold in the U.S. come from Colombia, where the use of pesticides and fungicides – some banned in the developed countries that export them – has drastic health and environmental consequences. With urgency and intimacy, this film evokes the testimonies of the women workers and documents their efforts to organize. As women workers continue to struggle in this industry (in 2007 almost 200 workers were fired from the largest flower plantation in Colombia for their attempts to unionize and improve their conditions) this powerful and unique documentary remains an important resource for those interested in globalization, environmentalism, labor issues, social struggles, and Latin American studies.
Restoration made possible by the support of the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, the production, supervision and management of Felipe Colmenares, and the cultural exchange with the National Film Library of Ecuador "Ulises Estrella."
A digital file of the restored version is available for exhibition and licensing. Please contact [email protected] for information.
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From Here, From This Side
The relationship between Mexico and the United States has always been fraught. Using mostly stock footage, this collage-like documentary “stars” Robert Redford, John Gavin, and Superman in an exploration of the border separating the United States of Mexico from the United States of America. Incorporating texts by Octavio Paz and others, images from Mexican melodramas and Hollywood movies, this film forces U.S. viewers to consider the question of cultural imperialism from a non-dominant perspective.
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There Was An Unseen Cloud, Moving
A deft and intentionally fragmented "biography" of Isabelle Eberhardt, a Victorian traveler who, dressed as an Arab man, became a Muslim and a writer in Algeria at the turn of the century.
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The Displaced View
THE DISPLACED VIEW is a film that movingly depicts the odyssey of an American-born Japanese granddaughter in search of her identity through her grandmother who is the last of the family born in Japan. The sense of isolation the granddaughter feels as a Japanese woman who cannot speak Japanese is skillfully evoked in a montage of images gleaned from old photographs, movies, animated puppets, and various experimental film techniques. Onodera focuses almost exclusively on Japanese women as preservers of the old traditions in a country where they have no meaning. By revealing the inconsistency of memory and the cultural erosion of assimilation, the fragile identity of the Japanese in North America is eloquently expressed, and the sense of alienation and displacement heightens as the old voices try to remember the past. The narrative shifts between English and Japanese, as well as between generations. Japanese subtitles are artfully displayed throughout. The focus on women makes this film ideal for women’s studies, but the historical overview would be important in other disciplines such as history and sociology. Highly recommended for academic libraries. -Roxanna Herrick, SUNY at Stony Brook Library
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Dreaming Rivers
From Sankofa Film and Video comes this bittersweet and nostalgic short drama illustrating the spirit of modern families touched by the experience of migration. Miss T., from the Caribbean, lives alone in her one-room apartment, her children and husband having left her to pursue new dreams. When she dies her family and friends gather at her wake. The tapestry of words that interweave the drama convey the fragments of a life lived, but only partly remembered.
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Angola Is Our Country
Angolan women are rarely heard describing the impact of South Africa’s undeclared war against their country. This moving documentary, produced in conjunction with the Organization of Angolan Women (OMA), highlights the contribution women make to the reconstruction of a country where war has consumed more than half the national budget and produced at least a million internal refugees.
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Sari Red
Made in memory of Kalbinder Kaur Hayre, a young Indian woman killed in 1985 in a racist attack in England, SARI RED eloquently examines the effect of the ever-present threat of violence upon the lives of Asian women in both private and public spheres. In this moving visual poem, the title refers to red, the color of blood spilt and the red of the sari, symbolizing sensuality and intimacy between Asian women.
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