Ferry Tales
A film by Katja Esson
Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Short, FERRY TALES exposes a secret world that exists in the powder room of the Staten Island Ferry.
2003 | 40 minutes | Color | 16mm/DVD | Order No. 05853
SYNOPSIS
Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary Short, FERRY TALES exposes a secret world that exists in the powder room of the Staten Island Ferry--a place that brings together suburban moms and urban dwellers, white-collar and blue-collar, sisters and socialites. For 30 minutes every day, they gather around mirrors to put on their makeup – talking not as wives, mothers, or professionals, but just as themselves. Sassy and honest, they dish on everything from sex scandals to stilettos, family problems to September 11th, leaving stereotypes at the door and surprising viewers with their straight-shooting wisdom.
In broaching such topics as divorce, single motherhood and domestic violence, FERRY TALES goes beyond the surface to show us the realities of life for working women. A rare and honest look at the intersections of race and class, this heartwarming film is also a must have for women’s studies, urban studies and sociology departments. Utterly charming and often outrageous, FERRY TALES gives these unlikely heroines their moment in the spotlight.
PRESS
'Esson's film gives a fantastic glimpse into one of the countless secret sub-cultures of New York. Her brilliant portrayal rethinks class and gender and turns our ideas of the suburban/urban divide on their head...with important lessons for sociology, women's studies, and urban history alike."
“Highly recommended...Absorbing ...a useful addition to collections supporting urban or women’s studies.”
“A delightful microcosm of a diverse group of women…their views of the world, race, relationships, and the challenges and the joys of the working woman in today’s society.”
“An exploration of a floating community, both transitory and enduring, cliquish and inclusive, performative and insular, this engaging documentary gives new meaning to the notion of the transference of identity…an important contribution to the study of gendered space, racial politics, and urban class dynamics.”
SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS
- Academy Award Nominee for Best Short Doc.
- Annapolis Film Festival - Honorable Mention
- Underdog Film Festival - First Place
- Woodstock Film Festival - Honorable Mention
- Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
- Brooklyn International Film Festival
- New Orleans Film Festival
- Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival
- Exground Filmfest, Germany - European Premiere
- Sarasota Film Festival
- Austin Film Festival
- Seattle International Film Festival
- Florida Film Festival
- Palm Springs International Film Festival
- Adelaide International Women's Film Festival
- Frame by Frame Documentary Film Festival
- Dallas Video Fest
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Katja Esson
Katja Esson is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, born in Germany and based in Miami. Known for her intimate character-driven documentaries tackling race, class, and gender, her credits include WMM release FERRY TALES, which turns the unlikely setting of the Staten Island Ferry Powder Room into a celebration of sisterhood (HBO 2004). In 2007, HOLE IN THE SKY - THE SCARS OF 9/11 received the Gold-Award at the World-Media-Festival. Her 2011 film SKYDANCER, a WMM release, about two Mohawk ironworkers torn between the Akwesasne reservation and New York City, received nominations for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Cinematography at the Shanghai Film Festival and premiered on PBS and ARTE in 2011. Katja’s POETRY OF RESILIENCE, a WMM release, was nominated for the Cinema for Peace Award in 2012. Her five-part documentary series BACKROADS USA (2014) and AMERICAN RIVERS (2016) premiered on ARTE and PBS in 2018. A Simons-Public Humanities Fellow at Kansas University, her films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian. Katja’s work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Knight Foundation, ITVS, IDA Enterprise, NYSCA, the Redford Center, Sundance and the Ford Foundation. (10/23)
RELATED LINKS
MATERIALS
LATEST RELEASES
My Stolen Planet
Farah, an Iranian woman, was born in 1979 at the end of the Islamic Revolution, shortly after the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty. Drawing on personal archives and 8mm archival recordings of strangers' lives, she contrasts moments of private joy with public defiance to show lives of women under the regimented oppression in Tehran.
Learn more
Is There Anybody Out There?
While navigating daily discrimination, a filmmaker who inhabits and loves her unusual body searches the world for another person like her, and explores what it takes to love oneself fiercely despite the pervasiveness of ableism.
Learn more
Bye Bye Tiberias
Years after leaving her Palestinian village to pursue an acting career in France, Emmy-nominated Hiam Abbass (SUCCESSION, RAMY, BLADE RUNNER) returns home with her daughter, in this intimate documentary about four generations of women and their shared legacy of separation.
Learn more
Loud Enough
After surviving a life-threatening sexual assault and being dismissed by the legal system, college student Madison Smith and her tight-knit Kansas family take on the local prosecutor to fight for justice and systemic change.
Learn more
Razing Liberty Square
Eight miles inland of Miami’s beaches, Liberty City residents fight to save their community from climate gentrification: their land, sitting on a ridge, becomes real estate gold.
Learn more
Marianne
Set in the context of France's laïcité, (France's version of secularism), MARIANNE follows seven Muslim women challenging bans on wearing hijabs, headscarfs, face coverings, and abayas at school and in public. Their stories resonate globally, urging viewers to reevaluate liberty, feminism, and Western identity.
Learn more
80 Years Later
Through multigenerational conversations, 80 Years Later engages with the racial inheritance of Japanese American family incarceration during World War II.
Learn more
Esther Newton Made Me Gay
A feature documentary about the pathbreaking cultural anthropologist, dog agility enthusiast, and iconic butch lesbian, Esther Newton.
Learn more
Behind the Rage
Women’s rights activist and BAFTA, Peabody, and Emmy-winning filmmaker Deeyah Khan explores male violence against the women they claim to love – and asks if, behind the rage, rehabilitation and change is possible.
Learn more
Abortion and Women's Rights 1970
The first film ever made about the struggle for abortion rights in the U.S., originally released in 1970, this powerful archival piece documents women’s voices from a pre-Roe v. Wade era.
Learn more
A Woman on the Outside
A deeply American story about the legacy of mass incarceration. Kristal Bush, who has watched nearly every man in her life disappear into prison, channels her struggle into reuniting other Philadelphia families divided by the correctional system.
Learn more
Rebel Dykes
REBEL DYKES is a riotous documentary about the explosion that happened when punk met feminism, told through the lives of a gang of lesbians in post-punk, 1980s London.
Learn more
WINN
This powerful, short documentary exposes the horrifying experience that incarcerated pregnant women endure and documents Pamela Winn's mission to end shackling and ultimately prison birth.
Learn more
Love, Barbara
A touching tribute to the pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, told through the lens and love of her partner of over 30 years.
Learn more
Storming Caesars Palace
STORMING CAESARS PALACE chronicles the life of Ruby Duncan, an activist who fights the welfare system and becomes a White House advisor. A real-life superhero, she takes on both the Nevada political establishment and organized crime in a valiant and resolute act of civil disobedience.
Learn more
What About China?
Offering a journey into the wealth of China’s traditional architecture while exploring the hinterlands of self and other in their encounter, the film addresses the process of "harmonising" rural China, due to the country's Great Uprooting. It seeks to engage the viewer further by asking: What exactly is disappearing? And how?
Learn more
Neurodivergent
In this profoundly personal mixed-media experience inside the ADHD mind, a 35-year-old film student interrogates her past and future, while trying to make sense of this misunderstood disorder.
Learn more
TikTok, Boom.
Dissecting one of the most influential platforms of the contemporary social media landscape, TIKTOK, BOOM., directed by CODED BIAS filmmaker Shalini Kantayya, examines the algorithmic, socio-political, economic, and cultural influences and impact of the history-making app.
Learn more
Dying to Divorce
By sharing three women’s intimately personal stories, DYING TO DIVORCE takes viewers into the heart of Turkey’s gender-based violence crisis and the recent political events that have severely eroded democratic freedoms.
Learn more
Maestra and Maestras Voluntarias
MAESTRA (2012)
MAESTRAS VOLUNTARIAS (2022)
Two films tell the courageous history of the first Volunteer Teachers in Cuba and the women who laid the groundwork for a massive National Literacy Campaign that would teach more than 707,000 Cubans how to read and write.
Learn more
Annah la Javanaise
An animated reimagining of the life of Annah, a 13-year-old Javanese girl brought to France in 1893 to serve as a maid and model to the famous painter Paul Gauguin.
Learn more
Call Me Human
International award-winning Innu writer and poet Joséphine Bacon, a meditation on interconnectedness, and an anti-colonialist story about revitalizing Indigenous languages.
Learn more
The Judge
Peabody Award winner and Emmy nominated THE JUDGE provides rare insight into Shari’a law, an often-misunderstood legal framework for Muslims, told through the eyes of the first woman judge to be appointed to the Middle East’s religious courts.
Learn more
America's War on Abortion
In this BAFTA award-winning film, two-time Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmaker Deeyah Khan examines the erosion of reproductive rights in the United States, foregrounding the stories of those often forgotten in this ‘war’ who nonetheless find themselves on its frontline: impoverished women and women of color.
Learn more
Running with My Girls
Tired of watching local government ignore their communities’ interests, five diverse female activists decide to run for municipal office in Denver — one of the fastest gentrifying cities in the U.S.
Learn more
Apart
Against the backdrop of a Midwestern state battling industrial decline, an opioid epidemic, and rising incarceration rates, APART offers an intimate portrait of three women who return home from prison and rebuild their lives after being separated from their children for years.
Learn more
Fannie Lou Hamer's America
FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA, winner of Best TV Feature Documentary or miniseries at the IDA Awards, is a portrait of Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist, Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest leaders.
Learn more
Muslim in America
In this Peabody Award-winning exposé, director Deeyah Khan uses her uniquely intimate filming style to investigate the rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S.
Learn more
Havana Divas
Offering a window into the experience of Chinese migration to Cuba, HAVANA DIVAS follows two Cantonese opera singers who perform for decades in Cuba before, and during, Fidel Castro’s revolution.
Learn more
In the Rumbling Belly of Motherland
Filmed as the U.S. planned for its September 2021 withdrawal of troops, IN THE RUMBLING BELLY OF MOTHERLAND documents an inspiring female-led news agency in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Learn more
Fly So Far
A grave warning of how far state control of women’s bodies can go, FLY SO FAR follows Teodora Vásquez, who was sentenced to thirty years in a Salvadorean prison after she suffered a stillbirth.
Learn more
Ways of Being Home
An evocative audiovisual meditation on the experience of Mexican immigrants living and working in rural America.
Learn more
Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power
An intimate and inspiring portrait of Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), a champion of civil rights and the lone vote in opposition of the broad authorization of military force following the September 11th attacks.
Learn more
Daughter of a Lost Bird
Kendra Mylnechuk Potter, a Native woman adopted into a white family, reconnects with her Native identity and begins to view herself as a living legacy of U.S. assimilationist policy.
Learn more
Breach of Trust
Told from the point of view of women advocating for accountability and change, this compelling documentary by USC Graduate Mishal Mahmud examines the sexual assault scandal at the University of Southern California, detailing crimes committed by former gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall and exposing the active cover-up on the part of the administration.
Learn more
The Celine Archive
In 1932, Celine Navarro was buried alive by her own community in Northern California. This is an attempt to uncover the real story, revealing Navarro’s feminism and resistance in a time when neither was embraced, as well as the silences that haunt Filipino-American communities to this day.
Learn more
Unlearning Sex
38 minute educational version included on the DVD. For the DSL version, please email [email protected].
Told through a deeply personal lens, this film explores sexual assault and trauma – and how these experiences intersect with race, class, and sexual orientation – with complexity and sensitivity.
Learn more
Stateless
STATELESS, from Michèle Stephenson, the critically acclaimed filmmaker of American Promise, looks at the complex politics of immigration and race in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, using a combination of magical realism and hidden camera techniques.
Learn more
Nice Chinese Girls Don’t: Kitty Tsui
Nice Chinese Girls Don’t is a portrait of Kitty Tsui -- an iconic Asian American lesbian, poet, artist, activist, writer, and bodybuilder who came of age in the early days of the Women’s Liberation Movement in San Francisco.
Learn more
Belly of the Beast
Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, this Emmy-winning documentary exposes a pattern of illegal sterilizations, modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.
Learn more
Coded Bias
When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that many facial recognition technologies misclassify women and darker-skinned faces, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms.
Learn more
Paulette
PAULETTE follows the historic campaign of Paulette Jordan, the first Native American candidate – as well as the first woman -- to win the Idaho Primary for Governor.
Learn more
Without a Whisper
WITHOUT A WHISPER - KONNON:KWE is the untold story of the profound influence of Indigenous women on the beginning of the women’s rights movement in the United States.
Learn more
Black Feminist
BLACK FEMINIST explores the double-edged sword of racial and gender oppression that Black Women face in America.
Learn more
The R-Word
A 28 minute educational version is also available, email [email protected] for details.
THE R-WORD is an intimate look at the history of the word ‘retard(ed),’ cultural representation, and the challenges and triumphs of people living with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Learn more
Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa
At the Philadelphia abortion helpline, counselors field nonstop calls from women and teens who are seeking to end a pregnancy but can’t afford to, illustrating how economic stigma and cruel laws determine who has access to abortion in America.
Learn more
Sisters Rising
Native American survivors of sexual assault fight to restore personal and tribal sovereignty against the backdrop of an ongoing legacy of violent colonization.
Learn more
Waging Change
WAGING CHANGE shines a light on an American struggle hidden in plain sight: the women-led movement to end the federal tipped minimum wage for restaurant workers.
Learn more
Mothertime
MOTHERTIME is a personal video diary that takes us on a corporeal journey in parenting via a small portable Go-Pro camera mounted on the filmmaker and her toddler over the period of a year and a half.
Learn more
Wonder Women!
Now Available from WMM: WONDER WOMEN! traces the fascinating birth, evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman and introduces audiences to a dynamic group of fictional and real-life superheroines fighting for positive role models for girls, both on screen and off.
Learn more
Conscience Point
CONSCIENCE POINT unearths a deep clash of values between the Shinnecock Indian Nation and their elite Hamptons neighbors, who have made sacred land their playground.
Learn more
#Female Pleasure
#FEMALE PLEASURE accompanies five extraordinary women around the globe fighting to reclaim female sexuality.
Learn more
Fattitude
An eye-opening look at how popular media perpetuates fat hatred that results in cultural bias and discrimination.
Learn more
A Normal Girl
A NORMAL GIRL brings the widely unknown struggles of intersex people to light through the story of intersex activist Pidgeon Pagonis.
Learn more
The Archivettes
For more than 40 years, the Lesbian Herstory Archives has combated lesbian invisibility by literally rescuing history from the trash.
Learn more
False Confessions
Defense attorney Jane Fisher-Byrialsen exposes the dark side of the American justice system
Learn more
The Gold Diggers
Now digitally remastered! Sally Potter’s ground-breaking first feature examining the relationship between women and capitalism.
Learn more
Thriller
Now digitally remastered! Sally Potter’s cult classic rewrites Puccini’s La Boheme to ask why the woman always has to die.
Learn more
The Cancer Journals Revisited
A chorus of voices recite Black feminist poet Audre Lorde’s 1980 memoir of her cancer experience, and reflect upon its personal and political impact in the present moment.
Learn more
There Goes the Neighborhood
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD intimately follows an extended Black family of View Park-Windsor Hills, California as they experience changes due to gentrification and reflect on their shifting community.
Learn more
Feminista: A Journey to the Heart of Feminism in Europe
FEMINISTA is a lively and inspiring feminist road movie that explores the largely unrecognized yet hugely vibrant pan European feminist movement.
Learn more
I Am the Revolution
A Portrait of Three Women in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq Leading the Fight for Gender Equality
Learn more
The Feeling of Being Watched
An Arab American filmmaker uncovers the story of her community’s surveillance by the FBI long before 9/11
Learn more
Councilwoman
COUNCILWOMAN follows the first term of Rhode Island Councilwoman Carmen Castillo as she balances her day job as a hotel housekeeper with the demands of public office.
Learn more
Birth on the Border
Seeking a safer future for their children, two women from Ciudad Juárez, risk harassment at the hands of Border Patrol to cross the US-Mexico border legally to give birth in El Paso, Texas.
Learn more
Home Truth
In the wake of her daughters’ murders, a mother takes a historic lawsuit about police non-enforcement of restraining orders to the Supreme Court.
Learn more
Exit: Leaving Extremism Behind
A former right-wing extremist explores why people join hate groups and what makes them decide to leave.
Learn more
A Thousand Girls Like Me
The story of a young Afghan woman’s brave fight for justice after experiencing years of abuse at the hands of her father.
Learn more
93Queen
93QUEEN chronicles the creation of the first all-female Hasidic ambulance corps in New York City.
Learn more
Primas
Two teenage cousins in Argentina come of age together, overcoming the heinous acts of violence that interrupted their childhoods.
Learn more
White Right: Meeting the Enemy
Muslim filmmaker Deeyah Khan’s Emmy-winning look at the personal and political motivations behind the resurgence of far-right extremism in the U.S.
Learn more
The Rest I Make Up
A portrait of visionary Cuban-American dramatist Maria Irene Fornes and the story of her unexpected collaboration with filmmaker Michelle Memran.
Learn more
Atomic Homefront
ATOMIC HOMEFRONT shines an urgent and devastating light on the lasting toxic effects that nuclear waste can have on communities.
Learn more
Lovesick
A hopeful look at one doctor’s struggle to help HIV+ patients in India find love and meet societal expectations by playing marriage matchmaker.
Learn more
Yours in Sisterhood
A collective portrait of feminist conversation 40 years ago and today based on letters sent to Ms. Magazine in the 1970s.
Learn more
Dinner with the President
Pakistani filmmaker Sabiha Sumar and co-director Sachithanandam Sathananthan request a dinner with President Musharraf as he’s facing impeachment charges and engage him in an enlightening discussion about the past and his vision for the country.
Learn more
Azmaish: A Journey Through the Subcontinent
Pakistani filmmaker Sabiha Sumar’s inspiring and probing documentary explores the complex relationship between India and her native country.
Learn more
Defiant Lives
DEFIANT LIVES is a triumphant film that traces the origins of the world-wide disability rights movement.
Learn more
Shadow Girl
SHADOW GIRL is the extraordinary story of a filmmaker struggling with the prospect of losing her vision.
Learn more
Nothing Without Us: The Women Who Will End AIDS
NOTHING WITHOUT US tells the inspiring story of the vital role that women have played - and continue to play - in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.
Learn more
62 Days
62 DAYS is an urgent examination of a growing trend of laws that seek to control a pregnant woman's body.
Learn more
Geek Girls
Nerdy women - the "hidden half" of fan culture - open up about their lives in the world of conventions, video games, and other rife-with-misogyny pop culture touchstones.
Learn more
Breaking Silence
Three Muslim women share their stories of sexual assault—and, in a deeply personal way, they challenge the stigma that has long suppressed the voice of survivors.
Learn more
Lives: Visible/Leftovers
Lesbians in a box…two thousand private snapshots hidden away for over fifty years reveal the rich history of Chicago’s working class butch/fem life in the pre-Stonewall era.
Learn more
Love the Sinner
LOVE THE SINNER is a personal documentary exploring the connection between Christianity and homophobia in the wake of the 2016 shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
Learn more
What Doesn't Kill Me
Every day, 5 million children in the U.S. either witness or are victims of domestic violence.
Learn more
A Better Man
A BETTER MAN follows a series of intimate conversations between a woman and her former boyfriend when she confronts him about their history of domestic abuse.
Learn more
Black Girl in Suburbia
For many Black girls raised in the suburbs, the experiences of going to school, playing on the playground, and living day-to-day life can be uniquely alienating. BLACK GIRL IN SUBURBIA looks at the suburbs of America from the perspective of women of color. Filmmaker Melissa Lowery shares her own childhood memories of navigating racial expectations both subtle and overt-including questions like, "Hey, I just saw a Black guy walking down the street; is that your cousin?"
Through conversations with her own daughters, with teachers and scholars who are experts in the personal impacts of growing up a person of color in a predominately white place, this film explores the conflicts that many Black girls in homogeneous hometowns have in relating to both white and Black communities. BLACK GIRL IN SUBURBIA is a great discussion starter for Freshman orientation week and can be used in a wide variety of educational settings including classes in sociology, race relations, African American Studies, Women's Studies, and American Studies.
Learn more
Siberian Love
In rural Siberia, romantic expectations are traditional and practical. The man is the head of the household. The woman takes care of the housekeeping and the children. But filmmaker Olga Delane doesn’t agree. While she was born in this small Siberian village, as a teenager she migrated to Berlin with her family, and 20 years of living in Germany has changed her expectations. SIBERIAN LOVE follows Delane home to her community of birth, where she interviews family and neighbors about their lives and relationships. Amusing and moving, this elegant film paints a picture of a world completely outside of technology, a hard-farming community where life is hard and marriage is sometimes unhappy—but where there are also unexpected paths to joy and family togetherness. Through clashing ideals of modern and traditional womanhood, SIBERIAN LOVE is a fascinating study of a country little known in the US and of a rural community that raises questions about domesticity, gender expectations, domestic abuse, childcare, and romance. Excellent for anthropology, women's studies, sociology, Russian and Eastern European Studies.
Learn more
Birthright: A War Story
BIRTHRIGHT: A WAR STORY examines how women are being jailed, physically violated and even put at risk of dying as a radical movement tightens its grip across America.
Read Civia Tamarkin's director's statement here.
Learn more
Read Civia Tamarkin's director's statement here.
Inside the Chinese Closet
The complexities of gay life in modern China collide at the event where Andy and Cherry first meet—a “fake marriage fair” in Shanghai, where a new, cosmopolitan generation of gay men and lesbian women seek to make a deal with a spouse of the opposite sex. Homosexuality has only recently become legal in China, but morally and practically, life is still difficult. People in Andy and Cherry’s generation, the result of the “one child” policy, are under an unbearable pressure to meet the demands of their parents and grandparents. To these elders, who carry the trauma of the great famine and the limits of the Cultural Revolution, their gay children’s search for love and happiness in the city is unintelligible. INSIDE THE CHINESE CLOSET is a humorous and compassionate portrait of modern gay life, the eternally difficult relationship between parents and children, and the social, cultural, and moral beliefs in flux in China today.
Learn more
What Happened to Her
WHAT HAPPENED TO HER is a forensic exploration of our cultural obsession with images of the dead woman on screen. Interspersing found footage from films and police procedural television shows and one actor’s experience of playing the part of a corpse, the film offers a meditative critique on the trope of the dead female body.
The visual narrative of the genre, one reinforced through its intense and pervasive repetition, is revealed as a highly structured pageant. The experience of physical invasion and exploitation voiced by the actor pierce the fabric of the screened fantasy. The result is recurring and magnetic film cliché laid bare. Essential viewing for Pop Culture, Women’s and Cinema Studies classes.
Learn more
Faces of Harassment
FACES OF HARASSMENT is an experiment in storytelling about trauma. When the hashtag #MyFirstHarassment swept across Brazil, it showed not only the widespread experience of sexual harassment and assault, but a widespread hunger to bring it out of the shadows. FACES OF HARASSMENT amplifies this movement, by opening space for women to speak their own truth. The film was shot in a mobile storytelling van, parked in rich and poor neighborhoods alike across São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and open to any woman. The van was a free, autonomous space, where women spoke to the camera directly, no interviewer or other influence present. FACES OF HARASSMENT offers an honest and unflinching look at the scourge of sexual harassment and assault - and at the radical possibilities for dignity and healing that can happen when women are free to speak completely for themselves.
Learn more
Girls' War
As the forces of ISIS and Assad tear through villages and society in Syria and Northern Iraq, a group of brave and idealistic women are taking up arms against them—and winning inspiring victories. Members of “The Free Women’s Party” come from Paris, Turkish Kurdistan, and other parts of the world. Their dream: To create a Democratic Syria, and a society based on gender equality. Guns in hand, these women are carrying on a movement with roots that run 40 years deep in the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. GIRL’S WAR honors the legacy of Sakine Cansiz, co-founder of the PKK who was assassinated in Paris in 2013, and reflects on the sacrifices made by all of the women in the movement, who have endured jail, rape, war, and persecution in their quest to liberate their lives and sisters from male dominance. With scenes of solidarity, strength, and love amongst these brave women soldiers, GIRL'S WAR is a surprising story of Middle Eastern feminism on the front lines.
Learn more
Ohero:kon - Under the Husk
OHERO:KON - UNDER THE HUSK follows two Mohawk girls on their journey to become Mohawk women.
Learn more
Heather Booth: Changing the World
Renowned organizer and activist Heather Booth began her remarkable career at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Through her life and work, this inspiring film explores many of the pivotal moments in progressive movements that altered our history over the last fifty years, from her involvement with Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Summer Project, to her founding of the JANE Underground in 1964, to her personal relationships with respected leaders such as Julian Bond and Senator Elizabeth Warren. Featuring interviews from close friends, clients, political colleagues and current Midwest Academy students, HEATHER BOOTH: CHANGING THE WORLD explores Heather’s legacy in progressive politics and organizing.
At a time when many are wondering how to make their voices heard, when civil and women's rights are under attack, Lilly Rivlin’s acclaimed documentary is an empowering look at how social change happens.
Learn more
Footprint: Population, Consumption and Sustainability
FOOTPRINT takes a dizzying spin around the globe, witnessing population explosions, overconsumption, limited resources, and expert testimony as to what a world straining at its limits can sustain. We spend time with indigenous health workers, activists, and the ordinary people in the Philippines, Mexico, Pakistan and Kenya, women who all challenge the idea that our world can continue to support the weight of humanity’s footprint on it. FOOTPRINT offers unprecedented access to the people on the ground who are all in their unique way challenging the status quo and making us rethink what’s really at stake. There are surprising revelations on who are the players standing in the way of solutions and those pushing for it, without losing sight of the array of possible solutions that open up when we take the time to ask this critical question of how many of us there are in the world and what the Earth can sustain if we are to all live a dignified life.
Learn more
The Revival: Women and the Word
THE REVIVAL: WOMEN AND THE WORD chronicles the US tour of a group of Black lesbian poets and musicians, who become present-day stewards of a historical movement to build community among queer women of color. Their journey to strengthen their community is enriched by insightful interviews with leading Black feminist thinkers and historians, including Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Nikki Finney, and Alexis Deveaux. As the group tours the country, the film reveals their aspirations and triumphs, as well as the unique identity challenges they face encompassing gender, race, and sexuality. This is a rarely seen look into a special sisterhood - one where marginalized voices are both heard and respected.
Learn more
A Revolution in Four Seasons
The Tunisian Revolution sparked the Arab Spring. But revolution was the easy part—as two women learned on the journey from protest to functioning government. Emna Ben Jemaa and Jawhara Ettis represent opposite sides of their country’s politics: One is a well-known journalist in the city, fighting for free speech. The other is a strict Islamist from a rural town, elected to help draft the new constitution. Despite their differences, both face the threat of extremists hijacking their fragile political process, and both Emna and Jawhara have to make difficult choices to balance their public political roles with their domestic environment.
The film is a gripping and surprising perspective on the clash between Islam and secularism, and the political role of women in the Arab world. Offering an insightful portrait of the messy work of democracy, A REVOLUTION IN FOUR SEASONS is especially poignant in this global era of divided politics.
Learn more
PROFILED
Profiled knits the stories of mothers of Black and Latino youth murdered by the NYPD into a powerful indictment of racial profiling and police brutality, and places them within a historical context of the roots of racism in the U.S. Some of the victims—Eric Garner, Michael Brown—are now familiar the world over. Others, like Shantel Davis and Kimani Gray, are remembered mostly by family and friends in their New York neighborhoods.
Ranging from the routine harassment of minority students in an affluent Brooklyn neighborhood to the killings and protests in Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri, PROFILED bears witness to the racist violence that remains an everyday reality for Black and Latino people in this country. Moving interviews with victims’ family members are juxtaposed with sharply etched analyses by evolutionary biologist, Joseph L.Graves, Jr, (The Race Myth) and civil rights lawyer, Chauniqua D. Young, (Center for Constitutional Rights, Stop and Frisk lawsuit). PROFILED gives us a window on one of the burning issues of our time.
Learn more
Ovarian Psycos
Riding at night through streets deemed dangerous in Eastside Los Angeles, the Ovarian Psycos use their bicycles to confront the violence in their lives. At the helm of the crew is founder Xela de la X, a single mother and poet M.C. dedicated to recruiting an unapologetic, misfit crew of women of color. The film intimately chronicles Xela as she struggles to strike a balance between her activism and nine year old daughter Yoli; street artist Andi who is estranged from her family and journeys to become a leader within the crew; and bright eyed recruit Evie, who despite poverty, and the concerns of her protective Salvadoran mother, discovers a newfound confidence.
The film Ovarian Psycos rides along with the Ova’s, exploring the impact of the group’s activism, born of feminist ideals, Indigenous understanding and an urban/hood mentality, on neighborhood women and communities as they confront injustice, racism, and violence, and take back their streets one ride at a time.
Learn more
Four Wives – One Man
From Nahid Persson, the filmmaker of the award-winning Prostitution Behind the Veil, comes an intimate portrait of a polygamist family in a rural Iranian village. Persson reveals the intricacies of the relationships between the four wives, their husband, their astoundingly free-spoken mother-in-law and their numerous children. Sometimes humorous and often heartbreaking, this film follows the daily lives of the wives whose situation has turned them into both bitter rivals and co-conspirators against their abusive husband.
Persson’s camera unobtrusively and beautifully captures the range of the family’s interactions – from peaceful, pastoral scenes of a family picnic, to the temporary chaos caused by a broken faucet in the kitchen, to a furtive, whispered conversation between two wives about the latest beating. The women’s work – making bread, weaving carpets, milking and herding the sheep – provide the background to their frank conversations. Avoiding sensationalism and sentimentality, this film provides unique insights into the practice of polygamy and its effect on the women involved.
Learn more