Kim Longinotto
Kim Longinotto (born 1952) is a British documentary filmmaker, well known for making films that highlight the plight of female victims of oppression or discrimination. Longinotto studied camera and directing at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England, where she now tutors occasionally.
Longinotto was born to an Italian father and a Welsh mother; her father was a photographer who later went bankrupt. At the age of 10 she was sent to a draconian all-girls boarding school, where she found it hard to make friends due to the mistress forbidding anyone to talk to her for a term after she became lost during a school trip. After a period of homelessness, Longinotto went on to Essex University to study English and European literature and later followed friend and future filmmaker, Nick Broomfield to the National Film and Television School. While studying, she made a documentary about her boarding school that was shown at the London Film Festival, since when she has continued to be a prolific documentary filmmaker.
Longinotto is an observational filmmaker. Observational cinema, also known as direct cinema, free cinema or cinema verite, usually excludes certain documentary techniques such as advanced planning, scripting, staging, narration, lighting, reenactment and interviewing. Longinotto’s unobtrusiveness, which is an important part of observational documentary, gives the women on camera a certain voice and presence that may not have emerged with another documentary genre. She has received a number of awards for her films over the years, including a BAFTA for her documentary PINK SARIS.
Among her more than 20 films, she has followed a teenager struggling to become a wrestling star in 2000’s GAEA GIRLS, challenged the tradition of female genital mutilation in Kenya in 2002’s THE DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET, and told the story of an Indian Muslim woman who smuggled poetry out to the world while locked up by her family in 2013’s SALMA. In 2015's DREAMCATCHER Longinotto looks at the life and work of a former sex worker who rescues Chicago girls from the street.
Her new film SHOOTING THE MAFIA, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. (3/19)
Available Title(s):
Dreamcatcher
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2015, 98 min, Color
“You got any dreams you wanna catch?” Sundance award winner DREAMCATCHER takes us into a hidden world of prostitution and sexual trafficking through the eyes of one of its survivors, Brenda Myers-Powell. A former teenage prostitute with a drug habit, Brenda defied the odds to become a powerful advocate for change in her community, and…
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Salma
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2013, 89 min, Color
When Salma, a young Muslim girl in a south Indian village, was 13 years old, her family locked her up for 25 years, forbidding her to study and forcing her into marriage. During that time, words were Salma’s salvation. She began covertly composing poems on scraps of paper and, through an intricate system, was able…
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Pink Saris
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2010, 96 min, Color
“A girl’s life is cruel...A woman’s life is very cruel,” notes Sampat Pal, the complex protagonist at the center of PINK SARIS, internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto’s latest foray into the lives of extraordinary women (SISTERS IN LAW, DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE, ROUGH AUNTIES). Sampat should know – like many others she was married as a…
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Rough Aunties
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2008, 103 min, Color
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 documentary by internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto (SISTERS IN LAW, DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE) follows the outspoken, multiracial cadre of Thuli, Mildred, Sdudla,…
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Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2007, 100 min, Color
Harrowing at one moment and heartwarming the next, HOLD ME TIGHT, LET ME GO is set at England’s Mulberry Bush School, founded by Barbara Dockar-Drysdale who developed unique methods for working with children suffering through severe emotional trauma. “Longinotto, director of award-winning SISTERS IN LAW, spent a year filming these children, who are prone to…
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Theatre Girls
A film by Kim Longinotto, 1978, 56 min, BW
In her final piece at film school, Longinotto and her partner take us into the "Theatre Girls Club" in Soho, London–a hostel for elderly and destitute women and the only shelter in London that would take in any woman at any time. The filmmakers lived in the hostel for more than two months, establishing an…
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Pride of Place
A film by Kim Longinotto, 1976, 60 min, BW
A rarely seen classic, PRIDE OF PLACE was made as a first project while Longinotto was a student at England’s National School of Television and Film. As a teenager, the filmmaker had been condemned to a girls' boarding school in an old, isolated castle in Buckinghamshire. Wisely, she ran away at the age of 17,…
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Sisters in Law
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2005, 104 min, Color
Winner of the Prix Art et Essai at the Cannes Film Festival and screened to acclaim at more than 120 festivals around the world, SISTERS IN LAW is the bestselling documentary from internationally renowned director Kim Longinotto, co-directed by Florence Ayisi. In the little town of Kumba, Cameroon, there have been no convictions in spousal…
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The Day I Will Never Forget
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2002, 92 min, Color
THE DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET is a gripping feature documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Kim Longinotto that examines the practice of female genital mutilation in Kenya and the pioneering African women who are bravely reversing the tradition. In this epic work, women speak candidly about the practice and explain its cultural significance within Kenyan society.…
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Runaway
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2001, 87 min, Color
“RUNAWAY is a powerful and heart-breaking documentary about a group of young runaway girls who are taken to a women's shelter in Tehran, Iran. The film focuses on the sufferings of young girls who struggle to free themselves from the tyrannical and abusive power of their families, mainly their fathers, brothers, and stepfathers. The sisterly…
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Gaea Girls
A film by Kim Longinotto, 2000, 62 min, Color
"This fascinating film follows the physically grueling and mentally exhausting training regimen of several young wanna-be GAEA GIRLS, a group of Japanese women wrestlers. The idea of them may seem like a total oxymoron in a country where women are usually regarded as docile and subservient. However, in training and in the arena, the female…
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Divorce Iranian Style
A film by Kim Longinotto, 1998, 80 min, Color
Hilarious, tragic, stirring, this fly-on-the-wall look at several weeks in an Iranian divorce court provides a unique window into the intimate circumstances of Iranian women’s lives. Following Jamileh, whose husband beats her; Ziba, a 16-year-old trying to divorce her 38-year-old husband; and Maryam, who is desperately fighting to gain custody of her daughters, this deadpan…
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Shinjuku Boys
A film by Kim Longinotto, 1995, 53 min, Color
This documentary from Kim Longinoto and Jano Williams (DREAM GIRLS), offers rich insight into gender and sexuality in Japan via a candid portrait of Kazuki, Tatsu, and Gaish, three trans masculine hosts working at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo’s bustling Shinjuku district. As the film follows them at home and on the job, all…
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Dream Girls
A film by Kim Longinotto, 1993, 50 min, Color
This fascinating documentary, produced for the BBC, opens a door into the spectacular world of the Takarazuka Revue, a highly successful musical theater company in Japan. Each year, thousands of girls apply to enter the male-run Takarazuka Music School. The few who are accepted endure years of a highly disciplined and reclusive existence before they…
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The Good Wife of Tokyo
A film by Kim Longinotto, 1992, 52 min, Color
“Forget those demure ladies with fragrant fans and meet the new breed of Japanese women!” - Amanda Casson, London Film Festival. Kazuko Hohki goes back to Tokyo with her band, the ‘Frank Chickens’, after living in England for 15 years. This wry and delightful film records her re-experiencing of Japan after a long absence, examining…
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Eat the Kimono
A film by Kim Longinotto, 1989, 60 min, Color
EAT THE KIMONO is a brilliant documentary about Hanayagi Genshu, a Japanese feminist and avant-garde dancer and performer, who has spent her life defying her conservative culture’s contempt for independence and unconventionality. She denounced Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal, and dismissed death threats made against her by right-wing groups. “You mustn’t be eaten by…
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Hidden Faces
A film by Kim Longinotto, 1990, 52 min, Color
Originally intended as a film about internationally renowned feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi, HIDDEN FACES develops into a fascinating portrayal of Egyptian women’s lives in Muslim society. In this collaborative documentary, Safaa Fathay, a young Egyptian woman living in Paris, returns home to interview the famed writer and activist, but becomes disillusioned with her. Illuminated…
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