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Women's Studies

ALL WE'VE GOT

By Alexis Clements

ALL WE'VE GOT is a personal exploration of LGBTQI women's communities, cultures, and social justice work through the lens of the physical spaces they create, from bars to bookstores to arts and political hubs.

Social groups rely on physical spaces to meet and build connections, step outside oppressive social structures, avoid policing and violence, share information, provide support, and organize politically. Yet, in the past decade, more than 100 bars, bookstores, art and community spaces where LGBTQI women gather have closed. In ALL WE'VE GOT, filmmaker Alexis Clements travels the country to explore the factors driving the loss of these spaces, understand why some are able to endure, and to search for community among the ones that remain. From a lesbian bar in Oklahoma; to the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center in San Antonio run by queer Latinas; to the WOW Cafe Theatre in New York; to the public gatherings organized by the Trans Ladies Picnics around the US and beyond; to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, the film takes us into diverse LGBTQI spaces and shines a light on why having a place to gather matters. Ultimately, ALL WE'VE GOT is a celebration of the history and resilience of the LGBTQI community and the inclusive spaces they make, as well as a call to action to continue building stronger futures for all communities.

DVD (Color) / 2019 / 67 minutes

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I AM THE REVOLUTION

By Benedetta Argentieri

I AM THE REVOLUTION is an empowering portrait of three determined women in the Middle East who are leading the fight for gender equality and freedom. Politician Selay Ghaffar is one of the most wanted people in the world by the Taliban and yet she still travels through Afghanistan to educate other women about their rights. Rojda Felat is a commander of the Syrian Democratic Army, leading 60,000 troops to defeat ISIS, including freeing their hold on Raqqa and rescuing its people. And Yanar Mohammed, named by the BBC as one of 100 most influential women in the world in 2018, pushes for parliamentary reform in Iraq while running shelters for abused women. Despite battling seemingly overwhelming obstacles, all three women display resilience, bravery and compassion. I AM THE REVOLUTION challenges the images of veiled, silent women in the Middle East and instead reveals the extraordinary strength of women rising up on the front lines to claim their voice and their rights.

DVD (English, Arabic, Kurdish, Pashtun, Color) / 2019 / 72 minutes

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93QUEEN

By Paula Eiselt

93QUEEN follows Rachel "Ruchie" Freier, a no-nonsense Hasidic lawyer and mother of six who is determined to shake up the boys club in her Hasidic community by creating Ezras Nashim, the first all-female ambulance corps in NYC.

In the Hasidic enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn, EMS corps have long been the province of men. Though the neighborhood is home to the largest volunteer ambulance corps in the world known as Hatzolah, that organization has steadfastly banned women from its ranks. Now Ruchie and an engaging cast of dogged Hasidic women are risking their reputations, and the futures of their children, by taking matters into their own hands to provide dignified emergency medical care to the Hasidic women and girls of Borough Park. In a society where most women don't drive-and a few minutes can mean the difference between life and death-how do female EMTs transport themselves to the scene of an emergency? And how does Ezras Nashim combat a behemoth like Hatzolah, which possesses political clout throughout New York City?

With unprecedented and exclusive access, 93QUEEN follows the formation and launch of Ezras Nashim through the organization's first year on the ground. We witness the highs and lows of creating an organization against incredible odds, as well as the women's struggles to "have it all" as wives and mothers. And in the midst of this already ground-breaking endeavor, Ruchie announces that she had decided to take her burgeoning feminism even further when she enters the race for civil court judge in Brooklyn's 5th Municipal Court District. Through it all, we see Ruchie and the other women grappling to balance their faith with their nascent feminism, even as they are confronted by the patriarchal attitudes that so dominate Hasidic society. As Ruchie observes, while making dinner at 3 a.m., "I sometimes wonder why God created me a woman. If I'd have been born a Hasidic man, I don't think I would have half the problems I have."

DVD (Color) / 2018 / 90 minutes

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AMA

Directed by Lorna Tucker

The untold story of the involuntary sterilization of Native American women by the Indian Health Service well into the 1970s.

Ama tells an important and untold story: the abuses committed against Native American women by the US Government during the 1960s and 70s. The women were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools. They were subjected to forced relocation away from their traditional lands and, perhaps worst of all, they were subjected to involuntary sterilization.

The result of nine years painstaking and sensitive work by filmmaker Lorna Tucker, the film features the testimony of many Native Americans, including three remarkable women who tell their stories - Jean Whitehorse, Yvonne Swan and Charon Asetoyer - as well as a revealing and rare interview with Dr. Reimert Ravenholt whose population control ideas were the framework for some of the government policies directed at Native American women.

It is estimated over a twenty-year period between 1960 and 1980 that tens of thousands of Native American women were sterilized without their knowledge or consent. Due to poor record keeping during this era the number may in fact be much higher. Many of these women went to their graves having suffered this incredible abuse of power.

The film ends with a call to action - to back a campaign to get a formal apology from the US government, which would then open the door for the women to bring a lawsuit.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 74 minutes

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CANCER JOURNALS REVISITED, THE

By Lana Lin

THE CANCER JOURNALS REVISITED is prompted by the question of what it means to re-visit and re-vision Black lesbian feminist poet Audre Lorde's classic 1980 memoir of her breast cancer experience today. At the invitation of filmmaker Lana Lin, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, twenty-seven writers, artists, activists, health care advocates, and current and former patients recite Lorde's manifesto aloud on camera, collectively dramatizing it and producing an oration for the screen. The film is both a critical commentary and a poetic reflection upon the precarious conditions of survival within the intimate and politicized public sphere of illness.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 98 minutes

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CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE

Directed by Rosine Mbakam

Sabine attaches a hair weave and gets to work. Her hands move quickly and precisely, as she tightly braids the hair in front of the sign in her salon promising African, European, and American-style coiffure. Sabine is a larger than-life personality crammed into a tiny, glassed-in shop in the largely immigrant Brussels district of Matonge. Here, she and her employees fit extensions and glue on lashes while watching soaps, dishing romantic advice, sharing rumors about government programs to legalize migrants, and talking about people back home in West Africa.

At the start of CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE, filmmaker Rosine Mbakam stands outside the salon, filming. Sabine calls her in, warning her it's unsafe out in hallway of the cramped urban mall. Mbakam sets up in the shop-and stays, filming over the course of a year, becoming a regular fixture and presence. This cinematic "chamber piece" takes place entirely inside the tiny salon, seemingly not much larger than a take-out stand, making skillful use of its many mirrors.

More than a place for women to get their hair done, Jolie Coiffure serves as a community hub for West African women-many from Cameroon, like Sabine. Fueled by endless cans of soda and cups of McDonald's coffee, she recruits for a tontine-an investment scheme paying each member a yearly annuity, organizes accommodation for a pregnant woman who lacks immigration papers, and, in quieter, more introspective moments, tells her own harrowing journey to Belgium after working as a domestic under terrible conditions in Lebanon.

Though she has created a home in her own space, Sabine remains an outsider in Belgium. Students and tourist groups made up only of white people walk past, pausing at the window and gawking. (At one point, Sabine urges Mbakam to turn her camera on them so they'll go away; the director obliges.) When word has it that the immigration police are coming through, she hurriedly turns off all the lights and quickly vanishes out the door.

CHEZ JOLIE COIFFURE is a highly revealing documentary, capturing the day-to-day lives and concerns of immigrant West African women in a space they can call their own.

DVD (French with English Subtitles, Color) / 2018 / 70 minutes

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CITY DREAMERS

Director: Joseph Hillel

Phyllis Lambert, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, Denise Scott Brown - four trailblazers who became accustomed to being the only woman in the room. Each has an extensive list of accomplishments in architecture, planning and landscape architecture dating back 60+ years and has taught, mentored and inspired generations of professionals. Since the 1950's, they have worked for and collaborated with some of the leading figures in architecture, from Le Corbusier to Louis Kahn and Mies van der Rohe, while finding their own voices in the male-dominated world of architecture. How have they envisioned our cities?

Through original interviews, archival material and stunning cinematography, filmmaker Joseph Hillel uncovers how each of these independent thinkers has been working, observing and thinking about the transformations shaping the city of today and tomorrow. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, the insights of these forward-looking women who have built social and environmental values into their work seem more relevant now than ever.

DVD (English & French w/ English subtitles) / 2018 / 81 minutes

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COUNCILWOMAN

By Margo Guernsey

COUNCILWOMAN is the inspiring story of Carmen Castillo, an immigrant Dominican housekeeper in a Providence hotel who wins a seat in City Council, taking her advocacy for low-income workers from the margins to city politics.

The film follows Castillo's first term as she balances her full-time day job as a housekeeper with her family life and the demands of public office. She faces skeptics who say she doesn't have the education to govern, the power of corporate interests who take a stand against her fight for a $15 hourly wage, and a tough re-election against two contenders. As Castillo battles personal setbacks and deep-rooted notions of who is qualified to run for political office, she fiercely defends her vision of a society in which all people can earn enough to support themselves and their families.

An eye-opening look at entrenched power in American democracy, COUNCILWOMAN is essential viewing for Latinx, Immigrant, Political Science and Labor Studies courses.

DVD (English, Spanish, Color) / 2018 / 57 minutes

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MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY

By Cordelia Dvorak

MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY is a fascinating portrait of the persevering French filmmaker, writer, and Holocaust survivor Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928-2018).

Marceline was only 15 when both she and her father, a Polish Jew from Lodz, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She survived but her father didn't, and Marceline had to find radical and unconventional ways to heal after the tragedies of the war. In 1961, she appeared in Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's landmark film Chronicle of a Summer, which gave birth to the term cinema verite. Later she married the legendary Dutch documentary director Joris Ivens, traveled with him to Vietnam, and co-directed films such as 17th Parallel: Vietnam in War (1968) and How Yukong Moved the Mountains (1976).

Filmed as she was nearing 90 years old and living in Paris, MARCELINE. A WOMAN. A CENTURY spans the broad arc of her life from Holocaust survivor to political activist to combatively critical filmmaker. Looking back on the momentous events she experienced and filmed such as the Algerian and Vietnam Wars and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, MARCELINE is a thought-provoking chronicle of a remarkable witness of the 20th century.

DVD (French, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 58 minutes

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PRIMAS

By Laura Bari

PRIMAS is an evocative and poetic portrait of two Argentine teenage cousins who come of age together as they overcome the heinous acts of violence that interrupted their childhoods.

When Rocio was 10 years old, she was dragged from her bike by a stranger, raped, set on fire and left for dead. Now a teenager, she still grapples with memories of the nightmarish assault that left her body scarred. Together with her cousin Aldana, who was sexually abused for years by her own father, she lives, laughs and shares her story. Traveling through Argentina and Montreal, the two cousins embark upon a program of theater, dance, and circus that helps them process complex emotions. Little by little, they manage to rebuild the lives that were so brutally stolen from them and free themselves from the shadows of their past.

A humanistic exploration of familial love, creativity, and courage in the wake of sexual violence, PRIMAS is a moving tribute to the deep strength of resilient women.

DVD (Color, Spanish) / 2018 / 95 minutes

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REST I MAKE UP, THE

By Michelle Memran

The visionary Cuban-American dramatist and educator Maria Irene Fornes spent her career constructing astonishing worlds onstage and teaching countless students how to connect with their imaginations. When she gradually stops writing due to dementia, an unexpected friendship with filmmaker Michelle Memran reignites her spontaneous creative spirit and triggers a decade-long collaboration that picks up where the pen left off.

The duo travels from New York to Havana, Miami to Seattle, exploring the playwright's remembered past and their shared present. Theater luminaries such as Edward Albee, Ellen Stewart, Lanford Wilson, and others weigh in on Fornes's important contributions. What began as an accidental collaboration becomes a story of love, creativity, and connection that persists even in the face of forgetting.

DVD (Color) / 2018 / 79 minutes

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THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME, A

By Sahra Mani

A THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME is an awe-inspiring verite documentary that tells the story of a young Afghan woman's fight for justice after experiencing years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her father.

Khatera Golzad was brutally raped by her father for thirteen years, resulting in numerous pregnancies, most of which ended in forced abortions. But two reached full term. Despite her many attempts to file charges, neither the Afghan police nor the legal system helped her. In 2014, she appeared on national television to publicly accuse her father, finally succeeding in bringing her case to court despite threats from male relatives and judges who labelled her a liar.

A THOUSAND GIRLS LIKE ME sheds light on the broken Afghan judicial system and the women it seldom protects. In a country where the systematic abuse of girls is rarely discussed, Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani presents a story of one woman's battle against cultural, familial, and legal pressures as she embarks on a mission to set a positive example for her daughter and other girls like her.

DVD (Color) / 2018 / 52 minutes

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ASHTON HARRISON: ROAD TO 24

By Ron Small

How can a pink roll cage change the course of destiny for one young woman?

The Road to 24 is an inspirational story of how one young lady has succeeded against the odds and broken through the proverbial "glass ceiling".

Ashton Harrison is a Georgia girl. She loves her family, has a soft spot for rescue dogs and oh, yes...she's also a professional race car driver routinely hitting wicked speeds.

Join Ashton as she negotiates the male-dominated world of professional auto racing with her signature pink roll cage.

In a fusion of Mazda racing history and the persistence of one driver, The Road to 24 takes you from Ashton's first taste at Bondurant Racing School to her time trials at Barber Motorsports Park, to racing at Sebring, Road Atlanta, Road America, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and Atlanta Motorsports Park. Ashton is on a mission to become one of the top drivers in what she hopes to be the Mazda Prototype, one of professional racing's most coveted positions. This is her inspirational story.

DVD / 2017 / 58 minutes

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BREAST ARCHIVES, THE

Director: Meagan Murphy

Real women reveal their breasts and uncover personal truths in this gently provocative documentary exploring embodiment, womanhood, and the power of being seen.

The Breast Archives features nine women's personal stories of empowerment. Baring their breasts and their hearts, the women share the unique journeys they've made with their bodies, from their formative years of hiding, shame, and disconnection to adulthood and the discovery of what it means to be a powerful woman. As the women slowly reconnect with their body-based stories they find a reservoir of strength and wisdom that lies within their breasts.

DVD / 2017 / 57 minutes

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FEMINISTA: A JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF FEMINISM IN EUROPE

By Myriam Fougere

FEMINISTA is a lively and inspiring feminist road movie that explores the largely unrecognized yet hugely vibrant pan European feminist movement. Filmmaker Myriam Fougere joined an international group of young feminists who were traveling across twenty countries - from Turkey to Portugal, by the way of the Balkans, to Italy, Spain and Portugal - to make connections and unite forces with other women. She witnessed these determined activists participating in political gatherings, supporting homegrown local feminist struggles, exchanging strategies, and inventing new ways to resist and fight for change. Revealing how feminism is transmitted from one generation to another, FEMINISTA provides a rare glimpse into a widespread feminist groundswell movement, possibly one of the largest and unrecognized mass political movements that is very much alive and well throughout Europe today.

DVD (Color) / 2017 / 60 minutes

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MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN: THE LIFE & SCIENCE OF DR. MARIAN DIAMOND

Directed by Catherine Ryan, Gary Weimberg

Looks at the life and work of Dr. Marian Diamond, one of the founders of modern neuroscience, and an inspirational teacher to thousands at UC Berkeley and to millions on YouTube.

Meet Dr. Marian Diamond as she pulls a human brain out of a hatbox and lovingly enumerates its astonishing qualities. MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN follows this remarkable woman over a 5-year period and introduces the viewer to both her many scientific accomplishments and the warm, funny, and thoroughly charming woman herself, who describes her 60-year career researching the human brain as "pure joy."

As one of the founders of modern neuroscience, Dr. Diamond challenged orthodoxy and changed our understanding of the brain--its plasticity, its response to enrichment and to experiences that shape both development and aging. Her groundbreaking work is all the more remarkable because it began during an era when so few women entered science at all. Shouted at from the back of the conference hall by noteworthy male academics as she presented her research, and disparaged in the scientific journals, Dr. Diamond simply did the work and followed where her curiosity led her, bringing about a paradigm shift in the process. As she points out, in order to get to the answers that matter, you have to start by asking the right questions.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adults) / 57 minutes

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NOTHING WITHOUT US: THE WOMEN WHO WILL END AIDS

By Harriet Hirshorn

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. Combining archival footage and interviews with female activists, scientists and scholars in the US and Africa, Nothing Without Us reveals how women not only shaped grassroots groups like ACT-UP in the U.S., but have also played an essential part in HIV prevention and treatment access throughout sub-Saharan Africa. From beauty parlors in Baton Rouge to the first HIV clinic in Burundi, this film looks boldly at the unaddressed dynamics that keep women around the world at high-risk for HIV, while introducing the remarkable women who have the answers to ending this 30-year old pandemic. As the history of AIDS activism is being written, women, particularly women of color, are being written out of it. This documentary will be a step in restoring women's crucial role in the history and present-day activism around HIV as well as bolstering the work of women everywhere still fighting for their lives.

DVD (Color) / 2017 / 67 minutes

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TRACKING EDITH

Director: Peter Stephan Jungk

When she wasn't working as a Soviet agent, she was taking photos of workers and street children in Vienna and London, documenting poverty and social deprivation. Being a secret agent doesn't seem to have come naturally to the photographer Edith Tudor-Hart. But she did manage to recruit Kim Philby, and act as one of the architects of the Cambridge Five, the Soviet Union's most successful spy ring in Great Britain.

Edith was director Peter Stephan Jungk's great aunt, his mother's cousin; in Tracking Edith he tries to unravel the truth about his great aunt's life - a spy with a conscience and hidden family secrets.

DVD / 2017 / 92 minutes

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CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE

Directed by Jennifer Townsend

Explores the same women's and men's reactions to the groundbreaking film, "Thelma & Louise", 25 years ago and today.

Powerful, authentic, and timely, CATCHING SIGHT OF THELMA & LOUISE dives off the edge into the truth of women's experience in the world. It revisits the journey of Thelma & Louise through the lens of viewers who saw that iconic film in 1991 and shared intimate, personal, stories at that time. The same women and men were tracked down 25 years later. Are their responses different now? Has anything changed in the way women are treated?

Interview commentary mixes with clips from "Thelma & Louise" to reveal why this cinema classic continues to resonate with millions of viewers, the world over. Christopher McDonald, who played Thelma's husband, and Marco St. John, who played the truck driver, offer an insider's viewpoint.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 86 minutes

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GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY: THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN FILM AND OTHER WAR STORIES

By Karen Day

GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY is the untold story of the first female independent filmmaker and action-adventure heroine, Nell Shipman (1892-1970), who left Hollywood to make her films in Idaho. An unadulterated, undiscovered adventure tale of a pioneering woman who rewrote the rules of filmmaking, and, in so doing, paved the way for independent voices-especially prominent female voices in today's film industry. Her storylines of self-reliant women overcoming physical challenges in the wilderness and often, rescuing the male lead, shattered the predictable cinematic formulas of large studio productions. Featuring rare archival footage by early pioneers, including minority filmmakers, Zora Neale Hurston and Miriam Wong, the first Chinese-American filmmaker in 1914 and present day interviews with Geena Davis and the Director of Women in Film, GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY discuss how gender-inequities that Shipman and her counterparts faced perpetuate in today's film industry. Emblematic of an entire lost generation of female producers and directors in silent film, Nell Shipman's legacy has remained a buried treasure in film history for nearly 100 years.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 66 minutes

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GREAT UNSUNG WOMEN OF COMPUTING: THE COMPUTERS, THE CODERS AND THE FUTURE MAKERS

By Kathy Kleiman, Jon Palfreman and Kate McMahon

In the United States, women are vastly underrepresented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) fields, holding under 25% of STEM jobs and a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees. Great Unsung Women of Computing is a series of three remarkable documentary films that show how women revolutionized the computing and Internet technology we use today, inspiring female students to believe that programming careers lie within their grasp.

The Computers features the extraordinary story of the ENIAC Programmers, six young women who programmed the world's first modern, programmable computer, ENIAC, as part of a secret WWII project. They programmed ENIAC without programming language (for none existed), and harnessed its power to perform advanced military calculations at lighting speeds. However, when the ENIAC was unveiled in 1946, the Programmers were never introduced and they became invisible. This stunning documentary features rare footage and never-before-seen interviews with the ENIAC Programmers. 70 years later, this is their story.

The Coders tells the story of two extraordinary women, Sarah Allen and Pavni Diwanji whose technologies revolutionized the Internet: Sarah co-invented Flash, the first multimedia platform supporting video, graphics, games and animation for the internet, while Pavni invented the Java servlet to allow web applications to respond quickly to requests from users everywhere.

In The Future Makers, Andrea Colaco, a young MIT PhD, shares her dream of a world in which we interact with our smart devices using natural hand gestures, not static keyboards or touchpads. She invented 3D "gestural recognition technology" and co-founded 3dim to develop and market it. In 2013, 3dim won MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Prize and launched Andrea towards her dream of innovation and changing the world.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 48 minutes

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MRS. B., A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN

By Jero Yun

"There are five kinds of families that buy us," says Mrs. B over dinner and drinks with fellow North Korean exiles living in China. "The first type, either the father or the mother is missing and the son can't get married. Then there are the very poor families, like my husband's. In the third type, the man is handicapped... mentally handicapped too. They're all poor. We're sold to families like that."

Mrs. B (we don't learn her real name) is something of an expert when it comes to the trafficking of North Koreans. In 2003, at age 37, she left her husband and two sons behind in North Korea, crossed the icy Tumen River into China, and was sold into marriage. When we meet her a decade later, she's running a robust trafficking business from her home on a small farm in northern China. While her husband fixes equipment and brings in the harvest, she's on her cellphone negotiating with people smugglers, bringing in karaoke girls, and advising newly smuggled clients on how to avoid detection and deportation.

MRS. B, A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN is a closely observed verite portrait of a world-weary woman who finds herself between countries, between worlds, and between families. Unable to bring her North Korean family to China, Mrs. B eventually arranges to get them into South Korea (where her husband was originally held under suspicion of espionage). Now, she plans to return to Seoul herself, seek refugee status, see her Korean husband and sons again, and then send for her Chinese husband and his octogenarian parents.

Director Jero Yun runs considerable risks, jammed into the back of a car with Mrs B as she welcomes a newly smuggled young mother into the country, and joining her and a group of women as they travel all the way across China to Thailand - by bus and car, and on a long night-time trek through fields with a crying baby - seeking a better life.

By focusing so tightly on one person, Yun offers a powerful look at the mundane realities of life for both trafficker and trafficked, overturning cliched notions about a necessarily mysterious trade.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 71 minutes

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REVIVAL, THE: WOMEN AND THE WORD

By Sekiya Dorsett

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.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2016 / 82 minutes

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RICHMOND ROSIES, THE

Director: Ken Stewart

The Richmond Rosies were part of the vanguard of women during WWII who left their homes to take jobs that were once the exclusive domain of men. From 1942 to 1945, they helped build 747 Victory and Liberty ships at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, CA, the largest shipyard in the world at that time.

The 5 featured women in the film became "Rosies"; short for Rosie the Riveter. They became journeyman welders, pipe welders, draftswomen, and electricians. And they built ships. Big ones... and lots of them. By the end of the war, women made up 60% of Kaiser's workforce which included the Oregon facility.

This film was made to honor the American women who helped to win a victory for their country as well as themselves. Individually and collectively they were part of a massive woman's movement and helped give birth to a new, and very independent American woman with their ambition, guts, skill, and fierce independence.

These are "The Richmond Rosies". These are the women who built ships.

DVD / 2016 / 44 minutes

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SOLITARY STRENGTH: THE STORY OF CATTLEWOMAN DOROTHY STOVER HALL

By Trudy Duisenberg

At the height of the Great Depression Dorothy Stover Hall saved her paycheck and at the age of 26 bought a 130 acre ranch.

The American West, Sustainability and Women's History combine in a tale of the spirited determination of one working woman who spent her life going against the grain. Her legacy is one of confidence, integrity and self-contained dignity.

Dorothy Stover Hall, born in 1910 in the high country of the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California, was the grand child of legendary pioneer families who were among the first cattle ranching families of the West.

SOLITARY STRENGTH: The Story of Cattlewoman Dorothy Stover Hall is the tale of a very authentic working woman and her spirited determination.

This beautifully produced historical documentary will appeal to audiences that love stories of the American West, Women's Studies and Sustainability.

DVD (Color, Black and White) / 2016 / 51 minutes

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TWO FACES OF A BAMILEKE WOMAN, THE

By Rosine Mbakam

Rosine Mbakam left Cameroon at 27 to live in Belgium. Seven years later-having studied film and married a European-she returns, accompanied by her son. Motivated by a desire to better understand her past and the place she grew up, Rosine is nonetheless surprised by the revelations her mother and other women make in startlingly intimate conversations.

THE TWO FACES OF A BAMILEKE WOMAN opens with Rosine making what she calls a journey into darkness-to the village of her birth, and later to the capital city of Yaounde, where her mother now lives most of the year. In the village of Tonga, her mother, Ma Breh, shares memories of the horrors of the war against French colonizers, and of daily life for a Cameroonian woman in an arranged marriage-a fate Rosine herself barely escaped, leaving the family of an angry ex-fiance behind.

Rosine accompanies her mother, aunts, and other women while they go about daily tasks: cooking fish, serving kokistew to a crowd, and selling goods at a thriving market stall. Like many immigrants, she finds herself distant from her home country, yet drawn to its rituals and memories. She goes through a dusty suitcase of her late father's documents, asks if she has damaged family traditions by marrying a white man, teaches her son to say "I love you grandma" in Bamikele, and asks her mother to do a traditional post-birth ritual several years after the fact.

As she spends more time with her mother and the women around her, Rosine reveals the strength of their solidarity and their ability to face adversity-whether hiding for their lives from French soldiers or being committed to a man for marriage at age eight. This world of women's work and women's struggles is one that surrounded her in her early years, but she couldn't recognize it-or its complexity-until she had been away from the social structures of her country.

THE TWO FACES OF A BAMILEKE WOMAN is a sharply observed, nuanced and powerful feature documentary debut that captures the relationship between a woman and her mother-and subtly expresses the dislocation of emigration.

DVD (French, Bamileke, With English Subtitles, Color) / 2016 / 76 minutes

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VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH

By Maha Marouan and Rachel Raimist

When one thinks of the American Deep South, the image of veiled Muslim students strolling the University of Alabama campus is the last thing that comes to mind. VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH is a documentary that explores the Muslim culture through the lens of five University of Alabama Muslim students. The film tackles how Muslim women carve a space for self-expression in the Deep South and how they negotiate their identities in a predominantly Christian society that often has unflattering views about Islam and Muslims. Through interviews with students and faculty at Alabama, this film examines representations and issues of agency by asking: How do Muslim female students carve a space in a culture that thinks of Muslims as terrorists and Muslim women as backward?

DVD (Color) / 2015 / 32 minutes

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WHAT'S THE T?

What "Paris is Burning" was to drag balls-"What's the T?" is to transgender life-a documentary that explores the challenges, successes and lives of five transgender women; a multi-character study and an introduction to the uninitiated.

"To understand the ladies of "What's the T?" is to love them," says San Francisco-based filmmaker, Cecilio Asuncion, recipient of the 2012 Outstanding Filipino-American award for LGBT advocacy. It is thanks to Asuncion's unique, tender and intimate friendships with the film's subjects that allows "What's the T?"-structured around a series of Asuncion's conversations with The Ladies-to be such a frank, engaging and memorable film.

The film is not only a loving crafted and empathetically handled documentary, but also a vivid snapshot of transgender life as it exists today-the terminology, the social realities, the successes and the heartbreak.

Over the last couple years, transgender characters and themes have jumped into mainstream consciousness, particularly through television and video-on-demand dramas like Netflix' "Orange is the New Black" and Amazon's "Transparent". Most recently and-perhaps most dramatically-"Orange is the new Black" star Laverne Cox, became the first trans person ever to be on the cover of TIME Magazine.

The exposure, discussion and timing of this welcome trans awareness has been both prescient and fortuitous for the release of "What's The T?"

"What's the T?" was an official selection at over ten major LGBT film festivals worldwide including: Frameline, 37 San Francisco, Rio Gay Film Festival, Transgender Kiel Germany, as well as the Portland, Pensacola, and the Soho International Film Festivals. Additionally, "What's the T?" won the festival favorite award at Cinema Diverse Palm Springs and is widely considered the best film of its kind to hit the festival circuit in years.

DVD / 2013 / 65 minutes

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ENTRE NOS

Directed by Paola Mendoza and Gloria LaMorte

Entre Nos tells the true story of a woman's struggle to survive in New York City with her two children after being abandoned by her husband.

The main character, Mariana, totes her two children from the country and culture of Colombia to reunite with her husband in Queens, New York. Her life is devastatingly turned around when her husband abandons the family.

As a result, Mariana must struggle with unemployment, eviction letters, eviction notice forms, how to speak fluent English, and then experiences the early signs of pregnancy.

With no where to go Mariana is under extreme stress due to her misfortunes. She and her kids have to now survive living in a foreign country. As Mariana desperately searches for jobs in NYC, the story weaves along with the stress she lives with. In the end, Mariana resourcefully navigates a surprising way to make some money by using recycle containers to recycle for cash.

DVD (English and Spanish with English and Spanish Subtitles) / 2009 / 81 minutes

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WOMEN WITHOUT MEN

Women Without Men, an adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur's magic realist novel of the same name, is Iranian artist Shirin Neshat's first feature length film.

The story chronicles the intertwining lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953; a cataclysmic moment in Iranian history when an American led, British backed coup d'etat brought down the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstalled the Shah to power.

Over the course of several days, four disparate women from Iranian society are brought together against the backdrop of political and social turmoil. Fakhri, a middle aged woman trapped in a loveless marriage must contend with her feelings for an old flame who has just returned from America and walked back into her life. Zarin, a young prostitute, tries to escape the devastating realization that she can no longer see the faces of men. Munis, a politically awakened young woman, must resist the seclusion imposed on her by her religiously traditional brother, while her friend Faezeh remains oblivious to the turmoil in the streets and longs only to marry Munis' domineering brother.

As the political turmoil swells in the streets of Tehran, each woman seeks to be liberated from her predicament. Munis becomes an active part of the political struggle by following a young communist who she believes can restore her faith in the world. Fakhri frees herself from the chains of her stagnant marriage by leaving her husband and purchasing a mystical orchard in the outskirts of the city. Faezeh is taken to the orchard by Munis to face her own awakened self after her innocence is stolen, while Zarin attempts to find solace in her newfound communion with the land. But it is only a matter of time before the world outside the walls of the orchard seep into the lives of these four women as their country's history takes a tragic turn.

DVD (Persian with English Subtitles) / 2009 / 99 minutes

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