Women’s History Month, an A-Z Top Ten
To mark International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, OVID continues to expand and diversify our collection of films about women’s lives and ongoing struggles for liberation. This week, we thought to assemble a brief and comprehensive A-Z top ten here of some favorites from the collection to date…
Chez Jolie Coiffure by Rosine Mbakam centers on a hair salon in the African Matonge district of Brussels, where charismatic owner Sabine presides over customers’ flirting, gossiping, and harrowing tales of immigration. 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.
Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed by Shola Lynch with Shirley Chisholm, Amiri Baraka, Octavia Butler, and Bobby Seale. With a new biopic about to emerge starring Regina King, now’s a good time to visit this compelling documentary on the first black woman elected to Congress and the first to seek nomination for the highest office in the land.
Dam/Age by Aradhana Seth with Arundhati Roy traces the author’s bold and controversial campaign against the Narmada dam project in India, which will displace up to a million people. The author of The God of Small Things, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 1998, Roy has also published The Cost of Living, a book of two essays critical of India’s massive dam and irrigation projects, as well as India’s successful detonation of a nuclear bomb. In her most recent book Power Politics, Roy challenges the idea that only experts can speak out on such urgent matters as nuclear war, the privatization of India’s power supply by Enron and issues like the Narmada dam project. As the film traces the events that led up to her imprisonment, Roy meditates on her own personal negotiation with her fame, the responsibility it places on her as a writer, a political thinker and a citizen.
“An urgent and vital film… Aradhana Seth’s inspiring documentary charts Roy’s progress, and her poetry, with bold accomplishment.”—The Guardian
Fannie’s Film by Fronza Woods is about a 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers’ exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. Challenging mainstream media’s ongoing stereotypes of women of color who earn their living as domestic workers, this deceptively simple documentary is an expressive portrait of a fully realized individual.
“Very simply, one of the best short films that I’ve ever seen.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Pair this with Killing Time also by Fronza Woods, an offbeat, wryly humorous look at the dilemma of a would-be suicide unable to find the right outfit to die in.
Frida Kahlo & Tina Modotti by Laura Mulvey is a tautly structured documentary shedding light on the work of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and Italian photographer Tina Modotti, women icons of the Mexican Renaissance. The film not only explores the two women’s artworks, but also includes rare footage of Modotti in the 1920 Hollywood film The Tiger’s Coat. We’re also treated to some exquisite home movie shots of Frida Kahlo and Mexican muralist Diego Rivera at their Blue House in Mexico City. The film was co-directed by film theorists and avant-garde filmmakers Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen to coincide with the landmark exhibition they curated at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1982.
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem by Ronit Elkabetz & Shlomi Elkabetz with Ronit Elkabetz and Menashe Noy (pictured above). A tightly wound, thrilling look at gender imbalance and the victimization of women in patriarchal institutions — a searing portrait of a woman’s struggle for freedom.
I Am Somebody by Madeline Anderson. A 1970 short political documentary by Madeline Anderson about black hospital workers on strike in Charleston, South Carolina. This was the first half-hour documentary film by an African-American woman in the film industry union.
“Terrific! By turns intimate and sweeping… With its weave of interviews and on-the-street scenes—and, notably, a female voice-over—I AM SOMEBODY is an exemplar of a certain nonfiction approach.” —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
I Had An Abortion by Gillian Aldrich and Jennifer Baumgardner, a collection of moving personal stories on the decision to terminate a pregnancy, including an account from Gloria Steinem.
“Fresh, moving, important…Muriel Rukeyser wrote, ‘If one woman told the truth about her life, the world would split open.’ [This film] gives us 10 truth-telling women, and splits the world open in as many ways.” —Katha Pollitt, The Nation
In the Mirror of Maya Deren by Martina Kudlácek, don’t just take it from us, take it from Time Out who described the film is a “wide-ranging, authoritative and often beautiful documentary about the avant garde movie-maker who virtually created the US independent film scene.”
Jaha’s Promise by Patrick Farrelly and Kate O’Callaghan with Jaha Dukureh. The film revolves around the life and activism of Jaha Dukureh, a Gambian anti-female genital mutilation campaigner against the most extreme form of Female Genital Mutilation, a pressing issue to this day.
Leave a Reply