Director: Philippe Le Guay
Writers: Philippe Le Guay, Jérôme Tonnerre
Stars: Fabrice Luchini, Sandrine Kiberlain and Natalia Verbeke
104 min – Comedy
In 1960s Paris, a conservative couple’s lives are turned upside down by two Spanish maids.
Category Archives: Women
The Women on the 6th Floor (Les femmes du 6ème étage) (2010)
My Piece of the Pie (2011)
Ma part du gâteau
France: 109 min
After losing her job at a local factory, a single mother enrolls in a housekeeper training program, soon landing work cleaning the Paris apartment of handsome but cocky power broker, who happens to be the same one responsible for the layoffs at her factory.
Director: Cédric Klapisch
Writer: Cédric Klapisch (scenario)
Stars: Karin Viard, Gilles Lellouche and Audrey Lamy | See full cast and crew
The Waiting Room (2012)
Directed by Peter Nicks
Unrated, 1 hr. 21 min.
24 hours in a public hospital emergency room waiting room.
The Waiting Room is a character-driven documentary film that uses extraordinary access to go behind the doors of an American public hospital struggling to care for a community of largely uninsured patients. The film – using a blend of cinema verité and characters’ voiceover – offers a raw, intimate, and even uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers each cope with disease, bureaucracy and hard choices.
The ER waiting room serves as the grounding point for the film, capturing in vivid detail what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance. Young victims of gun violence take their turn alongside artists and small business owners who lack insurance. Steel workers, taxi cab drivers and international asylum seekers crowd the halls. The film weaves the stories of several patients – as well as the hospital staff charged with caring for them – as they cope with the complexity of the nation’s public health care system, while weathering the storm of a national recession.
The Waiting Room lays bare the struggle and determination of both a community and an institution coping with limited resources and no road map for navigating a health care landscape marked by historic economic and political dysfunction. It is a film about one hospital, its multifaceted community, and how our common vulnerability to illness binds us together as humans.
trailer at whatruwaitingfor.com
Compliance (2012)
90m; U.S.
Director: Craig Zobel
Cast: Ann Dowd, Dreama Walker and Pat Healy
Synopsis: “In the middle of a bad day Sandra (Ann Dowd), the harried manager of a fast-food franchise, receives a phone call from a man claiming to be a police officer. He accuses an employee named Becky (Dreama Walker) of theft and instructs Sandra to subject the pretty teenager to a series of humiliations: detain her in the stock room, confiscate her belongings, conduct a strip search and on and on. As the title suggests, at each step of this increasingly elaborate and unnerving hoax, Sandra and Becky do what they are told.”
–‘Compliance’ Raises Questions About Human Behavior; NYT 8/10/2012
Trailer
The Hunger Games (2012)
142m; U.S.
Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland
Synopsis: In a dystopic future North America called Panem, the wealthy elite who live in the central city (known as the Capitol) exploit the impoverished workers of the rest of the country who are divided into twelve districts. The Capitol employs a range of social controls, including the Hunger Games, an annual event where two children from each district are thrown into an arena and fight until only one is left alive.
Into these games is thrust Katniss Everdeen, the daughter of a coal miner, who must use her wits and skills to survive while trying to maintain her humanity, even as her examples of resistance and solidarity begin to inspire some of the districts towards rebellion.
Trailer
Margaret Haley & Chicago Teachers (2007)
3m; U.S.
Director: American Federation of Teachers
Synopsis: Documentary on Margaret Haley and the origins of American Federation of Teachers in Chicago, circa 1917.
The Invisible Force: Women Workers in Pakistan (2007)
28m; Pakistan
Director: Aisha Gazdar
Synopsis: This film highlights the issues concerning women workers in Pakistan including factory workers, domestic workers as well as home based workers, their problems are the same. Working at extremely low wages women not only face harassment on the roads but also at work, this film gives an overview of the plight of the woman worker. – http://www.filmsdart.com/yeh_hath_salamat.shtml
The Motherhood Manifesto
2007, US, 58 minutes
Directed by Laura Pacheco
Produced by John de Graaf and Laura Pacheco
Writer – John de Graaf
Executive Producer – Joan Blades
Photographer/Editor – Diana Wilmar
Music – Claudia Schmidt
Narrator – Mary Steenburgen
Looks at the obstacles facing working mothers and families and the employer and public policy changes needed to restore work-life balance.
The Nanny Business (2010)
44m; Canada
Director: Shelley Saywell
Synopsis: Traces the story of Edelyn Pineda who left her three children behind and paid thousands of dollars to a recruitment agency in Canada to make the arrangements and book her with a family. She arrived to discover that the agent had taken her fee but the “employer” who signed her contract was not interested in her services. Joelina Maluto came to Canada after working in Hong Kong and the Middle East because “I heard Canada was a good country, and after two years I could bring my children here.” Instead, she arrived to find she had no job and was forced to live in her agent’s basement with 16 other nannies for the next 2 and a half months. When the agent finally got her a job, the employer forced her to work 18 hour days. Edelyn and Joelina were among several nannies brave enough to go public about their experiences in the hope of forcing change. Their stories are put into wider context by journalist Susan McClelland, whose own search for a nanny led her to this story, and whose subsequent article “Nanny Abuse” for Walrus Magazine won an Amnesty Award.
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