60m; U.S.
Director: Anayansi Prado
http://impactofilms.com/maidinamerica/updates.html
Synopsis: The lives and hopes of immigrant workers.
Category Archives: Women
Maid In America (2005)
Maids (Domésticas) [2001]
85m; Brazil
Director: Fernando Meirelles, Nando Olival
Cast: Cláudia Missura, Graziela Moretto and Lena Roque
Synopsis (IMDB): Five maids in São Paulo are observed in this episodic, impressionistic film. The women interact with each other, ride busses, work, and have longings: Rai for a husband, Créo for her lost daughter, Roxane for a career in modeling. Quitéria is naive, a gull for thieves. Cida has a husband and also a lover. While each woman gets what she wishes for (more or less), it doesn’t always make things better. As Roxane says, no child sets out to become a maid. But once there, are all other doors closed?
Man’s Castle (1933)
75m; U.S.
Director: Frank Borzage
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young and Marjorie Rambeau
Synopsis: Love flourishes among the unemployed in a shack by New York’s East River, but our hero turns to crime when his wife becomes pregnant.
Maquilapolis (2006)
U.S./Mexico
Director: Vicky Funari
http://www.maquilapolis.com/project_eng.htm
Synopsis: Maquiladoras, women’s issues
Margaret’s Museum (1995)
114m; U.S.
Director: Mort Ransen
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Kate Nelligan and Clive Russell
Synopsis (IMDB): In a town where half the men die down the coalpit, Margaret MacNeil is quite happy being single. Until she meets Neil Currie, a charming and sincere bagpipe-playing, Gaelic-speaking dishwasher. But no matter what you do, you can’t avoid the spectre of the pit forever.
Maria (1977)
48m
Director: Allan King
Cast: Enzina Berti, Diane D’Aquila and Jean Gascon
Synopsis (IMDB): Outraged by the insults to her mother, Maria decides to organize a union for the immigrant women she and her mother work with in a Toronto sweat shop. In her battle against male chauvinism, patronage and bullying, Maria wins her own freedom.
Marked Woman (1937)
96m; U.S.
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Lola Lane
Synopsis: Mary Dwight works as a hostess at the Club Intime run by ruthless gangster Johnny Vanning. When one of her “clients” is murdered prosecutor David Graham questions Mary but she won’t cooperate and Vanning is acquitted. When Mary’s sister Betty is killed by one of Vanning’s thugs she decides to spill the beans and is beaten into disfigurement. At her bedside all the hostesses agree to testify.
The Marrying Kind (1952)
92m; U.S.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Judy Holliday, Aldo Ray and Madge Kennedy
Synopsis: Romanticized version of working class sexual politics as a couple each tell a divorce judge their story.
The Match Factory Girl (1990)
68m; Finland
Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Cast: Kati Outinen, Elina Salo and Esko Nikkari
Synopsis (IMDB): Iris has a dead-end job in a match-factory, lives with her dour and forbidding parents, and her social life is a disaster. But when she is made pregnant after a one-night stand by a man who thought she was a prostitute, she decides that enough is enough and plans her revenge.
Modern Heroes, Modern Slaves
Synopsis: Each day, thousands of women leave underdeveloped countries to seek work as domestics in more prosperous places. This film shows the human and sometimes tragic side of their stories.
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