18m; Canada
Director: Edie Steiner
Synopsis: Filmmaker’s quest to bring social justice to her family, in light of her father’s death from occupational illness.
Contact: espix@sympatico.ca 416 260-2734 (Home)
Category Archives: Women
Number One (2009)
86m; Morocco
Director: Zakia Tahiri
Cast: Aziz Saâdallah, Nezha Rahile and Chantal Ladesou
Synopsis: A Moroccan comedy about a grumpy, cruel factory manager whose outlook on life changes when his wife slips him a potion that renders him sympathetic toward everyone he meets.
Contact: Cinexport T: +33 1 45 62 49 45 E: cinexport@wanadoo.fr
OUVRIERES DU MONDE(Working Women of the World) [2001]
53m; Belguim
Director: Marie-France Collard
Synopsis: Women and labor.
The Phantom of the Operator (2004)
A film by Caroline Martel
Canada, 2004, 66 minutes, Color/BW, DVD, French, Subtitled
Order No. W05869
Order No. W05869
This wry and delightful found-footage film reveals a little-known chapter in labor history: the story of female telephone operators’ central place in the development of global communications. With an eye for the quirky and humorous, Caroline Martel assembles a dazzling array of clips – more than one hundred remarkable, rarely seen industrial, advertising and scientific management films produced in North America between 1903 and 1989 by Bell and Western Electric – and transforms them into a dreamlike montage documentary.
As the first agents of globalization, this invisible army of women offered a way for companies to feminize and glamorize what was a highly stressful, underpaid and difficult job. Not merely “Voices with a Smile,” telephone operators were shooting stars in a universe of infinite progress, test pilots for new management systems, and the face of shrewd public relations campaigns. As the work of operators has been eclipsed by the advent of automated systems, this artful piece of labor history also offers an insightful comment on women’s work, industrialization and communications technology. Refreshing and hilarious, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERATOR provides a wry yet ethereal portrait of human society in the technocratic age.
available from Women Make Movies
Picture Bride (1994)
95m; U.S.
Director: Kayo Hatta
Cast: Youki Kudoh, Akira Takayama and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
Synopsis (IMDB): The story of 16-year-old Riyo who journeys to Hawaii in 1918 to marry a man she has never met, except through photographs and letters they have exchanged. Hoping to escape a troubled past and to start anew, Riyo is bitterly disappointed upon her arrival: her husband is twice her age and Hawaii is not the paradise she expected. As Riyo comes to terms with her new home, she discovers a land full of hardship, struggle–and unexpected joy.
Poor Cow (1967)
101m; U.K.
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Terence Stamp, Carol White and John Bindon
Synopsis (IMDB): A young woman lives a life filled with bad choices. She marries and has a child with an abusive thief at a young age who quickly ends up in prison. Left alone she takes up with his mate (another thief) who seems to give her some happiness but who also ends up in the nick. She then takes up with a series of seedy types who offer nothing but momentary pleasure. Her son goes missing and she briefly comes to grips with what is most important to her.
Portrait of Teresa (Retrato de Teresa) [1979]
103m; Cuba
Director: Pastor Vega
Cast: Idalia Anreus, Miguel Benavides and Samuel Claxton
Synopsis (IMDB): Teresa is overwhelmed: with a husband, three young sons, a job as a crew leader in a textile factory, and volunteer commitments as cultural leader of her union. Her husband, Ramón, wants more of her attention; her feelings are mixed, wanting domestic peace, feeling responsibilities to the revolution, and wanting to control her own life beyond doing dirty dishes. They separate; he begins an affair. When he wants a reconciliation, she asks what his response would be if she’d had an affair too. “But men are different,” is his reply. He’s failed her test, and to hold on to independence and self-respect, she remains uncompromising and hard-edged.
Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (2009)
52m; U.S.
Director: Renée Bergan and Mark Schuller
Cast: Marie-Jeanne Solange Frisline Thérèse Hélène
Synopsis: The compelling lives of five courageous Haitian women workers give the global economy a human face. Each woman’s personal story explains neoliberal globalization, how it is gendered, and how it impacts Haiti: inhumane working/living conditions, violence, poverty, lack of education, and poor health care. While the film offers in-depth understanding of Haiti, its focus on women’s subjugation, worker exploitation, poverty, and resistance demonstrates these are global struggles. Finally, through their collective activism, these women demonstrate that despite monumental obstacles in a poor country like Haiti, collective action makes change possible.
Contact: TÈT ANSANM PRODUCTIONS 139 Clinton Ave. #4, Brooklyn, NY 11205 347-599-1116 (phone/fax) info@potomitan.net
Performing the Border (1999)
42m
Director: Ursula Biemann
Synopsis (Women Make Movies): A video essay set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas. This imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area. Looking at the border as both a discursive and material space, the video explores the sexualization of the border region through labor division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere. Candid interviews with Mexican women factory and sex workers, as well as activists and journalists, are combined with scripted voiceover analysis, screen text, scenes and sounds recorded on site, and found footage to give new insights into the gendered conditions inscribed by the high-tech industry at its low-wage end.
Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c474.shtml
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