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Category Archives: Women

Apache 8 (2011)

17 Apr

57m

Director: Sande Zeig

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): Between 1974 and 2005, a crew of women from the White Mountain Apache Tribe fought raging fires in Arizona and other states. Featuring extensive interviews, childhood photos, and on-location and news footage, this insightful and honest documentary profiles the Apache 8 group through four women, who share their experiences. Interweaving the scenes of raging fires, intense training sessions, and disrupted home life are personal stories of sacrifice, tragedy, pride, and accomplishment. While the women may have initially set out to try and earn a living in their economically ravaged community, they quickly discover an inner strength and resilience that speaks to their traditions and beliefs as Native women.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c815.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 17, 2012 in Documentary, Public Sector, Women

 

Dish: Women, Waitressing and the Art of Service (2010)

17 Apr

58m

Director: Maya Gallus

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): Why do women bring your food at local diners, while in high-end establishments waiters are almost always men? DISH, by Maya Gallus, whose acclaimed GIRL INSIDE (2007) won Canada’s Gemini Award for documentary directing, answers this question in a delicious, well-crafted deconstruction of waitressing and our collective fascination with an enduring popular icon. Digging beyond the obvious, Gallus, who waited tables in her teens, explores diverse dynamics between food servers and customers, as well as cultural biases and attitudes they convey. Her feminist analysis climbs the socio-economic ladder—from the bustling world of lower-end eateries, where women prevail as wait staff, to the more genteel male-dominated sphere of haute cuisine. Astute, amusing observations from women on the job in Ontario’s truck stop diners, Montreal’s topless”sexy restos,” a Parisian super-luxe restaurant, and Tokyo’s fantasy “maid cafés”, as well as male customers’ telling comments, disclose how gender, social standing, earning opportunities, and working conditions intersect in the food service industry.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c808.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 17, 2012 in Documentary, Women

 

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Europlex (2003)

17 Apr

20m

Directors: Ursula Biemann and Angela Sanders

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): The fourth in Ursula Biemann’s critically acclaimed series of video essays that investigates migration across borders, EUROPLEX, a collaboration with Angela Sanders, tracks the daily, sometimes illicit, border crossings between Morocco and Spain- a rare intersection of the first and third worlds. Paying off officials to look the other way, workers smuggle contraband across the border, sometimes crossing up to 11 times a day. In a now common scenario of global economics, Moroccan women work in North Africa to produce goods destined for the European market. And in perhaps the most surreal example of border logic, domesticas commute into a Spanish enclave in Moroccan territory, losing two hours as they step into the European time zone. With a mesmerizing soundtrack and a dizzying blend of video footage, digital graphics and text, the film exposes a fascinating, often hidden layer in the cultural and economic landscape between Europe and Africa- revealing the new rules and profound implications of globalization.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c620.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 17, 2012 in Documentary, Migrant workers, Women

 

Hell to Pay (1988)

17 Apr

52m

Directors: Alexandra Anderson and Anne Cottringer

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): A moving and politically sophisticated analysis of the international debt situation through the eyes of the women of Bolivia, the poorest country in Latin America. Although most directly affected by government austerity programs, peasant women are assumed not to understand the workings of international capital and foreign policy. HELL TO PAY poignantly contradicts such assumptions as teachers, textile workers and miners’ wives speak vividly and with great comprehension of the causes of the debt crisis and the burden they are forced to bear.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c73.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 17, 2012 in Documentary, Women

 

Employee’s Entrance (1933)

06 Apr

75m

Director: Roy del Ruth

Synopsis (WorldCat): A pre-code film about a heartless manager of a department store who makes a penniless woman pay dearly for her job. He forbids his apprentice to marry, but the apprentice secretly marries a bride with secrets of her own.

 
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Posted by on April 6, 2012 in Drama, Retail, Women

 

La Americana (2008)

30 Mar

65m; 

Director: Nicholas Bruckman, John Mattiuzzi

Synopsis: When nine-year-old Carla suffers a life-threatening accident, her mother, Carmen, must leave her behind and make the dangerous and illegal journey from Bolivia to the U.S., where she hopes to earn enough to save her daughter’s life. Working in New York to support Carla’s medical needs, Carmen struggles in vain to legalize her immigration status, and wrestles with the prospect of never seeing her daughter again. Then, after six years of separation, Congress proposes “amnesty” legislation that could allow Carmen and Carla to be reunited at last… Filmed across three countries in a captivating cinematic narrative, LA AMERICANA is Carmen’s story, and the story of millions of illegal immigrants who must leave their families behind to pursue the elusive American dream. An intimate and powerful story, LA AMERICANA shows how immigration policy affects families on both sides of the border, putting a human face on this timely and controversial issue. Winner of multiple awards at film festivals across the country, La Americana is now being used as the centerpiece for a nationwide campaign to engage and inspire audiences to dialogue about immigrants’ rights and immigration reform.

 
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Posted by on March 30, 2012 in Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Legal System, Politics, Women

 

Labor’s Reward (1925)

30 Mar

Synopsis (National Film Preservation Foundation):

Produced by the American Federation of Labor, Labor’s Reward is probably the earliest surviving film sponsored by an American labor union. Although only the third of five reels survives (along with a shorter fragment), the reel makes for a relatively self-contained story. In the lost earlier reels a father is injured at a nonunion machine shop. Receiving no workers’ compensation, his family must rely on the wages of the elder daughter, Mary, who toils at a nonunion bookbindery. As reel 3 begins, friend Tom finds Mary bedridden from overwork.

When Labor’s Reward was made in 1925, the American labor movement was struggling after the suppression of more militant unions. Labor’s Reward was intended to turn the situation around by demonstrating the AFL’s “constructive methods” and by appealing to “the purchasing public” to buy union-made products. With its female focus, the film also addressed the AFL’s history of regarding women workers as low-paid competitors. It is women who here show Tom the importance of buying a hat with a union label. Widely advertised, Labor’s Reward was screened for free. The AFL-affiliated American Federation of Musicians provided the live accompaniment.

http://www.filmpreservation.org/dvds-and-books/clips/labor-s-reward-1925

 
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Posted by on March 30, 2012 in Classic, Drama, Women, Working Class

 

Ladies Who Do (1963)

30 Mar

85m; U.S.

Director: C.M. Pennington-Richards

Cast: Peggy Mount, Robert Morley and Harry H. Corbett

Synopsis (IMDB): The “Ladies Who Do” are office cleaners. One of them discovers some hot stock tips and they make a fortune. They then make good use of it to save their old neighbourhoods from the wicked developer.

 
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Posted by on March 30, 2012 in Comedy, Women, Working Class

 

Ladybird, Ladybird (1994)

30 Mar

101m; U.K.

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Crissy Rock, Vladimir Vega and Sandie Lavelle

Synopsis (IMDB): This Ken Loach docu-drama relates the story of a British womanUs fight with Social Services over the care of her children. Maggie has a history of bouncing from one abusive relationship to another. She has four children, of four different fathers, who came to the attention of Social Services when they were injured in a fire. Subsequently, Maggie was found to be an “unfit mother” and her children were removed from her care. She finally meets the man of her dreams, a Paraguayan expatriate, and they start a family together. Unfortunately, Social Services seems unwilling to accept that her life has changed and rends them from their new children. She and Jorge together, and separately, fight Social Services, Immigration, and other government bureaucrats in a desperate battle to make their family whole again

 
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Posted by on March 30, 2012 in Children, Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Women, Working Class

 

Kick Like a Girl (2008)

28 Mar

25m; U.S.

Director: Jenny Mackenzie

Synopsis: A soccer team of third-grade girls in Utah can’t find adequate competition against other girls’ teams and decides to enter the local boys’ league instead. The 24-minute film follows their season and the reactions of girls, boys, and parents.

Contact: http://www.kicklikeagirlmovie.com/

 
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Posted by on March 28, 2012 in Children, Documentary, Sports, Women

 
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