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Category Archives: Documentary

Made In India: SEWA in Action (1998)

18 Apr

52m

Director: Patricia Plattner

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): This powerful documentary is a portrait of SEWA, the now-famous women’s organization in India that holds to the simple yet radical belief that poor women need organizing, not welfare. SEWA, or the Self-Employed Women’s Association, corresponds to the Indian word sewa, meaning service. Based in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, a dusty old textile town on the edge of the Gujarati desert, SEWA is at its core a trade union for the self-employed. It offers union membership to the illiterate women who sell vegetables for 50 cents a day in the city markets, or who pick up paper scraps for recycling from the streets–jobs that most Indian men don’t consider real work.

Inspired by the political, economic and moral model advocated by Mahatma Gandhi, SEWA has grown since its founding to a membership of more than 217,000 and its bank now has 61,000 members, assets of $4 million and customers who walk in each day to deposit a dollar or take out 60 cents. Following the lives of six women involved in the organization, including Ela R. Bhat, its visionary founder, Plattner’s documentary is an important look at the power of grassroots global feminism.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c488.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 18, 2012 in Documentary, Organizing, Self-Employed/Freelance, Women

 

Love, Women and Flowers (1988)

18 Apr

58m

Directors: Marta Rodriguez and Jorge Silva

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): At any time of year in the U.S., carnations of every color are plentiful and cheap – but the ready availability of these beautiful flowers comes at a global price. Thousands of miles away from the bright displays in U.S. stores, hazardous labor conditions endanger the 90,000 women who work in Colombia’s flower industry.

According to a 2007 report, approximately 60 percent of all flowers sold in the U.S. come from Colombia, where the use of pesticides and fungicides – some banned in the developed countries that export them – has drastic health and environmental consequences. With urgency and intimacy, this film evokes the testimonies of the women workers and documents their efforts to organize. As women workers continue to struggle in this industry (in 2007 almost 200 workers were fired from the largest flower plantation in Colombia for their attempts to unionize and improve their conditions) this powerful and unique documentary remains an important resource for those interested in globalization, environmentalism, labor issues, social struggles, and Latin American studies.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c71.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 18, 2012 in Documentary, Farm & Food, Global Economy, Women

 

Highway Courtesans (2005)

18 Apr

71m

Director: Mystelle Brabbee

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): This provocative coming-of-age film chronicles the story of a bold young woman born into the Bachara community in Central India – the last hold-out of a tradition that started with India’s ancient palace courtesans and now survives with the sanctioned prostitution of every Bachara family’s oldest girl. Guddi, Shana and their neighbor Sungita serve a daily stream of roadside truckers to support their families. Their work as prostitutes forms the core of the local economy, but their contemporary ideas about freedom of choice, gender and self-determination slowly intrude on the Bachara way of life.

HIGHWAY COURTESANS follows Guddi from the ages of 16 through 23 as she turns her world upside down, incurring the wrath of her fathers and brother as she struggles with tradition, family and love in hopes of realizing her dreams. In probing beyond the surface of a world of paradoxes, HIGHWAY COURTESANS resists easy moralizing and reveals the very real costs – financial, social and personal – for breaking with tradition. As a community hangs in the balance between traditional and contemporary values, this gripping documentary raises universal questions about sex, the roles of women, and the right of one culture to judge another.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c654.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 18, 2012 in Documentary, Sex Industry/Sexuality, Women

 

Made In Thailand (1999)

18 Apr

30m

Directors: Eve-Laure Moros and Linzy Emery

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): In Thailand, women make up 90 percent of the labor force responsible for garments and toys for export by multinational corporations. This powerful, revealing documentary about women factory workers and their struggle to organize unions exposes the human cost behind the production of everyday items that reach our shores. Probing the profound impact of the New World Order on the populations that provide the global economy with cheap labor, MADE IN THAILAND also profiles women newly empowered by their campaign for human and worker’s rights. Several of these women are survivors of the 1993 Kader Toy Factory fire, one of the worst industrial fires in history. Today they are highly effective leaders in the grass-roots movement mobilizing workers in their recently industrialized country.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c472.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 18, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Organizing, Women

 

Nalini By Day, Nancy by Night (2005)

18 Apr

27m

Director: Sonali Gulati

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): In this insightful documentary, filmmaker Sonali Gulati explores complex issues of globalization, capitalism and identity through a witty and personal account of her journey into India’s call centers. Gulati, herself an Indian immigrant living in the US, explores the fascinating ramifications of outsourcing telephone service jobs to India—including how native telemarketers take on Western names and accents to take calls from the US, UK and Australia.

A fresh juxtaposition of animation, archival footage, live action shots and narrative work highlight the filmmaker’s presence and reveal the performative aspects of her subjects. With fascinating observations on how call centers affect the Indian culture and economy, NALINI BY DAY, NANCY BY NIGHT raises important questions about the complicated consequences of globalization.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c682.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 18, 2012 in Communications, Documentary, Global Economy, 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

 

Escuela (School) [2002]

17 Apr

53m

Director: Hannah Weyer

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): There are over 800,000 students enrolled in migrant education programs in the United States and, of those, only 45-50% ever finish high school. ESCUELA, the sequel to Hannah Weyer’s critically acclaimed documentary LA BODA, personalizes these glaring statistics through the honest portrait of a teenage Mexican-American farm worker, Liliana Luis.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c573.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 17, 2012 in Children, Documentary, Farm & Food, Migrant workers

 
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