Award Winning Documentary - (Audience Award - 2008 Hawaii International Film Festival)
In 1965, Patsy Mink became the first Asian American woman and woman of color in the United States Congress. Seven years later, she ran for the U.S. presidency and co-authored Title IX, the landmark legislation that opened up higher education and athletics to America’s women. PATSY MINK: AHEAD OF THE MAJORITY looks at Mink’s remarkable political journey, while often lonely and tumultuous, as she fought for the most disenfranchised and forgotten in society.

Exposing Homelessness
(USA, 2006, 20 min)

Exposing Homelessness documents the experience of three formerly homeless women who participated in a three-month photography workshop. Drawing from their personal experiences they were asked to use photography to express their insight into the issue of homelessness so that viewers could be exposed to a more intimate and profound analysis of the problem. Diverse in age, race, class and citizenship status, the women succeed in challenging the homeless stereotype and empowering themselves in the process. The relationship and intimacy that grows between the women over the course of the workshop proves to be a healing and powerful experience for the women and holds a vital message for the viewer.

Singing Pictures
(India, 2006, 40 min)

Singing Pictures - For generations, Patua (Chitrakar) communities of West Bengal, India have been painters and singers of stories depicted in scrolls. The Patuas tell the stories of Muslim saints (pirs and fakirs) as well as Hindu Gods and Goddesses, and offer devotion to saints at Muslim shrines. In the past they used to wander from village to village, receiving rice, vegetables and coins for their recital. They would unroll a scroll, a frame at a time, and sing their own compositions. But competition from other media eroded this way of life and now the Patuas are trying to adapt to changing conditions.

In response to this cultural crisis and as a means to make extra money, recently a group of women from Naya village near Calcutta formed a scroll painters' collaborative. The film follows the women’s daily lives as they paint, sing, cook, tend to their children and meet with the cooperative. They discuss the problems and rewards of practicing their art, and speak freely about the social, religious, and political changes in the village and the world beyond. Their wisdom, artistry, and good humor amidst many difficulties illuminate the lives around them.

Film website: www.der.org/films/singing-pictures.html

Through the Negev
(Egypt/Israel, 2007, 18 min)

Told through interwoven first-person accounts by the few women and children who have made the journey by walking from Egypt to Israel, Through the Negev is a short documentary that encapsulates the refugees' struggle for home and safety.  The documentary gives voice to women and children not often represented in stories about Sudan. We speak to 10-year old Naka and her mother Natalina, who escaped religious persecution in Southern Sudan. We meet 'Ahmul', an Arab Muslim student activist who fled Sudan after being tortured for attempting to start a student union. We speak to Affaf from Darfur, who misses her husband. And we meet Ida, a powerful orator who convinces us that home is a universal human right. Caught in complicated geographic, religious and political webs, the simplicity of their message becomes even more powerful.

(un)veiled
(United Arab Emirates, 2007, 36 min)

(un)veiled introduces the audience to ten Muslim women from various backgrounds who now live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Their discussion about hijab, the headscarf, revolves around a lecture on the same topic that was banned last minute but delivered anyway. In a time when Islam and especially Muslim women are represented as monolithic and beset by backwardness, the women in (un)veiled show the diverse, lively, argumentative debates in Muslim societies about the meanings of modernity, emancipation, and feminism. Dubai, where the filmmaker lived for eight months, becomes a character in itself, showing the complex face of a contemporary Arab city.

RuTH
(Israel, 2008, 56 min)

During the days of the Israeli withdrawal from the settlements in the Gaza strip, when the residents of the Katif Settlements are uniting to fight for its existence, Ruth, a young teenager from the settlement, is searching for excitement. When Ruth meets Erez, a photojournalist sent to cover the events of the disengagement, she realizes that she doesn’t belong anywhere.

RuTH is an adolescence story of a young girl living in the most dangerous place in Israel. In a society demanding a united front and common beliefs, Ruth fights to interpret her faith in her own way.  It is not a political struggle but the struggle of one girl for the privilege of holding an independent opinion in a social surrounding which strongly embraces a united point of view dictated from above.

The Sari Soldiers
(USA/Nepal, 2008, 90 min)

Filmed over three years during the most historic and pivotal time in Nepal’s modern history, The Sari Soldiers is an extraordinary story of six women’s courageous efforts to shape Nepal’s future in the midst of an escalating civil war against Maoist insurgents, and the King’s crackdown on civil liberties. When Devi, mother of a 15-year-old girl, witnesses her niece being tortured and murdered by the Royal Nepal Army, she speaks publicly about the atrocity. The army abducts her daughter in retaliation, and Devi embarks on a three-year struggle to uncover her daughter’s fate and see justice done. The Sari Soldiers follows her and five other brave women, including Maoist Commander Kranti; Royal Nepal Army Officer Rajani; Krishna, a monarchist from a rural community who leads a rebellion against the Maoists; Mandira, a human rights lawyer; and Ram Kumari, a young student activist shaping the protests to reclaim democracy. The Sari Soldiers intimately delves into the extraordinary journey of these women on opposing sides of the conflict, through the democratic revolution that reshapes the country’s future.  

Film website: http://www.butterlampfilms.com/index.html

Club Native
(Canada, 2008, 78 min)

In Kahnawake, the hometown of Mohawk director Tracey Deer (Mohawk Girls), there are two unspoken rules: Don’t marry a non-Native, and never, ever have a child with a non-Native. In a community where tribal membership rests on the equivocal measurement of blood quantum (literally the measurement of blood “purity”), following one’s heart requires risking one’s Mohawk status, as well as one’s family and community.

With warmth, intelligence and humor, Deer turns her camera on her own family and the lives of four proud Mohawk women deeply impacted by racism and prejudice rooted in Canada’s highly discriminatory 1876 Indian Act, and exacerbated by lingering preconceptions about blood quantum that have left a divisive legacy in her community.

Club Native raises critical questions about belonging and indignity, the heartbreak of “marrying out” of the Mohawk Nation, and the unjust patriarchal laws that disenfranchise Native women. It is a candid and engrossing work about the pain, confusion, and frustration suffered by many First Nations women, but also a testament to the triumph of love and the resilience of the human spirit.

Maquilapolis (City of Factories)
(Mexico/USA, 2006, 68  min)

Carmen works the graveyard shift in one of Tijuana’s maquiladoras, the multinationally-owned factories that came to Mexico for its cheap labor.  After making television components all night, Carmen comes home to a shack she built out of recycled garage doors, in a neighborhood with no sewage lines or electricity.  She suffers from kidney damage and lead poisoning from her years of exposure to toxic chemicals.  She earns six dollars a day.  But Carmen is not a victim.  She is a dynamic young woman, busy making a life for herself and her children. 

As Carmen and a million other maquiladora workers produce televisions, electrical cables, toys, clothes, batteries and IV tubes, they weave the very fabric of life for consumer nations.  They also confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos -- life on the frontier of the global economy.  In MAQUILAPOLIS, Carmen and her colleague Lourdes reach beyond the daily struggle for survival to organize for change:  Carmen takes a major television manufacturer to task for violating her labor rights.  Lourdes pressures the government to clean up a toxic waste dump left behind by a departing factory.

As they work for change, the world changes too:  a global economic crisis and the availability of cheaper labor in China begin to pull the factories away from Tijuana, leaving Carmen, Lourdes and their colleagues with an uncertain future. 

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo
(USA, 2007, 76 min)

Winner of the Sundance Special Jury Prize in Documentary and the inspiration for a 2008 U.N. Resolution classifying rape as a weapon of war, this extraordinary film, shot in the war zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), shatters the silence that surrounds the use of sexual violence as a weapon of conflict. Many tens of thousands of women and girls have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. A survivor of gang rape herself, Emmy Award®-winning filmmaker Lisa F. Jackson travels through the DRC to understand what is happening and why.

Produced in association with HBO Documentary Films and the Fledgling Fund, this film features interviews with activists, peacekeepers, physicians, and even—chillingly—the indifferent rapists who are soldiers of the Congolese Army. Harrowing moments of the film come as dozens of survivors recount their stories with an honesty and immediacy that is pulverizing in its intimacy and detail, but this powerful film also provides inspiring examples of resiliency, resistance, courage and grace.

Take 3 (New Zealand, 2008, 12 min)

The audition room is a minefield for three Asian actresses who are expected to be Asian in ways they are not completely comfortable with.  When the humiliations mount, they transcend their rivalry in one gleeful act of solidarity, empowering themselves with the very stereotype that they’ve been subjected to. 

Montreal 1971   (Canada, 2006, 24 min)

Three part poetic portraits taking place throughout the 20th century in Montreal Canada. A story told with few words and great cinematography, Montreal 1971 follows a young woman on her journey through love, loss and loneliness.  Each moment in her life and her memories unfolds in a serious of precious decisions similar to what many women face.

Love Letters (Australia, 8 min)

Steve, an 8 year old, corresponds with 8 year old Theresa, in Africa, through a sponsorship organization which only allows communication until she is 18. Before the contact is cut off, he has to tell her how he really feels. 

Colors of the Veil (USA, 5.5 min)

A former U.S. soldier ultimately found her identity in the veil, and became a vanguard of the growing American-Muslim community. Share in her struggles to find a job that accepts her and how her trials have inspired others like her.

Lullaby (Australia, 11 min)

Sisters Poppy and Bella struggle to bring themselves up in a rundown warehouse above a burlesque club where there Mother is a singer. 

Quarter to Noon (USA, 2008, 14 min)

Enclosed in a stale office with a single door and a single window and several framed “Best Worker” Awards A worker works. She is good at her job. Consistent, dedicated, and high performing. However, when she discovers a new world outside her office window… she escapes to it.

White Elephants
(USA, 2008, 24 min)

White Elephants is a sensitive, slice-of-life story involving a young couple going through the normal course of their day, while coming to terms with an unexpected medical diagnosis. The film is a reflection on the unfortunate hardships that can befall any couple, the decisions we are sometimes forced to make, and the ability to support one another as best as one knows how. 

Act As If
(USA, 2009, 18 min)

Act As If is the story of Harvard basketball phenomenon Kathy Delaney-Smith, the winningest coach in the Ivy League and mastermind behind the biggest upset in men’s or women’s NCAA playoff history.  Kathy picked up the whistle forty years ago as a favor to a friend.  She was clueless but determined to do a good job faking it just as Title IX legislation passed to provide equal federal funding for women’s sports.  Her mantra, “act as if,” transformed her from a feisty blue collar Boston kid into a Harvard icon using the power of positive thinking to overcome obstacles, including breast cancer.

Act As If explores the contradictions between our public personas and our private selves.  The players must learn to always act prepared and confident on the court and not reveal their exhaustion, injuries, or self-doubt.  Kathy is an irreverent and accidental philosopher who teaches a tribe of women that the way to win—at everything—is by convincing yourself that you already have.

Maїmouna – La vie devant moi (Maїmouna – The life in front of me)
(Germany/Burkina Faso, 2007, 60 min)

Maїmouna – The life in front of me explores efforts to change attitudes towards the traditional practice of female circumcision. The film follows the work of Maїmouna, a young woman from Burkina Faso as she visits villages and families as part of an NGO’s education and awareness program on female circumcision. On her journey Maїmouna explores the many myths and contradictions about female circumcision within her own culture. Maїmouna went out to teach people but in the end, she learned most about herself. Maїmouna’s story, which also tells the story of her society, is above all a story of hope.

Detained
(USA, 28 min)

On March 6, 2007, workers at a New Bedford factory producing vests for the U.S. military were arrested in a raid conducted by Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) officers.  Of the 361 undocumented immigrants arrested that day, the majority were women, many with small children.  Detained follows families affected by the immigration raid.