Documentary – Page 13

Video Break: Christiane Amanpour Interviews Gloria Steinem

Documentary Review: !Women Art Revolution

So why don’t we know more women in art? It’s a case of omission, of erasing women and their contributions out of history. A stunning film 40 years in the making, “!Women Art Revolution” seeks to fill that gap by combining “intimate” interviews along with visceral visual images of paintings, performance art, installation art, murals and photography.

Let’s play a game. Name three artists…go on. Now who comes to mind? Picasso? Monet? Michelangelo? Now what if I asked you to name three female artists. You probably would think of Frida Kahlo or Georgia O’Keefe. But what about other women like Judy Chicago, Kathe Kollwitz, Ana Mendieta or Miranda July? This very query of naming a mere three female artists, opens the compelling documentary !Women Art Revolution. Sadly, the people questioned, visitors exiting museums in NYC and San Francisco, could only think of Frida Kahlo. If you had asked those same people to name male artists, or just stated “artists” without indicating gender, I’m sure they would have rattled off a lengthy list…of men.

So why don’t we know more women in art? It’s a case of omission, of erasing women and their contributions out of history. A stunning film 40 years in the making, !Women Art Revolution seeks to fill that gap by combining “intimate” interviews along with visceral visual images of paintings, performance art, installation art, murals and photography. Director Lynn Hershman Leeson, a performance artist and filmmaker, began interviewing people, friends and colleagues who visited her apartment in the 1970s, continuing to interview artists, curators, historians, critics and professors for the next 4 decades. She narrates the film, becoming its conscience, observer and participant. Chronicling the convergence of feminism and art, fueled by anti-war and civil rights protests and the inception of the Feminist Art Movement in the 60s, the documentary depicts how women activists have fought to express their vision and have their voices heard in the art scene.

Difficult to synopsize, the film encompasses a vast breadth of work and activism. In the 70s, female artists created their own spaces and galleries such as WomanHouse, a feminist installation founded by installation artist Judy Chicago and abstract painter Miriam Schapiro at CalArts in Los Angeles, and A.I.R., an all-female gallery in NYC. Some of the pieces that stand out for me include Yoko Ono’s performance art “Cut Piece,” which consisted of her kneeling while spectators came up to her and snipped pieces of her clothing off with scissors; Faith Ringgold’s quilts depicting African American narratives; and Martha Rosler’s video “Semiotics of the Kitchen” displaying her performance of domestic chores and questioning gender roles.

One of the artists in the film says, “Women have always been looked upon, so we looked back.” This quote struck me. Women have been the muses and the models, but as artists and activists, they examine those gender roles and expectations. Feminist artists challenged norms. They questioned the dominant narrative of gender roles that women belonged as docile wives slaving over a hot stove and that women had to conform to societal beauty standards in a heteronormative world. Interestingly, many artists revealed their marriages suffered and dissolved as a result of their burgeoning outspokenness and activism.

Throughout the film, Hershman Leeson continually questions gender and power structures. Ana Mendieta, a sculptor, painter, performance and video artist, created images of women in trees, mud and grass using twigs and blood. At the age of 36, she was allegedly killed by her husband, artist Carl Andre. Because he was such a powerful figure in the minimalist movement, no one would speak out against him. As a result, he was acquitted.

!Women Art Revolution showcases the controversy swirling around The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago’s infamous exhibit. A powerful feminist installation piece, it consists of a massive triangular-shaped banquet table with 39 place settings. Each plate, utensils, chalice and placemat decorated with colors and iconography unique for the intended guests: various famous women throughout history and myth. Chicago created a groundbreaking piece that puts women front and center, something often lacking in the media. Apparently, The Dinner Party caused the government unease and even outrage. Accused of being pornographic due to the butterfly and floral plates symbolizing the vulva, the U.S.House debated on whether or not it should be displayed. Yes, because vaginas are soooo scary. Some Representatives, all male, said it wasn’t art. Um, who are they to determine that?! One Congressman, a former Black Panther, defended the piece saying it was art and protected as free speech. Sadly, the House passed a bill banning it from being exhibited (Oh that’s right, because Congress has nothing better to do! Sigh). Luckily, when it went to the Senate, a small group of wealthy and influential women urged their Senators to drop the legislation, causing it to be dismissed.

The film covers and interviews the Guerilla Girls, an anonymous watchdog group of gorilla mask-wearing feminist activists combating sexism in the international art world. Formed in 1985, an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art that showcased an international collection of recent artists in painting and sculpture spurred their creation. The exhibit featured 169 artists, only 3 of whom were women. They also looked at the collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1989 and found that only 3% of the artists in the modern wing were women and 83% of nude subjects were women. This prompted their famous poster tagline, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” The Guerilla Girls protest and continue to speak out, publishing report cards on gender and racial gaps in other museums, galleries and exhibits. They force the art world to face the reality of its own discrimination.

But gender discrimination didn’t just happen to artists. Museum curators also faced disparities. Marcia Tucker, Founding Director at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, shared her personal story of wage inequity when she was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the first woman to hold that position there. After she found out she made less than her male counterpart, she confronted the museum’s president who gave her the feeble excuse, “The budget, the budget, the budget.” To which she replied, “The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post.” While things have certainly improved, there’s still a long way to go in reducing wage gaps as women still earn far less than men today.

!Women Art Revolution easily could have become dull with dry facts or depressing due to the obstacles the female artists struggled against. Yet it pulses and throbs with fervent energy. Like a little feminist sponge, I soaked up all of the passion, activism and information. With images of women, hearing women’s voices and a score composed by Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney guitarist and Portlandia actor, the film feels like a safe haven for feminists. In our male-dominated media, it was inspiring to see a riveting documentary created by women and featuring women. My only complaint of the film is that it doesn’t really follow a chronological or thematic order, making it feel a bit chaotic. Yet it also makes it feel raw and personal. Interestingly, Hershman Leeson, almost prophetically anticipating this, admits as much in her own chronology, comprised of various pieces knitted together “like a patchwork quilt.” I found it refreshing that Hershman Leeson’s introspection as a documentary filmmaker leads her to question whether or not she should feature her own art in the film. She comes to the rightful conclusion that she should as women have been omitted from art history for too long.

Hershman Leeson said she didn’t know how the film would end; she’d been waiting to see how events would unfold. Without any more threats from douchebag legislators, The Dinner Party now permanently resides at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, founded in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum, for future generations to behold. In 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) featured “Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” a groundbreaking exhibit showcasing feminist art from 1965 to 1980, the first exhibit of its kind. The documentary also features young feminist artists like Alexandra Chowaniec. One young artist recalled how her instructor asked if she had ever heard of Ana Mendieta and other artists from the 70s, as her work mirrored that of feminists 40 years earlier. As she hadn’t, she visited the library to learn about them. When she could find no books on women in the Feminist Art Movement, her instructor gave the young artist copies of her own books. The artist admits that she and her generation benefit from the gains women who came before her struggled to achieve, a sentiment that too often leads many women of my generation and younger to deem feminism useless and outdated. But nothing could be further from the truth.

In an interview with Sophia Savage, Hershman Leeson talks about the “meaning of feminism today:”

“Of course I think it has positive connotations for intelligent women and men. But there is still an existing fear of the word itself, as well as miscommunicated baggage of what it represents. This needs revision. Feminism is about cultural values and equality. The young women I am in contact with are grateful to learn about this history. They devour the information. It is, after all, their legacy.”

It is this legacy to future generations that means so much to Hershman Leeson. Arising from the documentary, she started the RAW/WAR project, a virtual community allowing people to submit images of drawings, paintings, performances, dance and music, opening up the dialogue of art and gender to a global community. Also, all of the interview transcripts and many of the videos are available online. As to the message of the film, Hershman Leeson declares:

“As Marcia Tucker reminds us, “humor is the single most important weapon we have!” I think audiences will be inspired by the courage, sense of humor and tenaciousness of the artists who courageously and constantly reinvented themselves and in doing so dynamically revised existing exclusionary policies of their culture.”

Art questions, challenges and inspires. While it can be beautiful and serene, it can also be disturbing and uncomfortable, unnerving the viewer, forcing the audience to look at the world around them. The art in this documentary reveals the media’s incessant agenda of writing women out of history. Society views women’s art, their experiences and stories, as lesser than men’s: less important, less noble, less substantial. When I took Art History in college, I remember we only studied a handful of female artists. The Feminist Art Movement is a chapter ripped out of history, a period most people just don’t know. Whether you’re an art aficionado or not, you simply must see and experience this revolutionary and visionary film for yourself. !Women Art Revolution reclaims women’s narratives and manifests a vocal group of dissenters rattling the cages of constriction and conformity, refusing to be silenced.

Trailer:

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World. In addition to Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly and A Safe World for Women. Megan earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She currently lives in Boston with her diva cat. She previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Bitch Flicks.

Documentary Preview: Dark Girls

Dark Girls (2012)

Set to premiere this October at the International Black Film Festival in Nashville, Dark Girls is a documentary by D. Channsin Berry and Bill Duke that explores the prejudice against and the often-internalized feelings of self-hatred experienced by dark-skinned Black women in the United States.

The light-skinned bias is easily recognized in film and media, but rarely do we get to hear from women who experience this bias in their lives, workplaces, and relationships. I’m looking forward to watching this documentary, and hope it gets a wide release after its festival showings.

Writing for Clutch, Jamilah Lemieux says:

While many people would love to believe that color is no longer an issue, and that we are post-racial, post-color struck–post-anything that forces them to admit that all things are not even in this world, and that we have much work to do–the many subjects interviewed for the film sing a very different tune.

[…]

Though we know that not all darker sisters suffer great indignities or issues with self image, nor is life a crystal stair for those of us who are lighter, this film continues a long conversation that is still very important. So long as we have people amongst us who gladly uphold the damning “White is right” standard–assigning favor to people based upon their proximity to it, we can’t let this one go. This is something we can get past, this does not have to continue.

Watch the trailer and share your own experiences on the official film website:

Preview: !Women Art Revolution

!Women Art Revolution

From the official movie website:

!Women Art Revolution elaborates the relationship of the Feminist Art Movement to the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movements and explains how historical events, such as the all-male protest exhibition against the invasion of Cambodia, sparked the first of many feminist actions against major cultural institutions. The film details major developments in women’s art of the 1970s, including the first feminist art education programs, political organizations and protests, alternative art spaces such as the A.I.R. Gallery and Franklin Furnace in New York and the Los Angeles Women’s Building, publications such as Chrysalis and Heresies, and landmark exhibitions, performances, and installations of public art that changed the entire direction of art.

Director Lynn Hershman Leeson claims to have worked on this project for 40 years, and the film has been picked up for distribution by Zeitgeist. It is currently playing at the San Francisco International Film Festival. I know very little about the Feminist Art Movement, aside from some of the Guerrilla Girls‘ work, and can’t wait to see this film.

Watch the trailer:

Just for fun, here’s the other poster:

Let us know if you have seen or plan to see this film!

Documentary Review: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)

Most reviews of the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work begin by describing how the film opens–with a close-up shot of Rivers’ face, without make-up. This is, of course, a metaphor for the goal of the film (to get behind the facade) and an acknowledgment of what Rivers has come to be most famous for–her surgically-altered appearance. While her face is surely a piece of surgical work, the far more fascinating work is that of her long life in the spotlight, and her drive to keep going, keep performing, keep selling, when the culture tells her she should stop (or that she should have stopped long ago).

I went into this film feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, it’s a documentary about an extraordinary woman, made by two women–Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg, who are known for their previous films The End of America, The Devil Came on Horseback, and the forthcoming Burma Soldier, among others. It’s about a mouthy broad (and I love mouthy broads, women who speak their minds and aren’t afraid to put themselves out there), who is funny, and who has been at it since 1966. On the other hand, it’s yet another film about a wealthy white woman (I just watched and reviewed The September Issue, about Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour) who lives like “Marie Antoinette, if she’d have had money.” Though I enjoy most of her comedy, I–like many others–had come to see her primarily through her surgically-altered appearance, her anything-for-a-buck business approach (A comedy icon selling jewelry on QVC? Starring on Celebrity Apprentice?), and her less-than-feminist years hosting the red carpet.

Watching the film, however, gave me a new appreciation for Rivers–even while not sharing a number of her perspectives. A Piece of Work documents a year in Rivers’ life: she turns 75, faces down a heckler at a stand-up show in Wisconsin, honors George Carlin in a tribute, gets roasted by Comedy Central, and injects new life into her career by winning Celebrity Apprentice. All while still selling that damn jewelry. Her energy level is astounding, and I wonder how she manages to do all she does at the age of 75.

Rivers is an odd character. Being a superstar female comic alone is odd in the U.S.–only a few came before her–but we get a very real look at her life, at the troubles she has faced (her husband’s suicide) and continues to face, and at the loneliness that certainly helps her drive to fill her daily calendar. She is vulnerable and still nervous when going on stage, especially when pursuing what she calls the one sacred part of her life–her acting–in which she hasn’t seen a lot of personal success. I came to find her more compelling and interesting than my initial perception of her, and encourage anyone to see this film and learn more about a woman who refuses to stop.

Documentary Review: The September Issue

The September Issue (2009), directed by R.J. Cutler.

Fashion is a bit of an anomaly in capitalist enterprise, in that its major players are primarily women and gay men. Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, is the “single most important figure in the 300 billion dollar global fashion industry.” The September Issue chronicles the assembly of the massive 2007 fall fashion issue of the magazine.

Before getting into any specifics about the film, I want to say a thing or two about fashion, because it’s a subject–and an industry–about which I feel a great deal of ambivalence. Last March, when Stephanie and I reviewed Sex and the City: The Movie for this website, I struggled to pinpoint my perspective on fashion, and left it at this:

I like fashion. It’s an art form, and its creators are capable of beautiful design and cultural statements. It’s also an industry, and like all major industries, has a very ugly side. I liken it to professional sports: I watch from the sidelines, aware of the way I’m being manipulated, but enjoy it nonetheless—all without expressly participating.

I don’t think my perspective today is as sunny, nor would I necessarily choose the same sports metaphor. Yes, fashion is an art form, and designers truly do create magnificent works of art. Its “ugly side” isn’t so easy to overlook, though–particularly the endless number of rail-thin, anorexic-looking models reinforcing society’s ideal body type, which is unachievable for a vast majority of women. Fashion magazines not only perpetuate the idealization of the stick-skinny model, but also tell women, in page after page, that they aren’t good enough, and that they need to spend massive amounts of time, energy, and money on looking (read: being) better.

Here’s the thing, though: Despite my problems with the industry on display, I really like The September Issue, for a number of reasons.

Sitting down to watch TSI, I expected the film to explore the glamorous life of Anna Wintour. At least I expected that to be a major element of the film, but viewers actually learn very little about her–there isn’t a lot of insight into her life or her motivations, aside from what appears in the film’s trailer (which appears at the bottom of this post). Perhaps it was foolish to believe that this notoriously private woman would reveal herself in a documentary focused on her magazine, but we do get a few poignant moments of insight amidst all the meetings, photo shoots, disagreements, and jet setting.

Anna Wintour has Power. She jokes that her siblings find what she does for a living “peculiar,” because maybe editing a fashion magazine doesn’t affect world politics, or cure diseases, or save the world. But high fashion is art, and art is peculiar. Amid the ads for cosmetics (which probably contain ingredients that no one should be putting on her or his skin) and accessories few of us can afford, there are stunning photographs of beautiful clothes. Most of the clothes aren’t really meant to be worn in Real Life, but they are pieces of art, and the people who make this wearable art fall all over themselves hoping that Wintour will notice them. They cater to her every whim, her every pointed critique.

Perhaps Wintour finds her position a bit peculiar, as well. There’s a drive viewers can see in her, and it seems as if she’s blindly plowing ahead, following success after success with little reflection about the why of it all. Her daughter appears to have no interest in the fashion industry, even though there’s a simple, ready-made path for her there. Like her mother, she doesn’t elaborate on her opinions, but knows that the industry isn’t for her. Wintour herself doesn’t really have much to say about what she’s achieved; she’s not the type to wax philosophically. Instead she states–and shows viewers–very plainly that she works hard and that the magazine has earned her a lot of money.

Fortunately, the movie also features Wintour’s team at Vogue, one of whom emerges to become the real star of The September Issue.

Grace Coddington is a former model and the creative director at Vogue. She even started working there on the same day as Wintour. She is intelligent, reflective, and an artist to Wintour’s manager persona. Coddington isn’t afraid to stand up to Wintour (whose lack of empathy was famously fictionalized by Meryl Streep in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada) either, and flawlessly uses her every resource, including the documentary film crew, to her advantage. Viewers may see her as being cutthroat, but she’s an artist fighting for her vision, her work, and she’s earned it. She’s 68 and has spent her whole life in this industry, working for British Vogue and Calvin Klein before joining Wintour. Gawker points to one of my favorite moments in the film, in their piece “How Grace Coddington Stole The September Issue from Anna Wintour”:

Eventually, Coddington gets so palsy-walsy that she puts one of the September Issue cameramen into a last-minute photo shoot as a prop. The resulting pictures are fresh and fun and even manage to make Anna smile, although it’s not clear if she likes the pics or is just enjoying telling a middle-aged cameraman that he’s too fat. When Coddington hears that Wintour wants to Photoshop out his belly, she gets on the phone and threatens the art director and tells him that he has to leave it alone. “Not everything can be perfect in the world,” she rails. It is the climax of the movie, where Coddington eventually triumphs over the tyrant, who has been chipping away at her artistic integrity for the entire 90 minutes.

Of course, Gawker can’t help but pit these two women against each other–using words like “stole,” “palsy-walsy” (whatever that means, it doesn’t sound like a compliment), “rails,” and “tyrant” to pigeonhole their working relationship as a catty, woman-against-woman, oh-so-typical drama. While I love that Coddington fights to keep the photo of the cameraman un-retouched, I do wish that a woman with a belly could appear in the pages of Vogue. The moment, however, is a stroke of genius. The issue of the magazine had certainly been affected by the film crew being there, and Coddington found a way to literally put them into it.

While Coddington expresses enormous respect for Wintour, she isn’t afraid to speak her mind. Pontificating on the magazine in the back of a car, she mentions how little she likes the rise of celebrity culture and the practice of using actresses as cover models (the fall fashion issue features Sienna Miller on the cover), but concedes that Wintour knew this was the future of fashion mags and put the idea into action first.

At times we get the feeling that Coddington doesn’t really know how or why she got to this point in her career, but she’s very good at her job. Throughout the film we see exquisitely detailed photo shoots where she seems to be in her element and having a genuinely good time. The squabbles with Wintour over keeping her work in the issue upset Coddington, however, and make her nearly question the whole enterprise. Somehow, I get the feeling that if she walked out the Vogue office doors and never came back, she’d be just fine. Wintour never lets viewers in enough for us to even speculate, maintaining her ice queen reputation and doing so with less humor than her fictional counterpart.

Yes, there is drama in the film, and some of it even seems like stereotypical fashion magazine fare, but what remains remarkable is seeing two talented women in their sixties running a fashion empire, working together, clashing over their visions for the issue, all while expressing enormous respect for one another, and doing it all with intelligence and glamour.

Athena Film Festival Mini-Review: Poster Girl

Poster Girl synopsis:

Poster Girl is the story of Robynn Murray, an all-American high school cheerleader turned “poster girl” for women in combat, distinguished by Army Magazine’s cover shot. Now home from Iraq, her tough-as-nails exterior begins to crack, leaving Robynn struggling with the debilitation effects of PTSD and the challenges of rebuilding her life. Directed by Sara Nesson.

Amber’s Take:

Poster Girl was, without a doubt, my favorite film at the Athena Film Festival. It’s no surprise that the film is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary – Short Subject, even though this was a first effort at filmmaking from director Sara Nesson.

Robynn Murray’s trauma was palpable. Her anxiety came through in her near-constant breathlessness, emotional breakdowns, and outbursts of anger. Although she had enrolled in the division of the army sent in after combat missions–to rebuild and ‘win hearts and minds’–she was sent directly into combat. Although women are officially forbidden to participate in combat in the US military, most people will acknowledge that the distinction between combat and non-combat roles is archaic and even non-existent in 21st century war zones. That Murray was assigned a gunner position atop a tank (the most dangerous, exposed position) on the second day of her tour of duty in Iraq shouldn’t surprise the realists among us, but is nevertheless shocking when told from a raw, personal perspective.

Rooting for this film (and, in turn, rooting for its star and director) is enough to make me excited for next weekend’s Oscar ceremony.

Stephanie’s Take:

Watching Poster Girl was by far the highlight of my experience at the Athena Film Festival. Not only is it a convincing portrayal of the serious effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, but it’s a subtle anti-war film, one that illustrates the often disastrous consequences of repeated exposure to death and violence–and not just for women in combat. Nesson gets moving footage of several former soldiers, including Robynn, who create art from their uniforms, and the soldiers all emphasize the healing power of that process. (I personally loved watching each of them rip their uniforms to shreds.)

Nesson also juxtaposes photos of Robynn prior to her Army experience–where she’s in a cheerleading uniform, smiling and having fun with friends–with the post-Army Robynn, a tattooed, pierced, PTSD victim who stares at the former photos as if they couldn’t possibly be her. And they aren’t anymore. The new Robynn is an activist who speaks out against war and gun violence, even while dealing with debilitating panic attacks.

The film shows just how screwed up our system is for soldiers returning from service: it’s heartbreaking to watch Robynn practically beg for the disability checks the government owes her, as well as witness the lengths she has to go to to “prove” that she’s disabled. But even after all this, Poster Girl somehow ends on a hopeful note, with a smile from Robynn that we hadn’t seen since before she entered the Army.

Watch the preview:

Athena Film Festival Preview

This weekend we’re attending the Athena Film Festival in New York City, billed as a “celebration of women and leadership.” Why a festival dedicated to women and film?

From the official website:

In 2010, for the first time in history, a woman won the Oscar for best director. Directing is the most visible leadership position in film yet, in 82 years, only 4 women have been nominated for best director, and only a single woman has won. In 2009, in the 250 top-grossing domestic films, women made up only 7% of directors, 8% of writers, and 17% of executive producers. 98% of these films had no female cinematographers. And, in front of the camera, as of 2007, women had less than 30% of the speaking roles.

In addition to feature films, documentaries, and short films, there will be events such as “A Hollywood Conversation with actress Greta Gerwig” and a panel on “The Bechdel Test – Where Are the Women Onscreen?” among others.

Here are previews of some of the films we’re planning to see. You can purchase tickets for individual films or a pass for the entire weekend. If you’re in the area, you won’t want to miss this festival!

Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbiased
Synopsis from the official site:

Unbought & Unbossed is the first historical documentary on Brooklyn Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and her campaign to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 1972. Following Chisholm from the announcement of her candidacy in January to the Democratic National Convention in Miami, Florida in July, the story is like her- fabulous, fierce, and fundamentally “right on.” Chisholm’s fight is for inclusion, as she writes in her book The Good Fight (1973), and encompasses all Americans “who agree that the institutions of this country belong to all of the people who inhabit it.”

The Mighty Macs
Synopsis from the Athena site:

In the early 70s, Cathy Rush becomes the head basketball coach at a tiny, all-girls Catholic college. Though her team has no gym and no uniforms — and the school itself is in danger of being sold — Coach Rush looks to steer her girls to their first national championship.

Miss Representation
Description from the official film website:

Writer/Director Jennifer Siebel Newsom brings together some of America’s most influential women in politics, news, and entertainment to give us an inside look at the media’s message. Miss Representation explores women’s under-representation in positions of power by challenging the limited and often disparaging portrayal of women in the media. As one of the most persuasive and pervasive forces in our culture, media is educating yet another generation that women’s primary value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality—not in their capacity as leaders. Through the riveting perspectives of youth and the critical analysis of top scholars, Miss Representation will change the way you see media.

There are plenty more films being shown at the festival–be sure to check them out!

The Fat Body (In)Visible

The New York Times published an article by Roni Caryn Rabin in 2008 titled, “In the Fatosphere, Big Is In, or at Least Accepted.” The author highlights several writers in the blogosphere who focus on Fat Acceptance and the HAES (Healthy at Every Size) Movement.

Rabin describes the Fatosphere as follows:

The bloggers’ main contention is that being fat is not a result of moral failure or a character flaw, or of gluttony, sloth or a lack of willpower. Diets often boomerang, they say; indeed, numerous long-term studies have found that even though dieters are often able to lose weight in the short term, they almost always regain the lost pounds over the next few years.

She continues:

Fat acceptance bloggers contend that the war on obesity has given people an excuse to wage war on fat people and that health concerns—coupled with the belief that fat people have only themselves to blame for being fat—are being used to justify discrimination that would not be tolerated toward just about any other group of people.

And, while Bitch Flicks hasn’t yet reviewed the worst offenders in terms of portrayals of obesity in film and television (eg, Shallow Hal, Norbit, et al), we’ve certainly noticed it in others, like Wall-E and The Big C; and the double standard that exists for men’s and women’s bodies in Couples Retreat is certainly evident.

So I was thrilled to run across a fat-positive documentary by Margitte Kristjansson called The Fat Body (In)Visible, in which she interviews Jessica and Keena about the experience of being a fat woman in a society that doesn’t value—and even openly discriminates against—fat women.

Quotes from the documentary:

Jessica, on Fat Acceptance: Fat acceptance is just the radical idea that every body is a good body and that regardless of your shape or your size that you deserve just as much respect as the next person.

Keena, on Fat Acceptance: Fat acceptance is just accepting your body where it is at. Whether you’re bigger or you’re smaller. Just accepting what it is, your arms, your double chin, your thighs, and just not worrying about how other people may view you.

You can read the entire transcript of the documentary at Shakesville. And also, be sure to check out Substantia Jones’ Adipositivity Project, where you can find more photos like those showcased in The Fat Body (In)Visible.

Quote of the Day: Rachel Maddow

Below is an excerpt from an interview that Feministing recently conducted with Rachel Maddow. Definitely read the amazing interview in its entirety.

Chloe Angyal: Why did you decide to make a documentary about the assassination of Dr. Tiller, and why did you feel so strongly about doing a larger-scale production about the anti-abortion movement?

Rachel Maddow: When we covered the Tiller murder when it happened, two things became clear. As soon as you heard last May that a doctor had been killed in Kansas, if you knew anything about the fight over reproductive rights and the radical anti-abortion movement, it was instantly clear that it was George Tiller who was killed, even before you heard the name. I had heard that a doctor was killed in Kansas that Sunday, and knew it was Tiller before I saw in the news that it was Tiller. There are not that many things in America, where you know who’s going to get killed, because there’s a campaign against them that includes people who think that violence up to murder is justified against people with whom they disagree or who they’ve vilified. It’s an unusual thing in America – there aren’t a lot of things like that, so that in itself was shocking enough.

But there was also some smaller scale stuff about our covering it in day-to-day news way. We do daily production, we have to do a show five nights a week, and turn around things in a short time frame, and the Tiller murder and the Roeder conviction were things that we covered intensively, but on this day-to-day production schedule. And one of the things that we didn’t report on, or didn’t really follow up on because it wasn’t appropriate to report on in that day-to-day schedule was the fact that there was a ton of celebration online when Tiller was killed. And you don’t blame people for their blog comments, and you don’t make a news story out of anonymous commenters on the internet machine. If you did, you’d constantly be foretelling the end of the world. It’s not really appropriate to cover that as news, that anecdotal reaction. But reading that reaction online, on Twitter and in blog comments, not just in the dark anti-abortion extremist corners of the internet, but actually in relatively mainstream places, I found very unsettling. It stuck with me and it made me want to do something longer form, more investigative and more in-depth about the murder.

The fight over reproductive rights and the tactics of the radical anti-abortion movement are subjects that are a bummer. It’s something that we think of as almost unendurable, I think, to dwell on, to think about, because it seems like it never gets better, and like the other side never pays a price. And one of the things that I don’t think people have really grasps, which is in this documentary, is the story of George Tiller, who was resolute, cheerful, clever, holistically cognizant of what was going on as he was being attacked in this way.

At Tiller’s funeral, they made giant flower arrangement that said “Trust Women,” because that was his motto. You have to understand the other side, the radicals and their tactics, in order to understand what’s going on in the fight over reproductive rights. But in order to understand the way that people survive this, and the way that people can even hope to win these battles in the long run, understanding the way George Tiller did it is underappreciated. We’ve got these interviews of him that have never before run on television, and you see him, coming back to his clinic the day after he was shot and the day after his clinic was bombed, saying, “What we’re doing is legal. What these people are doing, these terroristic tactics and this anarchy, is illegal,” and putting up the sign outside his clinic: “Women need abortions and I’m going to do them.” And the devotion that his staff had to him, because of that resolution and that resilience that he had, that is a story worth telling about how to live in the face of threat, and how to live in the face of people who are coming at you in ways that are sometimes are very painful to think about. This is a painful story, but this is also an instructive story and a cathartic story for people who support reproductive rights.

The Codes of Gender: Documentary Preview

From the Media Education Foundation (MEF):

Communication scholar Sut Jhally applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman’s groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape in this provocative new film about gender as a ritualized cultural performance. Uncovering a remarkable pattern of gender-specific poses, Jhally explores Goffman’s central claim that the way the body is displayed in advertising communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity. The film looks beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that focus on biological difference or issues of surface objectification and beauty, taking us into the two-tiered terrain of identity and power relations. With its sustained focus on the fundamental importance of gender, power, and how our perceptions of what it means to be a man or a woman get reproduced and reinforced on the level of culture in our everyday lives, The Codes of Gender is certain to inspire discussion and debate across a range of disciplines.

I haven’t yet watched The Codes of Gender, but I imagine it might provide some insight for our continued frustration with movie posters.

We previously highlighted Generation M, another documentary by the MEF, which focuses on the misogyny prevalent in contemporary culture.

As the MEF is a foundation focused on education, you can watch a low-resolution preview of any of their films online (for personal viewing only).

If you’ve seen The Codes of Gender, let us know what you think!

Documentary: When Abortion Was Illegal

In this 1992 documentary directed by Dorothy Fadiman, women (and men) tell their stories about illegal abortions, reminding us of the necessity of safe and legal access for women.

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1993, and is the first in a three-part series about abortion in America.