University of Kentucky Gender and Women's Studies Spring 2007 Film Series: The Family

(Announcement from Kate Black)

SPRING 2007 FILM SERIES: THE FAMILY

Shelter (Anne Lewis; 2001; 56 min.)
Tuesday, January 30, 7:00 p.m.
Gaines Center’s Bingham-Davis House, 218 E. Maxwell Street

In 1974, three women opened the first shelter for battered women, in St. Paul, Minnesota. From this courageous act emerged a grassroots movement that has not only saved lives, it has changed the way Americans think about domestic violence. By 1985, a mere decade later, there were 700 shelters and safe houses and by 2001 the number had grown to approximately 1,200. Shelter traces this remarkable evolution and gives voice to five women seeking protection in rural West Virginia. This documentary challenges our national ambivalence towards issues of domestic violence and common institutional responses from police, the court system, and social service agencies, while highlighting a model program that offers a holistic and healing approach to the problem.

Commentary and discussion led by Carol E. Jordan who is director of the UK Center for Research on Violence Against Women and holds faculty appointments in the Departments or Psychology and Psychiatry.

Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House (Deborah Dickson; 2002; 55 min.)
Tuesday, February 13, 7:00 p.m.
Gaines Center’s Bingham-Davis House, 218 E. Maxwell Street
A film about love, friendship, passion and politics – and the price two women paid to be themselves. In 1959, Ruthie Berman and Connie Kurtz were both married mothers of young children, living in a working-class Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. In 1974, they left their husbands and children, moved in with each other and turned their entire worlds upside down. “…touching and wise…the documentary is a textbook on how to illuminate large social issues through honest, intimate, personal biography.” --New York Newsday Winner of “Audience Award Best Documentary” at the New York Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, and the Toronto Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.
Commentary and discussion led by Melanie Otis, associate professor in the College of Social Work, whose research has focused in large part on lesbian and gay issues, particularly civil rights and social justice activism.

Highway Courtesans (Mystelle Brabbée; 2005; 71 min.)
Monday, March 5, 7:00 p.m.
Gaines Center’s Bingham-Davis House, 218 E. Maxwell Street
“…this is a searching and fluently edited portrait of innocence bought and sold along a highway that links Calcutta to Delhi to the Himalayas, a conduit for long-haul vehicles and long-term HIV, where a girl’s power to earn money defines her value…to the filmmaker’s credit, as she peels back the layer of reality in Guddi’s life, the theme that emerges becomes the slippery and even contradictory nature of truth.”—Robert Keser, Bright Lights Film Journal “ …No crusader, director Michelle Brabbee treats her subjects with subtlety and respect as she explores themes of culture, tradition, and women’s roles.”-- Joe Hart, Utne Magazine “Brabbee’s intelligent documentary…represent[s] the latest achievements in Asian and Asian American filmmaking.”—Asiance Magazine
Commentary and discussion led by Patricia Ahmed, assistant professor in the Sociology Department, whose specialties include gender and development in India.

Hidden Warriors (Phan Thanh Hao, Karen Turner; 2003; 46 min.)
Thursday, March 29, 7:00 p.m.
State Theatre (inside the Kentucky Theatre) 214 E. Main Street
Co-sponsors: UK’s Asia Center, Office of International Affairs, Patterson School of Diplomacy, and the Departments of Anthropology, Geography, History, and Sociology, and One World Films and the Central Kentucky Council for Peace and Justice
Director Karen Turner will introduce, talk about her most recent trip to Vietnam, and answer questions. Reception in lobby following the screening.

North Vietnamese women who defended the strategic Ho Chi Minh Trail after 1965 tell war stories never before heard by American audiences. Interviews with women veterans and rare archival footage document how women’s service and leadership in the face of unspeakable hardship in some of the most heavily bombarded sites of the North tipped the balance between victory and defeat in the “American War.” The documentary shows how these unsung heroines cope today with lingering illness and personal tragedy.
In addition to her filmmaking, Karen Turner is a professor of Chinese and Vietnamese history at Holy Cross. She is the author, with Phan Thanh Hao, of Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam (Wiley, 1998), the basis for Hidden Warriors. Cynthia Enloe, author of Manuevers: the International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives found Turner’s book “enthralling” and “a genuine eye-opener” that “will change our understanding of the Vietnam War—and of Vietnam today.”

In my Father’s House (Fatima Jebli Ouazzani; 1997; 67 min.)
Wednesday, April 11, 7:00 p.m.
Gaines Center’s Bingham-Davis House, 218 E. Maxwell Street

The filmmaker left her father’s house in Morocco to escape the constraints her culture and its traditions have put on women. She returns now to confront those traditions, her own family and herself. Following three generations of women—her grandmother and mothers’ arranged marriages, her grandmother’s subsequent attempts to divorce, and Naima, a young woman who has returned home for a traditional wedding ceremony—she questions whether her choice for a life of her own was worth the loss of her father. “Handsome, provocative…Ouazzani’s debut feature neatly combines staged segs, diarist elements and docu observation.”—Dennis Harvey, Variety Hot Docs Film Festival “Best International Documentary”

Commentary and discussion led by Patricia Cooper, an associate professor in the History Department and the Gender and Women’s Studies program, and UK students Sunshine Al-Jumaily and Roula Allouch.

All films free and open to the public