Grundtvig Partnership “Everybody can do it!” (ECDI)
30 Feminist Film
Title Description The Accused (1988) The Accused is a 1988 American drama film starring Jodie Foster and Kelly McGillis , directed by Jonathan Kaplan and written by Tom Topor.
Loosely based on the real life gang rape of Cheryl Araujo that occurred at Big Dan's Bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on March 6, 1983, this film was one of the first Hollywood films to deal with rape in a direct manner, and led to other films (including TV films and shows) on the subject.
Jodie Foster , for her portrayal as Sarah Tobias, earned the Academy Award for Best Actress , the film's sole nomination. The Accused also became the first film to win the Best Actress Academy Award without being nominated in any other category since The Three Faces o f Eve in 1957, when Joanne Woodward won Best Actress, the film's sole nomination.
The Ballad of Little Jo
The Ballad of Little Jo is a 1993 American western film inspired by the true story of a society woman who tries to escape the stigma of bearing a child out of wedlock by going out to the West , and living disguised as a man.
1 The Burning Bed (1984) The Burning Bed is the name of both a non fiction book by Faith McNulty about battered housewife Francine Hughes, and the TV movie adaptation written by Rose Leiman Goldemberg.
After thirteen years of domestic abuse at the hands of her husband, James Berlin ("Mickey") Hughes, Francine (Farrah Fawcett) set fire to the bed he was sleeping in at their Dansville, Michigan home on March 9, 1977. Mickey Hughes was killed and the house destroyed in the resulting inferno.
The Circle (2000)
The Circle is a 2000 drama film by Iranian independent filmmaker Jafar Panahi that criticizes the treatment of women in Iran. The film has won several awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000, but it is banned in Iran.
The Color Purple (1985) The Color Purple is a 1985 American period drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker. It was Spielberg's eighth film as a director, and was a change from the summer blockbusters for which he had become famous. The film starred Danny Glover, Desreta Jackson, Margaret Avery, Oprah Winfrey, Adolph Caesar, Rae Dawn Chong, and introduced Whoopi Goldberg as Celie Harris.
Filmed in Anson and Union counties in North Carolina, the film tells the story of a young African American girl named Celie Harris and shows the problems African American women faced during the early 1900s, including poverty, racism, and sexism. Celie is transformed as she finds her self worth through the help of two strong female companions.
2 Private Banjamin (1980) Private Benjamin is a 1980 American comedy film starring Goldie Hawn. The film was one of the biggest box office hits of 1980 and also spawned a short lived television series.
Judy Benjamin (Goldie Hawn) is an American woman who joins the U.S. Army after her new husband (Albert Brooks) dies on their wedding night during sex. Duped by a sneaky recruiting sergeant, Jim Ballard (Harry Dean Stanton), who lets her believe military life to be more glamorous than it is, she has a rude awakening in boot camp. After getting in trouble constantly, Judy wants to quit, and is astonished to learn that she can't.
Silkwood
The story of Karen Silkwood, a metallurgy worker at a plutonium processing plant who was purposefully contaminated, psychologically tortured and possibly murdered to prevent her from exposing blatant worker safety violations at the plant.
Stars: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher
G.I. Jane (1997) G.I. Jane is a 1997 American action film directed by Ridley Scott, starring Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen and Anne Bancroft. The film tells the fictional story of the first woman to undergo training in U.S. Navy Special Warfare Group.
3 Gas Food Lodging (1992)
Gas Food Lodging is a 1992 movie directed by Allison Anders about a waitress trying to find romance while raising two daughters in a trailer park. It stars Brooke Adams, Ione Skye, and Fairuza Balk. The film was adapted from the novel Don't Look and It Won't Hurt by Richard Peck. The title of the film is derived from road signs on American interstate highways directing travelers to those respective service establishments near highway exits.
The Group (1966) The Group is a 1966 ensemble film directed by Sidney Lumet based on the novel of the same name by Mary McCarthy about a group of female graduates from a Vassar like college during the early 1930s.
The cast of this social satire includes Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman, Shirley Knight, Jessica Walter, Kathleen Widdoes, and Joanna Pettet. The film also features small roles for Hal Holbrook, Carrie Nye, James Broderick, Larry Hagman and Richard Mulligan. For its time, the movie touched on some controversial topics, such as free love, contraception, abortion, lesbianism and mental illness.
The Hours (2002) The Hours is a 2002 drama film directed by Stephen Daldry, and starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne
Moore and Ed Harris. The screenplay by David Hare is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same title by Michael Cunningham.
The plot focuses on three women of different generations whose lives are interconnected by the novel Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: a New Yorker preparing an award party
for her AIDS stricken long time friend and poet, a pregnant 1950s California housewife with a young boy and an unhappy marriage and Virginia Woolf herself (Kidman) in
1920s England, who is struggling with depression and mental illness whilst trying to write her novel.
4 If These Walls Could Talk
If These Walls Could Talk is a 1996 made for cable film, broadcast on HBO. It follows the plights of three different women and their experiences with abortion. Each of the three stories takes place in the same house, 22 years apart:
1952, 1974, and 1996. All three segments were co written
by Nancy Savoca. Savoca directed the first and second segment while Cher directed the third. The women's experiences in each vignette are designed to demonstrate the popular views of society on the issue in each of the given decades.
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980) The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter is a 1980 documentary film by Connie Field about the American women who went to work during World War II to do "men's jobs". In 1996, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
The film's title refers to "Rosie the Riveter", the cultural icon that represented women who manned the manufacturing plants which produced munitions and material during World War II.
Little Women (1994) Little Women is a 1994 drama film directed by Gillian Armstrong. The screenplay by Robin Swicord is based on the Louisa May Alcott novel of the same name.
The film focuses on the March sisters beautiful Meg (Trini Alvarado), tempestuous Jo (Winona Ryder), tender Beth (Claire Danes), and romantic Amy (Kirsten Dunst) growing up in Concord, Massachusetts during and after the American Civil War. With their father away fighting in the war, the girls struggle with major and minor problems under the guidance of their strong willed mother, affectionately called Marmee (Susan Sarandon). As a means of escaping some of their problems, the sisters revel in performing in romantic plays written by Jo in their attic theater.
5 Matrubhoomi: a Nation Without Women (2003) Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women is a 2003 Indian film written and directed by Manish Jha. The film examines the impact of female foeticide and female infanticide on the gender balance and consequently the stability and attitudes of society.
Its storyline bears some resemblance to real life instances of gender imbalance and economics resulting in fraternal polyandry and bride buying in some parts of India. It depicts a future dystopia in an Indian village populated exclusively by males due to female infanticide over the years.
Norma Rae (1979)
Norma Rae is a 1979 American drama film that tells the story of a factory worker from a small town in North Carolina, who becomes involved in the labor union activities at the textile factory where she works.
The film stars Sally Field in the title role, Beau Bridges as Norma Rae's husband, Sonny, and Ron Leibman as union organizer Reuben Warshowsky.
North Country (2005)
North Country is a 2005 American drama film directed by Niki Caro. The screenplay by Michael Seitzman was inspired by the 2002 book Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, which chronicled the case of Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Company .
6 Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony (1999)
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony is a 1999 documentary by Ken Burns produced for National Public Radio and WETA. The documentary explores the movement for women's suffrage in the United States in the 19th century, focusing on leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. and on VHS November 9, 1999.
The Portrait of a Lady (1996) The Portrait of a Lady is a 1996 film adaptation of Henry James's novel The Portrait of a Lady directed by Jane Campion.
The film stars Nicole Kidman, Barbara Hershey, John Malkovich, Mary Louise Parker, Martin Donovan, Shelley Duvall, Richard E. Grant, Shelley Winters, Viggo Mortensen, Valentina Cervi, Christian Bale, and John Gielgud.
The film tells the story of Isabel Archer (Kidman), an innocent young woman of independent means who is manipulated by her "friend" Madame Merle (Hershey) and the devious Gilbert Osmond (Malkovich).
Ruby in Paradise (1993) Ruby in Paradise is a 1993 film written, directed, and edited by Victor Nuñez, and starring Ashley Judd, Todd Field, Bentley Mitchum, Allison Dean, and Dorothy Lyman. It is a homage to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
The film is a character study, proceeding at a leisurely pace with Ruby's introspective comments interspersed with routine scenes at the souvenir store or conversations with her friend Rochelle (played by Dean), or the men she dates (played by Field and Mitchum).
7 Searching for Debra Winger (2002)
Searching for Debra Winger is a 2002 American documentary film conceived and directed by Rosanna Arquette. It presents a series of interviews with leading actresses who discuss the various pressures they face as women working in the film industry while trying to juggle their professional commitments with their personal responsibilities to their families and themselves.
Sisters of '77(2005) Sisters of '77 is a documentary film that chronicles an unprecedented event in women's history, the first National Women's Conference in Houston, Texas in November 1977. The purpose of the National Women's Conference was to end discrimination against women and promote their equal rights. The conference was the first federally funded women's conference, and brought together over 20,000 women and men from around the United States.
Sisters of '77 provides a look at a pivotal weekend that changed the course of history and the lives of the women who attended. The film incorporates rare archival footage and interviews of leaders relating this history to the present. The conference attendees included former first ladies Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, and Rosalynn Carter.
The Smiling Madame Beudet (1922)
La Souriante Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame Beudet ) is a short French silent film made in 1922, directed by famed surrealist director Germaine Dulac. It is considered by many to be one of the first truly "feminist" films. It tells the story of an intelligent woman trapped in a loveless marriage.
8 Strike (2006) Strike is a Polish language film produced by a mainly German group, released in 2006 and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. The film is broadly a docudrama. It covers the formation of Solidarity. The action centers around work and labor organizing in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland.
The film follows the life of Agnieszka Kowalska (Katharina Thalbach) in about three segments covering first her life as a dedicated worker in communist Poland of the early Sixties (DVD chapters 1 4), then following events leading to the Polish 1970 protests (chapters 5 10), and finally the early Eighties including the dedication of the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970, the Gdańsk Agreement, and Martial law in Poland (chapters 11 15).
Swing Shift (1984) Swing Shift is a 1984 feature film directed by Jonathan Demme and produced by and starring Goldie Hawn with Kurt Russell. It also starred Christine Lahti, Fred Ward and Ed Harris.
During the Second World War, Kay Walsh (Goldie Hawn) is a woman who has been assigned to work in an armaments factory in California while her husband Jack (Ed Harris), a Leading Seaman, is overseas in naval service.
Lonely and vulnerable, Kay falls for the charms of another man, a musician named Lucky (Kurt Russell), and befriends her embittered neighbor Hazel (Christine Lahti), a former singer. The three of them enjoy their time together until Kay's husband comes home and realizes what has occurred.
Swings Or Roundabouts Jacke wie Hose (English language title: Swings Or (1953) Roundabouts ) is an East German comedy film, directed by Eduard Kubat. It was released in 1953.
After a new government law forbids women to operate heavy machinery in steel factories, a group of female workers that is determined to lift the ban proposes a competition to their male counterparts: those who will produce the greatest quantity of steel will win. The men are certain that they will be victorious. One of them, Ernst Hollup, is angered by his wife's involvement with the other team, and he demands that she will resign and become a housewife. The women develop a wagon that carries the molten iron to the steel furnace and greatly simplifies their work. They win the competition, as well as the respect of the men. The government lifts the ban.
9 An Unmarried Woman An Unmarried Woman is a 1978 American comedy drama (1978) film written and directed by Paul Mazursky.
It tells the story of the wealthy New York wife Erica Benton (Jill Clayburgh) whose “perfect” life is shattered when her stockbroker husband Martin (Michael Murphy) leaves her for a younger woman. The film documents Erica's attempts at being single again, where she suffers with confusion, sadness, and rage. As her life progresses, she begins to bond with several friends and finds herself inspired and even feels happier by her renewed liberation. The story also touches on the overall sexual liberation of the 1970s. Erica eventually finds love with a rugged, yet sensitive British artist (Alan Bates).
Whale Rider (2002)
Whale Rider is a 2002 drama film directed by Niki Caro, based on the novel of the same name by Witi Ihimaera. The film stars Keisha Castle Hughes as Kahu Paikea Apirana, a 12 year old Maori girl who wants to become the chief of the tribe. Her grandfather Koro believes that this is a role reserved for males only.
Women without Men (2009)
Women Without Men is a 2009 film adaptation of a Shahrnush Parsipur novel, directed by Shirin Neshat.
Shirin Neshat is an Iranian born artist and photographer whose work explores gender issues in the Islamic world. Women without Men is Neshat's first dramatic feature. Neshat, banned from even visiting Iran since 1996, lives and works in New York City. Neshat left Iran in 1979, just before the Islamic Revolution that drove the Shah into exile. The film profiles the lives of four women living in Tehran in 1953, during the American backed coup that returned the Shah of Iran to power.
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