DOC NYC: Films About Women

This year, DOC NYC features a number of films that focus on stories and issues affecting women.

VENUS AND SERENA Venus and Serena gains unprecedented access into the lives of the tennis-conquering Williams sisters during the most intimidating year of their careers. Over the course of 2011, Venus grappled with an energy-sapping autoimmune disease while Serena battled back from a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. But neither sister let adversity hold her back. Filmmakers Maiken Baird and Michelle Major (who worked in Peter Jennings’ documentary unit at ABC News) join forces with esteemed collaborators including editor Sam Pollard (When the Levees Broke) and musician Wyclef Jean. The film “gives a better sense of the sisters? than do reams of sports reportage” (Variety).

Expected to Attend: Michelle Major

TURNING US PREMIERE The indelible music of Antony and the Johnsons has won the admiration of Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, and others. Turning captures the band in concert collaborating with the filmmaker Charles Atlas, celebrating 13 women taking the stage who, like Antony himself, are not easily categorized personas. Many of them are transgendered, some gay, some straight. All have stories to tell about the hard-won struggle to be themselves, expressed with the transcendent power of Antony’s music.

Expected to Attend: Antony, Charles Atlas

BIRTH STORY: INA MAY GASKIN & THE FARM MIDWIVES In 1970, on a caravan of hippie school buses headed to a patch of rural Tennessee land, Ina May Gaskin and her friends began delivering each other’s babies. Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin & the Farm Midwives shows how these women, with counterculture heroine Gaskin as their leader, not only taught themselves midwifery from the ground up, but, with their families, founded an entirely communal, agricultural society called The Farm, where they changed a generation’s approach to childbirth.

Expected to Attend: Ina May Gaskin, Sara Lamm, Mary Wigmore

A GIRL AND A GUN WORLD PREMIERE A Girl and a Gun presents a feminine perspective on an object whose history is deeply bound up with men and masculinity. Filmed throughout the US, this documentary delves into the psyche of the American gun world. Reaching far beyond Hollywood’s hypersexualized femmes fatales, the film candidly explores the modern American woman through intimate portraits encompassing issues of protection, power, feminism, and violence. A Girl and A Gun is a complex and thoughtful meditation on a deadly serious issue.

Expected to Attend: Cathryne Czubek

RAFEA: SOLAR MAMA US PREMIERE Rafea is a Bedouin woman who lives with her daughters in a village near the Jordan-Iraq border. She is given a chance to travel to India to attend the Barefoot College, where illiterate women from around the world are trained in six months to be solar engineers. If Rafea succeeds, she will be able to electrify her village, train more engineers, and provide for her daughters. But can she overcome all the obstacles that stand in her way?

Expected to Attend: Mona Eldaief

SWEET DREAMS A decade after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Kiki Katese, a pioneering theatre director, founded Ingoma Nshya, the country’s first female drumming troupe, offering healing for women from both sides of the conflict. When Kiki met the owners of Brooklyn’s Blue Marble Ice Cream, she invited them to help Ingoma Nshya open Rwanda’s first local ice cream shop. Sweet Dreams follows this remarkable group of Rwandan women as they create their own unique path to a future of peace and possibility.

Expected to Attend: Rob Fruchtman, Lisa Fruchtman, Special Guests

BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL Bettie Page’s unabashed sexual expression and provocative fetish poses set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution and ushered in a modern era in fashion and pop culture. With her razor sharp wit and Tennessee twang, Page narrates this documentary through a rare audio interview revealing her secret past. Bettie Page Reveals All! is an intimate look at the rise, fall, and rise again of one of the world’s most recognized and controversial sex symbols.

Expected to Attend: Mark Mori

WONDER WOMEN! THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN SUPERHEROINES Tracing the fascinating origins, evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman, this lively documentary takes you from the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to the blockbusters of today. A look behind the scenes with Lynda Carter (TV’s Wonder Woman), Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman), comic book writers and artists, and reallife superheroines such as Gloria Steinem, Kathleen Hanna and others, this film offers an enlightening and entertaining counterpoint to the male-dominated superhero genre.

Expected to Attend: Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, Kelcey Edwards

OMA & BELLA Oma & Bella is an intimate glimpse into the world of Regina and Bella, two octogenarian friends who live together in Berlin. Their memories of the Holocaust are never distant as they lovingly prepare the same sumptuous meals they ate as children and converse about questions of heritage, memory and identity. As the film follows them through their daily lives, a portrait emerges of two women with a close bond, a light sense of humor, vivid stories, and a deep fondness for Eastern European cooking.

THE MOSUO SISTERS US PREMIERE When they lose their jobs in Beijing, Juma and Latso, sisters from one of the world’s last matriarchal societies, are thrust into the worldwide economic downturn. Left with few options, they return home to their remote village in the Himalayas. But home is no longer what it was, as growing exposure to the modern world has irrevocably altered the traditions of the Mosuo. Determined to keep their family out of poverty, one sister sacrifices her dream of an education and stays home to farm, while the other leaves to try her luck again in the city.

Expected to Attend: Marlo Poras

ETHEL A feature-length documentary about the remarkable life of Ethel Kennedy, this film is a revealing portrait through the eyes of those who know her best—her family. Directed by her Emmy Award-winning daughter, Rory Kennedy, and featuring candid interviews with Ethel and seven of her children, Ethel is a deeply personal look inside a political dynasty strengthened by family bonds, a compassion for others, and a wisdom forged from both hardship and triumph. Courtesy of HBO Documentary Films. 

Expected to Attend: Rory Kennedy

SING ME THE SONGS THAT SAY I LOVE YOU: A CONCERT FOR KATE MCGARRIGLE US PREMIERE In May 2011, family and friends gathered in New York City’s Town Hall Theater to pay tribute to the late, great singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle. A prolific musician, her untimely death shattered not only her family and friends, but legions of fans worldwide. Director Lian Lunson, who met McGarrigle’s son Rufus Wainwright while directing Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man, lovingly brings this story to the screen. The resulting film is part concert (with performances by Wainwright, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, Antony Hegarty and others) and part intimate look at a family coming to terms with the loss of a loved one.

Expected to Attend: Lian Lunson, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright