Monthly Archives - July 2016

‘Acting Our Age’ and other titles from Women Make Movies now available on NJVID

This week NJVID team has digitized and added new titles from the commercial video distributor – Women Make Movies. The content includes topics such as aging in women, a spotlight on Oscar nominated actress Beah Richards and many more topics. These titles can now be licensed by any NJVID member for streaming access. The complete titles in this list are:

  • Acting Our Age: A film About Women Growing Old – An invigorating antidote for American culture’s one-dimensional image of older women, this classic film offers empowering insights about women and aging for every generation. Personal portraits of six ordinary women in their 60’s and 70’s who share their lives. In candid interviews that tackle a range of thought-provoking topics, including self-image, sexuality, financial concerns, dying, and changing family relationships, members of the group display both a vibrant strength of spirit and inspiring zest for life.

  • Beah: A Black Woman Speaks – This film, the directorial debut of actress LisaGay Hamilton, celebrates the life of legendary African American actress, poet and political activist Beah Richards, best known for her Oscar nominated role in Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner. While Richards’ struggled to overcome racial stereotypes throughout her long career onstage and onscreen in Hollywood and New York, she also had an influential role in the fight for Civil Rights, working alongside the likes of Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois and Louise Patterson.
  • Out in South Africa –  In 1994, Barbara Hammer was invited to South Africa to present a retrospective of her 77 films and videos at Out in South Africa, the first gay and lesbian film festival on the African continent. While in South Africa she taught several groups of people how to use video, and to record each other in interviews about life as a lesbian or gay man living in the townships.

  • Dream Girls –  This fascinating documentary, produced for the BBC, opens a door into the spectacular world of the Takarazuka Revue, a highly successful musical theater company in Japan. Each year, thousands of girls apply to enter the male-run Takarazuka Music School. The few who are accepted endure years of a highly disciplined and reclusive existence before they can join the Revue, choosing male or female roles. Dream Girls offers a compelling insight into gender and sexual identity and the contradictions experienced by Japanese women today.
  • Performing the Border –  A video essay set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas. This imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area.

 

The titles can be licensed from Women Make Movies at aaquilino@wmm.com

‘Dirt & Deeds in Mississippi’ and other titles from California Newsreel and Dance Films Association now available on NJVID

This week NJVID team has digitized and added new titles from the commercial video distributors – California Newsreel and Dance Films Association. The content includes topics such as racial equality and the right to vote. These titles can now be licensed by any NJVID member for streaming access. The complete titles in this list are:

  • Dirt & Deeds in Mississippi (California Newsreel) – This film uncovers the largely unknown and pivotal role played by Black landowning families in the deep South who controlled over a million acres in the 1960s. They were prepared to put their land and

    their lives on the line in the fight for racial equality and the right to vote in America’s most segregated and violently racist state.In the face of escalating terror, Black landowners and independent farmers provided safe havens, collateral for jail bonds, armed protection and locations for Freedom Schools. They were often the first to attempt to register to vote and run for public office.

  • Nat Turner : A Troublesome Property (California Newsreel) – Nat Turner’s slave rebellion is a watershed event in America’s long and troubled history of slavery and racial conflict. Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property tells the story of that violent confrontation and of the ways that story has been continuously re-told during the years since 1831. It is a film about a critical moment in American history and of the multiple ways in which that moment has since been remembered. Nat Turner was a “troublesome property” for his master and he has remained a “troublesome property” for the historians, novelists, dramatists, artists and many others who have struggled to understand him.
  • BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez (California Newsreel) –  This film offers unprecedented access to the life, work and mesmerizing performances of renowned poet and activist Sonia Sanchez who describes herself as “a woman with razor blades between my teeth.” A leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and inspiration to today’s hip hop spoken word artists, Sanchez for over 60 years has helped to redefine American culture and politics as an activist in the Black, women’s and peace movements.
  • Dance on Camera 2015 (Dance Films Association) – Inaugurated In 1971 And Co-Presented Annually With The Film Society Of Lincoln Center Since 1996, Dance On Camera Festival Remains The Longest-Running Dance Film Festival In The World, Providing A Platform For Choreographic Storytelling And Creative Expression, And Intimate Access To Innovative Media Artists And Their Cinematic Works. The complete titles in this series can be viewed here

 

 

The titles can be licensed from the following representatives – California Newsreel: contact@newsreel.org; Dance Films Association: galen@dancefilms.org

‘Half The Sky’ and other titles from Ro*co Films and The Video Project now available on NJVID

This week NJVID team has digitized and added new titles from the commercial video distributors – Ro*co Films and The Video Project. The content includes topics such as empowerment of  women and girls around the world and more. These titles can now be licensed by any NJVID member for streaming access. The complete titles in this list are:

  • Half The Sky (Ro*co Films) – Actress/advocates and New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof meet individuals who are doing work to empower women and girls everywhere. These are stories of challenge, transformation and hope.
  • The Hunting Ground (Ro*co Films) – The Hunting Ground takes audiences straight to the heart of a shocking epidemic of violence and institutional cover – ups sweeping college campuses across America. The team behind the Oscar – nominated The Invisible War presents a scorching expose of the startling prevalence of sexual assault at US institutions of higher learning.

  • Living for 32 (The Video Project) – On a snowy April day at Virginia Tech in 2007, 32 students and faculty were shot and killed by a lone gunman, 17 others were wounded, and six more were injured jumping out of windows. Through the personal story of survivor Colin Goddard, Living for 32 tells the tragic tale of one of the worst gun massacres in recent American history, along with Goddard’s inspirational journey of renewal and hope. The then-21-year-old was shot four times and told he might never walk again. He lives today with three bullets still lodged in his body and a titanium rod in his left leg.Goddard revisits his former classroom for the first time in the film, and emotionally recounts the terror of that day. After recovering from his wounds and completing physical therapy, he made it his life’s mission to help ensure that a tragedy like the Virginia Tech massacre would never happen again.
  • Schools that Change Communities (The Video Project) –  Schools that Change Communities profiles a diverse group of public schools that are successfully creating higher achieving students in a different way — by turning the communities where they live into their classrooms.The film re-imagines what education can be, visiting K-12 public schools in five states across America that are engaging students in learning by solving real-world problems in a variety of communities, from economically and environmentally challenged rural areas to poverty-stricken urban neighborhoods.
The titles can be licensed from the following representatives – Ro*co Films: dana@rocofilms.com; The Video Project: rachel@videoproject.com