A journey between the sacred and profane in which the Femminielli, an ancient non-binary Neapolitan figure, fight for their survival against the globalizing tides of modernity.
Arguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.
Katie Couric travels across the U.S. to talk with scientists, psychologists, activists, authors and families about the complex issue of gender.
Five transgender women share their prison experiences. Interviews with attorneys, doctors, and other experts are also included.
For 18-year-old Finnish–Kosovan Fatu, a simple visit to the grocery store feels as nerve-racking as a lunar expedition: for the first time in his life, he’s wearing makeup in public. Luckily his best friend Rai, a young woman on the spectrum of autism, is there to ferociously support him through the voyage.
The gripping true story that reveals how an acclaimed American charity failed Some of the world's most vulnerable girls. Katie Meyler captivated Americans with the stories of girls she met in Monrovia, Liberia, who she said were so poor that they had to sell their bodies to buy clean drinking water. She started a charity called More Than Me, and in 2012 she won $1 million live on NBC to build a school of her own. She said she was saving vulnerable girls from sexual exploitation. But from the very beginning, girls were being raped by a man Meyler trusted. A yearlong ProPublica investigation delves into the question of who is responsible when those who help also cause enduring and irreversible harm.
Janet Sharrock has two children and Brent “Buddha” Barnes has three; the pair has a meet-cute at the local RSL, marry and unite their families, Brady Bunch style. Now grown up, Becky (famous for being one of only 80 people in the world with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory), Jessica (a comedian living with depression), Brendan (who aspires to take over Buddha’s repair shop), and young Kylie and Dylan laugh, cry, contemplate existence and dream big with their parents, finding joy and stability in one another as they face immense change.
Told in her own words, this candid documentary charts the unstoppable rise, sudden fall and hard-won comeback of lifestyle icon Martha Stewart.
Narrations of 3 women about their experiences, their inner fight with being feminine and masculine, and their acceptance journeys.
The destiny of women is irrevocably linked to blood. Between tradition and modernity, the female body has been marketed, honored, and mutilated.
A poetic cine-essay about race and Australia’s colonised history and how it impacts into the present offering insights into how various individuals deal with the traumatic legacies of British colonialism and its race-based policies. The film’s consultative process, with ‘Respecting Cultures’ (Tasmanian Aboriginal Protocols), offers an evolving shift in Australian historical narratives from the frontier wars, to one of diverse peoples working through historical trauma in a process of decolonisation.
$avy investigates the historical, cultural, and societal norms around women and money.
Soon after New York state passed a 2015 law that health insurance should cover transgender-related care and services, director Tania Cypriano and producer Michelle Hayashi began bringing their cameras behind the scenes at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where this remarkable documentary captures the emotional and physical journey of surgical transitioning. Lending equal narrative weight to the experiences of the center’s groundbreaking surgeon Dr. Jess Ting and those of his diverse group of patients, BORN TO BE perfectly balances compassionate personal storytelling and fly-on-the-wall vérité. It’s a film of astonishing access—most importantly into the lives, joys, and fears of the people at its center.
Two actresses take us through a series of 'raps' and sketches about what it means to be beautiful and black.
The open road presents a point of departure for director lori lozinski to process deep-seated grief. Revisiting the formative experiences that drove her ambition, lozinski examines the influence of her parents in the present light of day.
THE PERFUMED GARDEN is an exploration of the myths and realities of sensuality and sexuality in Arab society, a world of taboos and of erotic literature. Through interviews with men and women of all ages, classes, and sexual orientation, the film lifts a corner of the veil that usually shrouds discussion of this subject in the Arab world. Made by an Algerian-French woman director, the film begins by looking at the record of a more permissive history, and ends with the experiences of contemporary lovers from mixed backgrounds. It examines the personal issues raised by the desire for pleasure, amidst societal pressures for chastity and virginity. The film discusses pre-marital sex, courtship and marriage, familial pressures, private vs. public spaces, social taboos (and the desire to break them), and issues of language.
After investigating the Gilbert Rozon affair together in October 2017 in the wake of the #MeToo movement, journalists Émilie Perreault and Monic Néron are teaming up to sign this hotly current documentary that examines the failures of the justice system in matters of sexual assault.
Fred Martinez was a Navajo youth slain at the age of 16 by a man who bragged to his friends that he 'bug-smashed a fag'. But Fred was part of an honored Navajo tradition - the 'nadleeh', or 'two-spirit', who possesses a balance of masculine and feminine traits.
The history of nuns mirrors the history of all women -- in what we are taught about the past, women are almost invisible. Although today's one million nuns outnumber priests two to one, they must struggle to be heard by the all-male Roman Catholic hierarchy from which they are excluded. Behind the Veil: Nuns is the first film ever to record from a global perspective the turbulent history and remarkable achievements of women in religion, from pre-Christian Celtic communities to the radical sisters of the 1980s. Contemporary nuns of strength, dignity and commitment speak of their lives and of their predecessors.
A verité legal drama about Judge Kholoud Al-Faqih, the first woman appointed to a Shari'a court in the Middle East, whose career provides rare insights into both Islamic law and gendered justice.