Kathleen Shannon: On Film, Feminism & Other Dreams

María Domínguez. La palabra libre

Moi, agricultrice

Loosely based on Charles Dicken’s book “A Tale of Two Cities”, Working Class tells the tale of underground street artists Mike Giant and Mike Maxwell and their decade long friendship that started with a tattoo. The story is told through the cities they call home by, cutting back and forth between the neighborhoods of San Francisco and San Diego, as the artists talk about their life philosophies and the work they create.

Peaches - artist, feminist, rock star. She has been challenging gender stereotypes for over 20 years and is on par with the icons of the pop and rock world. With exclusive private archive material and current footage of preparations and concerts of her 2022 jubilee tour “20 Years of Teaches of Peaches”, we learn how the Canadian Merrill Nisker became the internationally celebrated musician and electro-clash icon Peaches.

Against the stereotypes of the “ideal” woman and the symbols of Pornography, the women in the works of Greek comic artist Stavros Kioutsioukis preserve their personality: they are the girls next door who try and get their rights in Happiness and Love.

An intimate study of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century tracking feminist icon Susan Sontag’s seminal, life-changing moments through archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her own words, as read by Patricia Clarkson.

Douglas Tirola’s latest documentary traces the evolution of feminism through the lives of two exceptional women, Noel and Selma, who came of age in the ’50s when women were relegated to the roles of wives and mothers. During the height of the women’s movement, Noel, a former teen model and Playboy bunny, meets and falls in love with Selma, a tough, outspoken radical feminist. Both women choose to leave their comfortable, yet unsatisfying marriages and children to come out as lesbians. The two share a love of cooking and gardening and, in the ’70s, open Bloodroot, the first vegetarian collective restaurant and bookstore in Bridgeport, Connecticut. By interspersing archival footage and clips from The Stepford Wives, Tirola affectionately chronicles the cultural shifts of the last 40 years as Noel and Selma attempt to keep Bloodroot open as an indispensable gathering spot for progressive women.

In the 1970s, Françoise d'Eaubonne stood out in the French intellectual landscape. At 50, she has already won several literary prizes and published around forty novels and essays, but is resuming her militant fight with renewed vigor. She is the first to define ecofeminism, denouncing the common oppression of women and the planet as a consequence of patriarchy. She participated in the actions of the MLF (Women's Liberation Movement), in the creation of the FHAR (Homosexual Revolutionary Action Front) and theorized counter-violence, going so far as to sabotage the construction site of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant. This film presents unpublished documents for the first time. Drawing freely from the manuscripts and photographic archives that she bequeathed to the Memory Institute for Contemporary Publishing, her relatives and researchers, historians and publishers comment on the resonance of her feminist and ecological heritage.

"Granddaughters of Witches"? A discussion about the reality of the modern woman. Featuring anthropologist Carla Cristina Garcia and artist MC Tha.

Journeying across Varanasi, Lucknow, and Muzzafarpur in India, this documentary film traces the lost traditions and the culture of tawaifs (courtesans of North India), particularly through a song sung by Rasoolan Bai, "Lagat karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" and its lesser known, earlier version "Lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar" (recorded in a 1935 Gramophone recording). Weaving the past with the present, the film spans between personal stories as it interacts with historical events, ultimately leading to the decline of a great art form.

bell hooks is one of America's most accessible public intellectuals. In this two-part video, extensively illustrated with many of the images under analysis, she makes a compelling argument for the transformative power of cultural criticism.

A virxe roxa

Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment

A documentary on women musicians of the 1990s from the indie rock music genre, grunge and riot grrrl including Hole, Babes in Toyland, L7 and more.

A taboo in the family: the death of my great-grandmother Sofía. The surface of this history is known but not the background and much less the beginning, only its end. The tragic end The answers are in the family, in my grandparents and my uncles. This project is a tribute to her and the woman she was.

A documentary about women in the Indonesian DIY hardcore/punk scene, including interviews with musicians, photographers, and zine-makers.

A locomotive journey traversing the North to the South of the German Democratic Republic on the eve of its dissolution. Labourers, punks, mothers, intellectuals, young and old are implored to reflect on their life choices, the sacrifices they've made, and their place in the world. Despite everything, hope persists.

On March 15, 2020, Montreal sees appearing on a wall, written in black letters on white paper "Stop feminicides". It is at this moment that the Collages Feminicides Montreal collective sees the light for the first time. Now the streets of the city are carpeted with their words. Today, after the 17th feminicide, they will continue to fight and stick, until this violence stops.

With analog and digital material collected during her stay on a "Work Trip" taking care of children in an American kindergarten as a migrant. I'm not speak English proposes —as a visual autobiography— to make visible a phantasmagorical light as a metaphor for the sudaca's bodies that work in invisible care task. Migrant bodies who bear as an imperceptible force the North American Nation.

Wittig, Yes!