The M Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause

From a high school art class to a local radio station, the day-to-day lives of several women coalesce into a poetic documentation of women’s presence and physicality across everyday spaces.

Davina was 44 and felt like she was losing it - hot flushes, depression, mental fog. Now she tells her menopause story, busting midlife taboos from sex to hormone treatment.

Rosemarie Blank made this film, which focuses on women aged around fifty, in collaboration with the organisation VIDO (Dutch: Vrouwen in de Overgang/Women in the Menopause). An all but invisible group of housewives who have spent their lives putting themselves last to ensure that their husbands and children can reach their full potential.

Exploring the subject of menopause in Ireland, seeking to broaden the conversation around a subject often considered taboo and finding out how real women experience this life event which affects half the population.

Virtually every woman who enters menopause has questions about what’s happening to her body and how to effectively deal with the changes. The broad availability of medicines, remedies and even hormones even conveys the concept that menopause as a curable “deficiency disorder”. This documentary takes a look at the scientific and medical contexts of menopause as well as the latest findings in international research. Are artificial hormones medically necessary or a seductive, supposed fountain of youth? Do they truly assist in alleviating the suffering of women, or are they lifestyle drugs reflecting a zeitgeist in which ageing is no longer acceptable and older people are seen as “flawed”? A visual and provoking science documentary about the hot time of menopause that also takes a look at whether and how the hormones in men likewise go crazy.

A documentary about hot flashes, organ descent, bladder weakness, cellulite? Sounds like a horror movie, doesn't it? But what if it's quite the opposite, and instead opens the way to a profound questioning of our identity as women, of what we wish to experience and never experience again? Through the eyes of 12 women, Menopauses explores this time of life through stories told with lucidity and humor, which ultimately raise a broader question: until what age does society really consider us to be women?

You-Turn is a short documentary that follows three menopausal women as they embark on a journey of reconnection and self-acceptance. After the damage that menopause has caused to their body image, this film explores the proces of speaking your truth, recognizing it’s worth, and being proud of it.

Ménopositive

A positive look at menopause. While different women confide how they experienced this natural and important passage in their lives, a female character tames her new environment and welcomes new ways of perceiving and projecting her femininity.

Unabashed comedian Lynne Koplitz offers a woman's take on being crazy, the benefits of childlessness and the three things all men really want.

Se-eun is a janitor who is always the first to arrive at the pool where she works. One day, she runs into an old friend who is now a swimming instructor.

When her only daughter goes off to university, an empty nest mother gets stuck taking care of her daughter's heart-broken ex-boyfriend, who she can't stand.

An unlikely basketball team of unappreciated middle-aged Texas women, all former high school champs, challenge the current high school girls’ state champs to raise money for breast cancer prevention. Sparks fly as the women go to comic extremes to prove themselves on and off the court, become a national media sensation, and gain a new lease on life.

CONFESSIONS OF A MENOPAUSAL FEMME FATALE is a fearless stand-up storytelling concert film in which Shakoor uses raw honesty, wit, music, and personal narrative to share her 12-year journey through menopause—a transformative experience that reshaped her identity as a woman, mother, artist, and human being. Framed around a return trip to Hawaii nearly 40 years after she once called it home, the story unfolds when a panic attack triggers deep introspection, forcing Shakoor to confront unresolved struggles, including addiction, postpartum depression, loss, and self-reinvention. Through wit, song, and unflinching truth, Shakoor breaks the silence surrounding menopause in a powerful performance that challenges stigma, invites laughter, and inspires radical self-acceptance.

Menopause turns a hot flashin' wallflower into a super-hot superhero.

Jungok, a housewife who suffers from menopausal symptoms after her period stops, sells her unused sanitary pads on an online trading platform. On the day of the trade, she meets a young girl.

A Life of Mao

Hong Kong's high-speed rail link, the demolition of Choi Yuen Village, the impending budget and the influence of the global Occupy movement are at the centre of independent filmmaker Lo's timely measure of the city's pulse. Ostensibly the third entry in a trilogy that began with 21 years after. (2010) and to be continued (2010), which also captured public reaction to watershed moments in Hong Kong's political life since 2009. The documentary was built upon the material used in its previous installment (to be continued, 46 minutes). It disproves the notion of a passive Hong Kong in a chronicle of a generation poised for massive social change.

Bruce Brown's The Endless Summer is one of the first and most influential surf movies of all time. The film documents American surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August as they travel the world during California’s winter (which, back in 1965 was off-season for surfing) in search of the perfect wave and ultimately, an endless summer.

A detailed chronicle of the famous 1969 tour of the United States by the British rock band The Rolling Stones, which culminated with the disastrous and tragic concert held on December 6 at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, an event of historical significance, as it marked the end of an era: the generation of peace and love suddenly became the generation of disillusionment.