WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES MEDIA MATERIALS

Title, Format,
& Running Time / Description / Availability
A
Abortion, Morality, and the Liberation of Women / This film documents an August, 2009 discussion between Susan Wickund, M.D., and Sunsara Taylor, and aims to bring scientific and moral clarity to the topic of women’s right to abortion. / WGST Office
Access on Location – David Suzuki
VHS – 120 minutes / No description available. / WGST Office
After the Rape
DVD – 58 minutes / In 2002, Mukhtaran Mai, a rural Pakistani woman from a remote part of the Punjab, was gang-raped by order of her tribal council as punishment for her younger brother’s alleged relationship with a woman from another clan. Instead of committing suicide or living in shame, Mukhtaran spoke out, fighting for justice in the Pakistani courts—making world headlines. Further defying custom, she started two schools for girls in her village and a crisis center for abused women. / WGST Office
An Attentive Life
VHS – 48 minutes / Looks behind the familiar image of Edna Staebler as a writer celebrated for her best-selling cookbooks since Food That Really Schmecks first appeared in 1968. In her recollections she describes a society that has slowly broadened its attitudes toward women like her who insist on making their way in the world as writers. / WGST Office
Anybody’s Son Will Do
VHS – 57 minutes / The film takes us to the Parris Island Marine Recruit Training Depot in South Carolina, U.S.A., to observe the rituals that will transform a motley group of 18-year-olds into soldiers of the United States Marine Corps, unquestionably the roughest, toughest branch in the U.S. military. Anybody’s Son Will Do is a gripping study of what it takes to change ordinary civilians into the staple of war – soldiers ready to kill, even to die, for their country. / WGST Office
may be damaged
Apocalypse Now
DVD – 153 minutes / A vision of man’s heart of darkness revealed through the madness of the Vietnam War. / WGST Office
(donated)
Title, Format,
& Running Time / Description / Availability
B
Banging the Door Down: Women & the Economy
VHS – 26 minutes / Economy is something you need a key for. Either you already have that key or you have to bang the door down. From office to forest to kitchen, Manitoba women talk about the economy. / WGST Office
Battling Eating Disorders
DVD – 29 minutes / Anorexia and other eating disorders exert a frightening degree of control over millions of teenagers, especially young women. This program represents a powerful weapon in the battle against eating disorders, pinpointing their origins in body image and self-esteem issues. / WGST Office
Beloved
DVD – 171 minutes / On a difficult journey to find freedom, Sethe is constantly confronted by the secrets that have haunted her for years. / WGST Office
(donated)
Beyond Good & Evil: Children, Media & Violent Times
VHS – 37 minutes / This video examines how the “good and evil” rhetoric has taught children to dehumanize the enemy, justify their killing and treat the suffering of innocent civilians as necessary sacrifice. The interviews include media scholars, child psychologists, teachers, educators, and the children themselves. / WGST Office
Blindspot: Some Things We’d Rather Not See
VHS – 11 minutes / Joe’s dad comes to visit, but instead of opening the door Joe’s mom calls the police. All Joe wants is to see his dad. All Anne wants is protection from Richard. All Richard wants is to get his family back. A family crisis seen through the eyes of a 6 year old boy. / WGST Office
Borat
DVD – 93 minutes / Political comedy / WGST Office
(donated)
Bordertown
DVD – 114 minutes / A powerful story of life on the border between the United States and Mexico, Bordertown is based on the tragic account of hundreds of women working in American-owned factories who have been brutally raped and murdered in Juarez, a city gripped by fear. The attacks have been covered up by the local authorities, and still continue today. / WGST Office
(This) Brave Nation
DVD / Documentary Series / WGST Office
(donated)
Breakfast on Pluto
DVD – 129 minutes / A boy is abandoned as a baby and left on the doorstep of a priest. From a very young age, he realizes he is different from the other boys but steadfastly refuses to change. / WGST Office
(donated)
Title, Format,
& Running Time / Description / Availability
(The) Business of Being Born
DVD – 85 minutes / Birth is a miracle, a rite of passage, a natural part of life. But birth is also big business. Compelled to explore the subject after the delivery of her first child, actress Ricki Lake recruits filmmaker Abby Epstein to question the way American women have babies. The film interlaces intimate birth stories with surprising historical, political and scientific insights and shocking statistics about the current maternity care system. When director Epstein discovers she is pregnant during the making of the film, the journey becomes even more personal. Should most births be viewed as a natural life process, or should every delivery be treated as a potentially catastrophic medical emergency? / Luther College Library.
Title, Format,
& Running Time / Description / Availability
C
Club Native
DVD – 78 minutes / Filmaker Tracey Deer uses Kahnawake, her hometown, as a lens to probe deeply into the history and contemporary reality of Aboriginal identity. Following the stories of four women, she reveals the exclusionary attitudes that divide the community and many others like it across Canada. / WGST Office
(The) Codes of Gender
DVD – 72 minutes / Communication scholar Sut Jhally applies the late sociologist Erving Goffman’s groundbreaking analysis of advertising to the contemporary commercial landscape in this provocative new film about gender as a ritualized cultural performance. Uncovering a remarkable pattern of gender-specific poses, Jhally explores Goffman’s central claim that the way the body is displayed in advertising communicates normative ideas about masculinity and femininity. The film looks beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that focus on biological difference or issues of surface objectification and beauty, taking us into the two-tiered terrain of identity and power relations. With its sustained focus on the fundamental importance of gender, power, and how our perceptions of what it means to be a man or a woman get reproduced and reinforced on the level of culture in our everyday lives, The Codes of Gender is certain to inspire discussion and debate across a range of disciplines. / WGST Office
Communalism & Religious Fundamentalism
DVD – 55 minutes / Talks by: Pervez Hoodboy (Pakistan), Tanika Sarkar (India), Amargeet Kaur (India), and Anonymous (Algeria) / WGST Office
Compañeras
DVD – 40 minutes / WGST Office
(The) Company of Wolves
VHS – 95 minutes
2 copies / Beware the woods! There, the wise old Granny weaves her vivid tales of folklore and fantasy. There, witches and wolves mix with reality in her granddaughter Rosaleen’s adolescent dreams, stirred by passion and foretelling the fate of all young girls who stray from the forest path. / WGST Office
Title, Format,
& Running Time / Description / Availability
Consuming Women
DVD – time length unknown / In March 2005, the Women’s Studies Program at the University of British Columbia presented Consuming Women – an undergraduate conference, at the Asian Studies Centre on the UBC campus. The conference brought together undergraduate students across British Columbia from science, social science, humanities, fine arts, and beyond in an informal, friendly, and supportive atmosphere where they presented their work, met others in related areas, debated different points of view, and engaged in conversations relating to women’s studies. DVD contains highlights from the conference including excerpts from the 3 keynote speakers, student presentations and interviews. / WGST Office
(The) Corporate Theft of Water
DVD – 43 minutes / A Talk by Maude Barlow / WGST Office
(The) Corporation
VHS – 145 minutes / Case studies, anecdotes and true confessions reveal behind-the-scenes tensions and influences in several corporate and anti-corporate dramas. Each illuminates an aspect of the corporation’s complex character. Featuring 40 interviews including 7 CEOs, 3 VPs, 2 whistleblowers, a broker, a spy, and the FBI’s top consultant on psychopaths. / WGST Office
Cronos
DVD – 92 minutes / Faced with his own mortality, an ingenious alchemist tries to perfect an invention that would provide him with the key to eternal live. / WGST Office
(donated)
Cry Freetown
VHS – 27 minutes
2 copies / Award-winning cameraman returns to Sierra Leone to expose the horror of his country’s civil war that he risked his life to document. This film is a unique and harrowing account of the innocent victims of a civil war largely ignored by the West. / WGST Office
Title, Format,
& Running Time / Description / Availability
D
(The) Date Rape Backlash
Media & the Denial of Rape – DVD - 57 minutes / Susan Faludi and Katha Politt trace the origins of the backlash to opinion pieces which appeared in right-wing/conservative journals as a response to the mainstream media’s “discovery” of date rape; and they explain how the “rape-type” idea, initially put forth by conservative makes, was catalyzed into mainstream media “controversy” when that same idea was mimicked by a young woman named Katie Roiphe (The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus). / WGST Office
December 6th: Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women
DVD – time length unknown / The December 6th slideshow begins on December 6th, 1989, when 14 women were murdered at L’Ecole Polytechnique of the University of Montreal. The devastation, loss and political awakening caused by their assassinations are revealed in epitaphs written by members of their families. From there we follow the activism of a Vancouver community under siege, struggling to draw attention to the high number of women murdered and missing on the Downtown Eastside. Here we witness the birth of the anti-murder campaign organized by Indigenous women; the February 14th Women’s Memorial March. / WGST Office
Deconstructing Supper
DVD – 47.30 minutes / Deconstructing Supper is an eye-opening journey into the billion dollar battle to control global food production. Starting with a gourmet meal in his five-star restaurant, Chef John Bishop travels the world, on a personal quest to find out what our food choices are today. From North America to Great Britain to India and back, Bishop meets scientists and activists with opposing views on genetic engineering, journalists and farmers who have experienced the might of giant biotech corporations and organic farmers in India who are fighting to preserve the natural biodiversity of crops. / WGST Office
Designer Babies:
The Dangers of Corporate Genetics
DVD – 59 minutes / Imagine a future in which physical strength and assertiveness are the top-selling items on “baby menus.” This program explores that possibility and other frightening implications of market-driven genetic engineering. Showing how the government-funded Human Genome Project has become highly lucrative for pharmaceutical companies, the video examines cases of exploitative gene harvesting in Iceland and Peru, where isolated ethnic populations contain commercially valuable DNA. Interviews with prominent scientists and activists highlight the dangers of patenting genomic data and an absence of public discourse about artificial gene selection. / WGST Office
Title, Format,
& Running Time / Description / Availability
(The) Devils
DVD – 111 minutes / This version of Ken Russell’s masterpiece restores all of the cut footage that was removed when the film was released including the never before seen “Rape of Christ” sequence. Includes 70 minutes of Extra Features Original Theatrical trailer Plot Summary for The Devils 1971 Cardinal Richelieu and his power-hungry entourage seek to take control of pre-rennaisance France, but need to destroy Father Grandier – the priest who runs the fortified town that prevents them from exerting total control. So they seek to destroy him by setting him up as a warlock in control of a devil-possessed nunnery, the mother superior of which is sexually obsessed by him. A mad witch-hunter is brought in to gather evidence against the priest, ready for the big trial / WGST Office
Diagnosing Difference
DVD – 63.45 minutes / A documentary film featuring thirteen transgender and genderqueer scholars, artists & activists discussing the impact and implications of the Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis on their lives and communities. / WGST Office
DNA - Pandora’s Box
DVD - 57 minutes / When it comes to DNA science, nobody has a better track record than Jim Watson; what makes him controversial, however, is his vision of its future. This program looks inside the Pandora’s box of genetic manipulation with the man who opened it. Watson serves as guide, exploring some of the current and proposed ways scientists are improving humankind. He also addresses some of his critics, including a family with a son who has Down syndrome, and Dr. Kay Jamison, a world expert on bipolar disorder and a bipolar patient herself. / WGST Office
DNA: Secret of Photo 51
DVD – 56 minutes / On April 25, 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published their groundbreaking discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, the molecule essential for passing on our genes and the “secret of life”. But their crucial breakthrough depended on the pioneering work of another biologist—Rosalind Franklin. She would never know that Watson and Crick had seen a crucial piece of her data without her permission. This was an X-ray image, “Photo 51” that proved to be a vital clue in their decoding of the double helix. Hear the inside story and new evidence of just how close Franklin came to making the vital double helix discovery herself. / WGST Office