Top 10 Film Releases for Libraries
The Films
Fly So Far (2021)
Fly So Far (2021)1hr, 29 min. Spanish with English subtitles.
Director: Celina Escher
Distribution: Women Make Movies
Genre: Reproductive rights, Law & criminal justice
As states in the U.S. enact abortion bans, FLY SO FAR serves as a grave warning of how far government control of women’s bodies can go. This brave film from Swiss-Salvadorean filmmaker Celina Escher is set in El Salvador, a country with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, including the criminalization of those who experience miscarriages and other obstetric emergencies.
The narrative centers on Teodora Vásquez, who was in the ninth month of her second pregnancy when she fainted and suffered a stillbirth. When she woke up at the hospital, she was accused of murder and was sentenced to thirty years in prison for aggravated homicide. At Ilopango Women’s Prison, she becomes the spokesperson for The Seventeen, a group of working-class women who were all incarcerated after having miscarriages. Many of these same women became pregnant after being sexually assaulted. While it exposes brutal human rights abuses, FLY SO FAR is unmistakably a story of collective resistance, activism, sisterhood, as well as the self-determination and agency of women.
Winner, Ibero-American Competition Grand Jury Prize, Seattle International Film Festival.
Winner, Activist Documentary Award, Movies That Matter Festival.
Winner, Best Central American and Caribbean Film, Costa Rica International Film Festival.
Winner, Regional Award & Human Rights Award, One World International Film Festival.
Documentary Feature Finalist, Social Impact Media Awards.
Available to stream via Docuseek.
Un pays qui se tient sage (The Monopoly of Violence) (2020) 1 hr, 28 min. French with English closed captioning.
Director: David Dufresne
Distribution: Big World Pictures
Genre: Political science, Social justice
As anger and resentment grow in the face of social inequalities, many citizen-led protests are being repressed with an ever-increasing violence. In THE MONOPOLY OF VIOLENCE, David Dufresne gathers a panel of citizens to question, exchange and confront their views on the social order and the legitimacy of the use of force by the State.
Winner, Best Documentary, Lumiere Awards, France.
Nominee, Best Use of Footage in a Factual or Natural World Production, FOCAL International Awards.
Nominee, Best Documentary, César Awards, France.
Available to stream via Kanopy.
Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust (2022) 1hr, 24 min. English with closed-captioning.
Director: Ann Kaneko
Distribution: Good Docs
Genre: Climate change, Environmental Studies
Follows inter-generational women from three communities who defend their land, their history and their culture from the insatiable thirst of Los Angeles. In this fresh retelling of the LA water story, Native Americans, Japanese-American WWII incarcerees and environmentalists form an unexpected alliance to preserve Payahuunadü (Owens Valley), “the land of flowing water.” Featuring breathtaking photography and immersive soundscapes, the film recounts more than 150 years of history, showing how this distant valley is inextricably tied to the city of Los Angeles. It reveals the forced removals of two peoples--the Nüümü (Paiute) and the Newe (Shoshone) who were marched out of the Valley in the 1860s by the US Army and the Japanese Americans who were brought here from their West Coast homes and incarcerated in a World War II concentration camp.
Winner, Best Documentary, San Diego Asian Film Festival.
Winner, Special Jury Award for Editing, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival.
Winner, Asian Voices Award, Portland Film Festival.
Available to stream via Good Docs.
Murder on a Sunday Morning (2014)
Murder on a Sunday Morning (2014) 1hr, 55 min. English with closed-captioning.
Director: Jean-Xavier de Lestrade
Distribution: Cinedigm
Genre: Race & class studies, Law & criminal justice
This 2001 Acadeny-Award documentary remains as relevant today as it did then, as it follows the murder of a white woman and the Black teen that everyone—from officers to journalists—was ready to condemn. When his defense lawyer joins the case, everything changes.
Winner, Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards.
Available to stream via Kanopy
Fractal: Stories Across the Gender Spectrum (2022) 1hr, 18 min. English and Spanish, with English closed-captioning.
Directors: Ley Comas, Biliana Grozdanova, Darcy McKinnon, Vaughn Shoonmaker, Petra Totten
Distribution: Collective Eye Films
Genre: LGBTQ+ studies, Gender & sexuality studies
A collection of four transgender and gender queer documentary shorts that explore the wide spectrum of experiences often left out of the traditional narrative.
‘A Fine Girl’, directed by Darcy McKinnon (she/her) and Biliana Grozdanova (she/her), follows Brandi Jarrow, a 27-year old trans woman of color from New Orleans, as she takes the personal and professional success she has achieved as a hairstylist, and works to open an inclusive luxury salon. The film is a joyful, optimistic portrait of what's possible when we include and uplift trans people as essential contributors to our community.
‘My Body is a Place Just Like Any Other’, directed by Petra Totten (she/they). Making her way across the deserts of North America in search of a place she can find herself reflected, Carrie muses on her identity through memories, stories, and conversations with people in the trans* community to uncover what it means to have an embodied experience in the world.
‘Ni Aqui Ni Alla’, directed by Ley Comas (they/them). Growing up in the Dominican Republic, filmmaker Ley Comas had a negative understanding of their trans identity. Years later, they attempt to share their truth with their religious family.
‘Princess Stephaney’, directed by Vaughn Shoonmaker (he/him). When the world shuts down to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, New Orleans' premier drag queen is left without a bar to tend and no one to entertain. With nothing but time on her hands and unpaid bills piling up, Princess Stephaney reckons with her age, her solitude and an uncertain future for her life in the Crescent City.
A Fine Girl: Official Selection at IF/Then Shorts 2019 New Orleans Film Festival
My Body is a Place Just Like Any Other: Official Selection at TRANSlations Transgender Film Festival 2022
Ni Aqui Ni Alla: Official Selection at 2021 OutFest
Available to stream via Alexander Street Videos Online (AVON)
Only I Can Hear (2022)
Only I Can Hear (2022) 1hr, 17 min. English with closed-captioning.
Director: Itaru Matsui
Distribution: Journeyman Pictures
Genre: Communication studies, Sociology
In the American Midwest, three hearing teenagers come of age in the vibrant, raucous Deaf community. In search of a home between two disparate worlds, the young women explore their unique identity as CODA — Children of Deaf Adults, as they strive to fit into both the deaf and hearing communities to which they belong.
Official Selection at the Doc Edge, Tokyo Docs, Hot Docs, and Seattle Deaf Film Festivals.
Available to stream via Kanopy.
Hold Your Fire (2022)
Hold Your Fire (2022) 1hr, 35 min. English with closed-captioning.
Director: Stefan Forbes
Distribution: IFC Films
Genre: Law & criminal justice, Race & class studies
In 1973 Brooklyn, Shu'aib Raheem and three other young African-American men stealing guns for self-defense were cornered for 47 hours by the NYPD, the longest siege in its history. Could visionary police psychologist Harvey Schlossberg convince his superiors to do the unthinkable – negotiate with "criminals" – and save a dozen hostages from a violent bloodbath?
Winner, Metropolis Grand Jury Prize, DOC NYC.
Nominee, Best Documentary, Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Available to stream via Alexander Street Video Online (AVON) and Film Platform.
All In My Power (2022)
All In My Power (2022) 1 hr, 36 min. English with closed captioning.
Director: Chandler Clarke
Distribution: Cinedigm
Genre: Health sciences, Nursing
On March 1st, 2020, New York recorded its first COVID-19 case. Nine weeks later, 12 healthcare professionals were asked to share their experiences fighting a new kind of war no one could have prepared them for.
Winner, Founder’s Choice Award, Queens World Film Festival.
Available to stream via Kanopy.
Chasing Childhood (2020)
Chasing Childhood (2020) 1 hr, 25 min. English with English or Spanish subtitles.
Director: Margaret Munzer, Loeb Eden Wurmfeld
Distribution: Eden Wurmfeld Films, MML Productions
Genre: Childhood development, Education
A feature length documentary that explores how free play and independence have all but disappeared from kids’ lives, supplanted by relentless perfectionism leading to record rates of anxiety and depression, a situation now compounded by the pandemic. Free play, unsupervised by adults, is critical for developing essential life skills: grit, independence, and resourcefulness. Many young adults may appear more accomplished on paper, but by the time they get to college they are emotionally struggling and lacking the tools needed to live independently. The film explores how and why helicopter parenting became the norm in many communities across the United States. The film features experts and advocates in the area of free play including Julie Lythcott-Haims, former Stanford Dean and author of How to Raise an Adult, and Peter Gray, biological psychologist.
Winner, Best Documentary Feature, Sarasota Film Festival.
Nominee, Best Film, Cleveland International Film Festival.
Available to stream via Film Platform.
The Wikipedia Promise (2021)
The Wikipedia Promise (2021) 51 min. English with closed captioning.
Director: Jascha Hannover, Lorenza Castella
Distribution: Video Project
Genre: Media & communications, Library & information studies
Can the world's most widely accessed collection of information be trusted? And if not, is it possible to change it for the better?
In 2001, Jimmy Wales created the first entry on Wikipedia: "Hello world". 20 years later, Wikipedia contains more than 50 million articles with English Wikipedia alone getting more than 300 million clicks per day, and has the professed goal of being free, democratic, and neutral. But is it reliable as a source of factual record? As the largest encyclopedia of all time, The Wikipedia Promise looks at the inner life of the website and deals with issues of perspective, representation, and Western-centrism.
The film thoroughly traces the origins of the platform as well as its rapid ascent among internet users, as well as the history of knowledge collections. Wikipedia began with a promise: knowledge production, which was in the hands of elites for millenia, is to be radically democratized. The film also addresses the problems associated with Wikipedia's place as an academic resource, as younger generations have grown up viewing the website as credible source of citable information. Anyone can contribute, regardless of education level or background. Given Wikipedia's popularity, it is particularly susceptible to willful disinformation and distortion. And with the anonymity of contributors comes an associated dissolving of accountability, as Wikipedia's evolution of self-regulation is also detailed.
With the website as a mirror of society, even in which old perspectives are faltering, women and people from the global South still find themselves underrepresented. More and more authors no longer want to accept this status quo. The film platforms "wikipedians", people behind the facade of the website, and authors from across the world in Egypt, Germany, Ghana, South Africa, Tunisia, and the US have their say about various pros and cons of Wikipedia. Also featured is Wikipedia "ex-founder" Larry Sanger, who effectively disowns the modern iteration of his co-creation.
Official Selection, The Jozi Film Festival, DOCUTAH, Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, Free Speech Film Festival, and Ananse Cinema International Film Festival.
Available to stream via Kanopy.
