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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
On the evening of April 30, 1971, a standing room only audience of local literati and feminists packed New York City’s Town Hall to watch Norman Mailer, who had just written “The Prisoner of Sex,” grapple with a panel of passionate feminists. The subject was Women’s Liberation, an issue on which Mailer seemed like the devil’s own advocate.
Thirty years ago, a rubber company enslaved a group of Asháninka people, manipulating them into tapping the trees in the lush borderland between Peru and Brazil. The company was expelled by a coalition of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, led by one mixed race couple. Now the adult children of this marriage combat political corruption and ongoing environmental disaster.
Outlawed in Pakistan tells the story of Kainat Soomro as she takes her rape case to Pakistan's deeply flawed court system in hopes of getting justice. The 13-year-old Kainat accuses four men of gang rape and shortly after is ordered to be killed by her village elders. Spanning over five years, the story is told through the perspective of Kainat and the four men accused of her rape.
LIMITED PARTNERSHIP is the love story between Filipino-American Richard Adams and Australian Tony Sullivan, who, in 1975, became one of the first same-sex couples in the world to be legally married. After applying for a green card for Tony based on their marriage, the couple received a denial letter from the Immigration and Naturalization Service stating, 'You have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots.' Outraged at this letter, and to prevent Tony's impending deportation, the couple sued the U.S. government, filing the first federal lawsuit seeking equal treatment for a same-sex marriage in U.S. history. This tenacious story of love, marriage and immigration equality is as precedent setting as it is little known... until now.
The 1920s saw a revolution in technology, the advent of the recording industry, that created the first class of African-American women to sing their way to fame and fortune. Blues divas such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Alberta Hunter created and promoted a working-class vision of blues life that provided an alternative to the Victorian gentility of middle-class manners. In their lives and music, blues women presented themselves as strong, independent women who lived hard lives and were unapologetic about their unconventional choices in clothes, recreational activities, and bed partners. Blues singers disseminated a Black feminism that celebrated emotional resilience and sexual pleasure, no matter the source.
As America's first international woman concert pianist, renowned lecturer, author, music critic, famous conductor's wife and champion for equal rights for women in music, Olga Samaroff was at the center of a musical life that to this day embodies the imprint of her artistry and achievements. Her life story also portrays an era in our American cultural heritage that has largely been underserved in the documentary film genre. Texas-born Olga Samaroff a.k.a. Lucy Hickenlooper lived at a time when music was dominated by men and Old World prejudices----and she emerged as a leader among many. Against tremendous odds she rose from complete obscurity to be the most successful American woman concert pianist of the early 20th Century.
In Ecuador, in a single day, the train passes from the mountainous Andes to the tropical coast. The roads were built between 1861 and 1908 to connect the country. Until this date, the two regions live as separate countries, although the roads connect them in less than a day. The film is an observational work that talks about space and collective memory.
