Women’s Studies Video Library Catalog
Loan Procedures & Guidelines
Revised Fall 2007

Click here for a quick index of all the films

By signing your name to the Women’s Studies Library Loan Log, you are in agreement to and responsible for the following terms:

• All materials loaned out by the WS Program become your responsibility the moment you remove them from the WS Center; you are liable for any/all damages.
• All materials are to be returned in good condition. Due to the money and time we have invested in our library, WS must hold you responsible for any materials you choose to borrow.
• All materials are to be returned in a prompt manner—the usual loan period is for 24 hours, unless prior arrangements have been made with the director for an extended loan.
• Videos may be reserved for a specific date by calling the Women’s Studies Center at 745-6477 or emailing trish.jaggers@wku.edu. In order to ensure that a video will be available, please reserve the video you would like to use well in advance (at least two weeks) of the date by which you need it..
• It is your responsibility to pick up and return borrowed materials to the WS library. Due to busy schedules, we are unable to deliver or pick up any materials. If you have outstanding videos, you'll be asked to return those before being permitted to check out additional videos.
• Unless special arranges have been made, students may not check out films/videos.
• Films/videos from our library are available to only WKU faculty and staff. (WKU students may check out books or view videos in our library.)

About our film decision-making process:
In order to support faculty interested in using films to address women’s studies issues in their classes, the Women’s Studies Program purchases at least 2 or 3 new titles each semester. If you have any suggestions for future purchase consideration, please contact a member of the Film & Video Committee listed below. Please provide as much information about your suggestion as possible (e.g. title, distributor, and price).
The Women’s Studies Film and Video committee hosts the Gender Images Film Series. Three or more films with a centralized theme or genre are shown each semester. All film showings are free and open to the public. A faculty/committee member or a student who is knowledgeable about the subject introduces each film. If you would like to participate in this committee or would like to introduce a film, please contact the committee members below.
Barry Brunson, Chair (270) 745-6995
Kate Hudepohl (270) 745-5842
Ted Hovet (270) 745-5782
Tim Evans (270) 745-5897
Kristin Dowell (270) 745-5903

 

Index Summary:

Africa/International: Africa Search for Common Ground, In My Country, Monday’s Girls, These Hands, Tsotsi, Women at the Intersection of Racism and Other Oppressions

Education: The Intolerable Burden Feature Films: The Color Purple, Daughters of the Dust, Secrets and Lies, The Watermelon Woman, Zora is My Name!

Health/Sexuality: And Still I Rise, Fire Eyes, The Heart of the Matter, Warrior Marks

Labor: I Am Somebody

Leaders: Ida B. Wells, A Litany for Survival, A Place of Rage, Toni Morrison

Music/Culture: Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues

 

Film information:

AFRICA SEARCH FOR COMMON GROUNDS
ERITREA: Three Generations of Women: Three Generations of Struggle
KENYA: Democracy or Disruption-Wangari Maathai and Green Belt.
VHS (two parts) 27 min., Common Grounds Production.

AND STILL I RISE
And Still I Rise uses images from popular culture to reveal the way the media misrepresents Black women's sexuality. The film intercuts historical and media images and depicts the Black women's struggle to create a new perspective.
VHS 30 min., color, Women Make Movies, 1993.

THE COLOR PURPLE
Based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple is the richly-textured, decades-spanning story of Celie, an uneducated woman living in the rural American south. Forced to marry a brutal man she calls “Mr.,” Celie turns inward and shares her grief only with God. But she is transformed by the friendship of two remarkable women, acquiring self-worth…and the strength to forgive.
154 min., color, Warner Brothers, 1985.

DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST
Daughters of the Dust tells the story of a large African-American family as they prepare to move north to the mainland from the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia. The film depicts the conflicts and struggles every family confronts when they leave their homeland for the promise of a new and better future. The film explores the unique culture of the Gullah people, descendants of slaves who struggle with the decision to leave their rich Gullah heritage.
VHS 113 min., Geechee Girl Production, distributed by Kino Video, 1991.

FIRE EYES
Somali filmmaker Soraya Mire knows firsthand about the traditional African practice of female genital mutilation. At thirteen she was subjected to it and spent the next twenty years recovering physically and emotionally from its cruel legacy. Fire Eyes explores the socio-economic, psychological, and medical consequences of this ancient custom that affects more than 80 million women worldwide. In this film several women who have been subject to this "rite of passage" voice varying points of view on perpetuating the practice. While a few courageous women would spare their daughters this suffering, others fear their daughters would be unmarriageable. The troubling fact is that female circumcision is a women’s ritual upheld by mothers, grandmothers and aunts, to conform to the male expectation for a chase wife. Testimony from doctors detail the various forms of female circumcision and the horrendous ob/gyn problems that result.
VHS & DVD 60 min., color, Filmakers Library, 1994.

THE HEART OF THE MATTER
The Heart of the Matter explores women's sexuality through the prism of AIDS. The film focuses on the inspiring story of Janice Jirau, an HIV-positive African American woman, as she unravels the pieces of her life that contributed to her risk of HIV and steps she took once she knew she had AIDS.
VHS 54 min., color, First Run / Icarus Films, 1994.

GOD GREW TIRED OF US
Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, God Grew Tired of Us explores the indomitable spirit of three “Lost Boys” from the Sudan who leave their homeland, triumph over seemingly insurmountable adversities and move to America, where they build active and fulfilling new lives but remain deeply committed to helping the friends and family they have left behind. 

I AM SOMEBODY (a film by Madeline Anderson)
This inspiring film tells the story of a 1969 strike in Charleston, South Carolina. Four hundred poorly paid black women working in a hospital and found themselves confronted by the National Guard. They gained the support of notables such as Andrew Young, Charles Abernathy, and Coretta Scott King for their 113 day strike.
VHS 28 min., color. First Run/Icarus Films. 1970.

IDA B. WELLS: A Passion for Justice
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a newspaper editor and journalist who went on to lead the American anti-lynching crusade. Working closely with both African-American community leaders and American suffragists, Wells worked to raise gender issues within the "Race Question" and race issues within the "Woman Question."
VHS 55 min., William Greaves Productions, 1989.

IN MY COUNTRY... An International Perspective on Gender
Thirteen participants from countries around the world participated in this Utah Valley State College program, responding frankly to a series of questions on parental attitudes toward children, learning about sexuality, marriage decisions, courtship customs, wedding rituals and financial control in marriages, in the context of their culture. Produced and directed by Ron J. Hammond; study guide available. Part I - Daily Life and Part II - Social Issues
VHS (two tapes) 46 minutes, color, Utah Valley State College, 1993.

THE INTOLERABLE BURDEN
When the public schools of Drew, Mississippi opened their doors in compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, blacks were not expected to choose white schools.  This proved true for all but the Carters who sent the youngest eight of their thirteen children to a formerly all white school.  The Intolerable Burden places the Carters’ commitment to obtaining a quality education in context by examining the conditions of segregation prior to 1965, the hardships the family faced during segregation, and the massive white resistance that led to resegregation.
DVD 56 minutes, color-b&w, First Run/Icarus Films, 2003.

A LITANY FOR SURVIVAL
A Litany for Survival, a powerful profile of African American poet Audre Lorde aired nationally Tuesday, June 18, 1996 at 10 p.m. ET on PBS, as part of P.O.V., broadcast television's only continuing forum for independent non-fiction film. The film features interviews with many of Lorde's fellow poets and activists, including Adrienne Rich, Sapphire, and Sonia Sanchez, all of whom pay tribute to Lorde's impact as a mentor and inspirational force.
55 min., color, Third World Newsreel, 1996.

MONDAY'S GIRLS
Monday’s Girls provides an up-to-the-minute look at tradition in today's changing Africa through the contrasting viewpoints of two young Iriabos women.
VHS 50 min., b/w, A BCC Production, 1993.

A PLACE OF RAGE
This exuberant celebration of African American women and their achievements features interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of the civil rights, Black power and feminist movements, the trio reassesses how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionized American society. A stirring chapter in African American history, highlighted by music from Prince, Janet Jackson, the Neville Brothers and the Staple Singers.
VHS 52 min., color, Women Make Movies, 1991.

SECRETS & LIES
Hortense is a young black optometrist, living in London. She weeps at her mother’s funeral. Her father is already dead. They were her adoptive parents, and she now feels the need to find her birth mother. She visits a social worker who gives her her case file. From this, Hortense discovers to her surprise and consternation that her birth mother Cynthia is white. Having gone to some lengths to track Cynthia down, Hortense plucks up the courage to phone her. On realizing who the caller is, Cynthia is deeply distressed: but after some hesitation, she agrees to meet her a few days later…
VHS 142 min., color, Alliance Video, 1996.

THESE HANDS
This film looks at a day in the life of African women whose labor (breaking up rocks) provides the only narrative for this compelling film. Community and a sense of fun and vitality persist despite their ground into the common currency of industrial civilization.
VHS 45 min., B/W, California Newsreel, 1992.

TONI MORRISON: Profile of a Writer (archived)
Toni Morrison, the leading chronicler of the black experience in America, talks about the problems of slavery and its appalling legacy with an approach that is at once warm, generous, intelligent and knowledgeable.
VHS 52 min., color, Home Vision, 1987.

TSOTSI
Captivating audiences worldwide, this compelling story of crime and redemption has earned countless awards around the globe.  On the edges of Johannesburg, Tsotsi’s life has no meaning beyond survival.  One night, in desperation, tsotsi steals a woman’s car.  But as he is driving off, he makes a shocking discovery in the backseat.  In one moment his life takes a sharp turn and leads him down an unexpected path to redemption… giving him hope for a future he never could have imagined.  Tsotsi is an extraordinary portrait of the choices that are made in life and how compassion can endure in the human heart.
DVD 94 min., color.  Mirmax Films. 2005.

WARRIOR MARKS
Warrior Marks is a poetic and political film about female genital mutilation from the director of A Place of Rage. Female genital mutilation affects one hundred million of the world’s women and this remarkable film unlocks some of the cultural and political complexities surrounding this issue. Interviews with women from Senegal, Gambia, Burkino Faso, the United States and England who are concerned with and affected by genital mutilation are intercut with Walker’s own personal reflections on the subject.
VHS 54 min., color, Women Make Movies, 1995.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN
Cheryl is a twenty-something black lesbian working as a clerk in a video store while struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, an obscure black actress from the 1930's. Cheryl is surprised to discover that Richards (known popularly as "the Watermelon Woman") had a white lesbian lover. At the same time, Cheryl falls in love with a very cute white customer at the video store (Guinevere Turner from Go Fish). Such are the complexities of race and sex in this startlingly fresh debut, which has been attacked by conservative Congressmen for having been funded by the NEA and lavishingly praised in the editorial pages for being charming and courageous.
VHS 84 min., color, First Run Features, 1997.

UNCHAINED MEMORIES
This film documents the inhumanity of slavery from the point of view of those who lived it. With the visual help of Ed Bell, Edward Bell, and Thomas Lennon, the stories from former slaves that were recorded long ago are brought to life through narratives by some of today's top African American actors and actresses. The narratives were recorded all across the U.S when many of the former slaves were very old.

WILD WOMEN DON’T HAVE THE BLUES
The story of Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Ida Cox, and other pioneering blues women from early in the century are brought to life in Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues.  We learn of their vision and their struggle, their pain and their humor, their unflagging spirit, and most of all, their legendary music.  The film complies for the first time dozens of rare, classic renditions of the early blues to commentary by “Queen of the Blues”, Koko Taylor.
VHS 58 min., color, California Newsreel, 1989.

WOMEN AT THE INTERSECTION OF RACISM AND OTHER OPPRESSIONS
Explores the intersectionality and women’s strategies for overcoming oppressions through examples of violations in war, conflict, and genocide—ethnic Chinese women in Indonesia; violations of bodily integrity and sexuality—Roma women in Siberia; and violations on accound of migrations and immigration—Hatian women immigrants in the Dominican Republic. It celebrates the organizing strategies used by women’s groups to work against intersectional discrimination.
VHS 30 min., Center for Women’s Global Leadership, 2003.

ZORA IS MY NAME!
A funny, stirring story based on the life of Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most distinctive writers of the American south. Through lively anecdotes and musical performances, this unique theatre piece reveals the life and times of a remarkable person.
VHS 90 min., color, PBS, 1989

We will be happy to check videos out to WKU faculty/staff and to arrange for students to view them in our facility.

For more information, please call 270/745.6477 or visit us on the web at www.wku.edu/womensstudies.

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