Society for the Study of Social Problems

The film exhibit is sponsored by AndersonGold Films, Bullfrog Films, California Newsreel, First Run/Icarus Films, Lost Heritage Productions, Media Education Foundation, New Day Films, TV2 Danmark and Women Make Movies. Information about film rentals and purchase will be available at the conference. The film exhibit will be held in the Germantown Room, 8th floor.

This documentary intertwines the story of the Padded Lilies, a troupe of fat synchronized swimmers, Archimedes, the Greek mathematician obsessed with floating bodies, and the inventor of the "Drystroke Swimulator" to investigate, proclaim and celebrate the fact that fat floats! Buoyant draws attention to its own surface and leaves us with the exuberant possibility of a fat body that literally and culturally rises, like cream, to the top. (Available from Women Make Movies, 28 minutes)

In the late 1990s, three victims of police brutality made headlines around the country: Amadou Diallo, the young West African man whose killing sparked intense public protest; Anthony Baez, killed in an illegal choke-hold, and Gary (Gidone) Bush, a Hasidic Jew shot and killed outside his Brooklyn home. Every Mother’s Son profiles three New York mothers who unexpectedly find themselves united to seek justice and transform their grief into an opportunity for profound social change.  (Available through AndersonGold Films, 60 minutes)

FEBRUARY ONE
Shown: Sunday, August 14 from 3:05pm - 4:10pm

In one remarkable day, four college freshmen changed the course of American history. February One tells the inspiring story surrounding the 1960 Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins that revitalized the Civil Rights Movement and set an example of student militancy for the coming decade. This moving film shows how a small group of determined individuals can galvanize a mass movement and focus a nation’s attention on injustice. (Available from California Newsreel, 61 minutes)

What’s motivating the thousands of Russian women who sign up with agencies to meet and marry American men? From the gray skies of St. Petersburg to sunny California ranches, we see the financial and emotional pros and cons of exporting one’s heart.  (Available from New Day Films, 58 minutes)

Keep Not Silent boldly documents the clandestine struggle of three women fighting for their right to love within their beloved Orthodox communities in Jerusalem. All three are pious, religiously committed women. All three are lesbians, and members of a secret support group called "Ortho-dykes." (Available from Women Make Movies, 52 minutes)

They clean other people’s homes and raise other people’s children - often leaving their own families behind. There are more than 70,000 domestic workers from Latin America working in Los Angeles today. Three years in the making, Maid in America follows the lives of three such women, each with distinct backgrounds, working situations, and aspirations. (Available from Women Make Movies, 57 minutes)

O Herói (The Hero) is the story of Angola, a nation torn apart by forty years of uninterrupted war, and now trying imperfectly but courageously to piece itself back together. It is also the story of a city, Luanda, like so many in the Third World, trying to absorb the millions of people displaced by civil strife and global economic change. After a thirteen year national liberation struggle against the Portuguese colonialists ended with independence in 1975, Angola plunged immediately into a brutal civil war. The national MPLA government, backed initially by Cuba and the Soviet Union, and the UNITA rebels, supported by the U.S. and the South African apartheid regime, remained locked in conflict until 2003, long after the end of the Cold War itself.  (Available from California Newsreel, 97 minutes)

On February 12, 2004, the mayor of San Francisco ordered city officials to allow gay and lesbian couples to get married. Pioneering activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, celebrating their 51st anniversary, had the privilege of being the first couple to tie the knot. One Wedding and a Revolution goes behind the scenes at the mayor’s office during the frantic days leading up to February 12th, and into city hall, with exclusive footage of this momentous historical event.  (Available from New Day Films, 19 minutes)

In this powerful video, Juliet Schor scrutinizes what she calls "the new consumerism" – a national phenomenon of upscale spending that is shaped and reinforced by a commercially-driven media system. She argues that "keeping up with the Joneses" is no longer enough for middle and upper-middle class Americans, many of whom become burdened with debilitating debt as they seek to emulate materialistic TV lifestyles. (Available from Media Education Foundation, 32 minutes)

Barry (Whitecap) Hambly was born in 1967 on Carry the Kettle First Nation in Saskatchewan. When he was four, his mother, Darlene Whitecap, ran from the reserve and an abusive relationship, taking Barry and his three siblings with her to Regina, 100 km to the west. A victim of alcohol abuse, the 24-year-old mother would soon lose her children when social agencies intervened. This era, known as the "Sixties Scoop," saw thousands of aboriginal children adopted into non-Native homes. Some children remained in Canada while others were sent to the U.S. and around the globe. While some have called it "assimilation," many claim the "scoop" era to have been a cultural genocide. Red Road shadows Barry Hambly’s journey, returning to Saskatchewan to confront his past and meet his birth mother.  (Available from Lost Heritage Productions, 46 minutes)

Spin the Bottle offers an indispensable critique of the role that contemporary popular culture plays in glamorizing excessive drinking and high-risk behaviors. Award-winning media critics Jackson Katz and Jean Kilbourne contrast these distorted representations with the often disturbing and dangerous ways that alcohol consumption affects the lives of real young men and women. Illustrating their analysis with numerous examples, Katz and Kilbourne decode the power and influence these seductive media images have in shaping gender identity, which is linked to the use of alcohol. Nowhere is this link more cause for concern than on America’s college campuses.  (Available from Media Education Foundation, 45 minutes)

Flying in the face of this culture’s extreme ageism, Still Doing It explores the lives of older women. Partnered, single, straight, gay, black and white; nine extraordinary women, age 67-87, express with startling honesty and humor how they feel about themselves, sex, and love in later life and the poignant realities of aging. Outspoken for their generation, these women mark a sea change. Women over 65 are the fastest-growing segment of the population and in 2011, when the baby boomers begin to turn 65, their numbers will swell. Still Doing It looks at this society’s complex relationship to women and aging with surprising and revelatory results.  (Available from New Day Films, 54 minutes)

In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines. But this simple act - "the take" - threatens to turn the globalization debate on its head. In the wake of Argentina’s spectacular economic collapse in 2001, Latin America’s most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The Forja San Martin auto plant had been dormant until its former employees took action. They’re part of a daring new movement of workers who are occupying bankrupt businesses and creating jobs in the ruins of the failed system.  (Available from First Run/Icarus Films, 87 minutes)

Global corporations are rapidly buying up local water supplies, and communities face losing control of one of their most precious resources. Looking at tensions in Bolivia, India, and Stockton, CA, Thirst reveals how water is becoming a catalyst for explosive community resistance to globalization. Focusing on one of the 21st century’s greatest issues, this film is a piercing look at the conflict between public stewardship and private profit, where activists claim that water is a human right and corporations declare it is a commodity.  (Available from Bullfrog Films, 62 minutes)

TOMBOYS! FEISTY GIRLS AND SPIRITED WOMEN
Shown: Friday, August 12 from 1:05pm - 1:35pm
Saturday, August 13 from 5:35pm - 6:05pm

Are tomboys "tamed" once they reach adolescence? This spirited and inspiring documentary celebrates four real-life tomboys of all ages: an African-American teenager Jay Gillespie; firefighter Tracy Driscoll; lesbian artist/boxer Nancy Brooks Brody; and the 94 year old political activist, "Granny D.," making the connection between the rebel girl and spirited woman gloriously clear.  (Available from Women Make Movies, 28 minutes)

War Feels Like War is a compelling account of the brutalities of 21st Century war, told through the eyes of independent journalists. The film documents the lives of reporters and photographers who subverted military media control to get access to the real Iraq War. The film records their frustration, fear, shock and horror as they fight their way to Bagdad. They are the lucky ones. Ahead of them some journalists are killed in the conflict. Behind them others become part of a media circus trapped in Kuwait. The authorities try to placate them with organized daytrips which end in farce, frustration, and cynicism.  (Available from TV2 Danmark, 59 minutes)

Dee-Dee, a Brooklyn barber and self-proclaimed "booty expert," covers his wall with magazine cut-outs of women. He wishes that real women could look more like the images on his "wall of beauty." However, when Dee-Dee is introduced to the art of photo-retouching, his perceptions of beauty are called into question. This documentary uses humor to raise serious concerns about the marketplace of commercial illusion and unrealizable standards of physical perfection. (Available from New Day Films, 11 minutes)

After a quarter century of struggle, mill workers in Kannapolis, North Carolina won the single largest industrial union victory in the history of the South. Where Do You Stand is a new documentary film about the rise and fall of an American town and the epic struggle of the people who live there. In the process, it tells the story of the dramatic changes in labor and demographics, in the nature of corporations, the rise of multinationals, and changes in the American South in the post-industrial age. (Available from California Newsreel, 60 minutes)