Film series: Women’s Bodies/Women’s Lives

From Simone Biles’s courageous refusal to risk her mental health to Afghan women being denied their education by the Taliban, to Texas and Mississippi putting Roe v Wade on the chopping block in a new Supreme Court, men across the globe continue to assert control over women’s bodies.

We offer an international slate of six films—from Chad, France, Tamil Nadu in southern India, New Zealand and the U.S.—including three stunning debuts by new filmmakers—that challenge patriarchal structures, while celebrating acts of resistance and affirming women’s lives.

A mother and daughter (impregnated from a rape) seek an abortion in Chad (Lingui, the Sacred Bonds); an elite teenage athlete is groomed by her ‘tough’ coach (Slalom); an abusive husband & father forces his son on a sun-parched journey to retrieve his wife who left him (Pebbles); a young interracial couple find their bonds stretched when the woman endures a sexual assault (Test Pattern).

Test Pattern has been nominated for Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay and Best Female Lead (Brittany S. Hall), and we'll be joined by the film's writer & director, Shatara Michelle Ford, for a Q & A via Zoom following the screening.

To round out the series we offer a 35mm screening of Jane Campion’s (The Power of the Dog) glorious 1993 Cannes and Oscar winner The Piano and a new 4K restoration of Lizzie Borden’s 1987 trail-blazing film of sex workers, Working Girls.

Cosponsored with the Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies (FGSS) Program.