Top 10 Favorite Feminist and Pro-Feminist Films
Films which depict women's organizing, women's empowerment, feminist challenges to patriarchal violence and power, feminist visions, and male allies (pro-feminists) working to support feminists and feminism.
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- DirectorMirra BankEllen HovdeMuffie MeyerStarsMaria TucciDavid StrathairnKevin BaconThis film is made up of three segments that share no plot but have a general thematic relationship. In the first segment, Virginia and her three children are left by her shiftless husband and she is courted by an old beau who is now married. In the second, a divorced woman reacts to some unexpected revelations from her aged father. In the third, childless, middle-aged social worker is swept into an affair with cab driver Dennis, and finds herself pregnant.Based on short stories by the pacifist-feminist activist Grace Paley - and beautifully converted to film. A wonder.
- DirectorOusmane SembeneStarsFatoumata CoulibalyMaimouna Hélène DiarraSalimata TraoréWhen a woman shelters a group of girls from suffering female genital mutilation, she starts a conflict that tears her village apart.A wrenching story of a few girls who seek the protection of a woman and a few women and male allies in a Senegalese village to avoid undergoing the torture of the traditional genital mutilation.
- DirectorJonathan KaplanStarsKelly McGillisJodie FosterBernie CoulsonAfter a young woman suffers a brutal gang rape in a bar one night, a prosecutor assists in bringing the perpetrators to justice, including the ones who encouraged and cheered on the attack.Focuses on the growing cross-class solidarity between the woman who is a prosecutor and the woman who is a rape survivor - and makes the powerful implicit point that all of us who are men are witnesses to male violence and are at a minimum complicit in men's violence against women, and therefore have a responsibility to stop it.
- StarsCatalina Lobo Guerrero CorreaJay O. SandersAlfre WoodardTwo extraordinary Afro-Colombian women fight to hold onto their gold-rich land and defy paramilitary death threats in the remote mountains of Colombia.Afro-Colombian women organize to protect their land from absentee gold mining landlords, and their outspoken activism and nonviolent approach and outreach to national and transnational allies builds a powerful movement. I didn't know about their struggle before watching the film. I won't forget it. Pray the Devil Back to Hell, also fantastic on women peacemaking in Liberia, was part of the same series.
- DirectorRose TrocheStarsV.S. BrodieGuinevere TurnerT. Wendy McMillanA romantic tale about finding a soulmate. The only difference here is that both partners are women...in Chicago's lesbian community.As someone wrote somewhere (I don't remember where), it might be the closest thing we ever see to Dykes to Watch Out For on screen (though Alison Bechdel had nothing, as far as I know, directly to do with this wonderful film - but now that I mention it, doesn't DTWOF have all the kernels of a fantastic TV series - sort of like Tales of the City?). And that's high praise.
- DirectorTodd HaynesStarsMerrill GruverMichael EdwardsMelissa BrownKaren Carpenter's battle with anorexia nervosa and the cultural influence of the Carpenters in the 70s.An innovative documentary about Karen Carpenter -- as a barbie doll suffering from anorexia -- as the conservative forces surrounding her refuse to acknowledge her suffering, and her art is exploited by Nixonian conservative warmongering. A movie that was pulled because of attacks by members of the surviving Carpenter family, who apparently didn't want to face the depiction of themselves and opposed its pro-feminist politics.
- DirectorAda Gay GriffinMichelle ParkersonTenderly tracing the life of poet Audre Lorde, the film cracks open life's poetry guided by Lorde's sincere belief more and better is possible if we envision it enough to will it into existence.Audre Lorde's incomparable prophetic voice. Fantastic.
- DirectorYimou ZhangStarsGong LiJingwu MaSaifei HeChina in the 1920s. After her father's death, Songlian is forced to marry the wealthy Master Chen. With three wives already, each living in a separate house, there is fierce competition for his attention and the privileges that are gained.A parable of how patriarchal power divides and conquers women, set in 1920s China. It's ultra-depressing, but a visual feast.
- DirectorNiki CaroStarsKeisha Castle-HughesRawiri ParateneVicky HaughtonA contemporary story of love, rejection and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.A young Maori girl literally finds her voice despite emotional repression and sexist discrimination in Aetoroa (indigenous New Zealand).
- DirectorSteven SoderberghStarsJulia RobertsAlbert FinneyDavid BrisbinAn unemployed single mother becomes a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city's water supply.It features environmental organizing, a pro-feminist guy as a romantic love interest, and brassy working class chutzpah outworking and outsmarting poisonous corporate arrogance. The scene where she serves the condescending corporate lawyers water from the wells their corporation poisoned is superb. The film is based on a true story and a real environmental activist (though I don't know how closely it sticks to the historical record).