January Featured Videos – Women’s Issues
Jan 8th, 2013 by Shelley Brown
This month we are focusing on DVDs that deal with women and issues relating to them.
Following is a sampling of titles that we have in our collection.
1. Abortion and Divorce in Western Law
KF 9315 G558 2003
Abortion and Divorce in Western Law contrasts the legal practices of Europe and America as they bear on the difficult choices of these controversial issues.
2. Blind Justice: Women and the Law
HQ 1236 B58 2003
This group of four animated programs provocatively traces the ways and means in which justice has been applied to women in Western society.
3. Constitute!
HQ 1236 C628 2010
Constitute! profiles the diverse history of women’s activism in constitution-making. The ad Hoc Committee of Women and the Constitution changed Canadian history on February 14, 1981.
4. Crimes of honour
HV 6250.4 W65 C756 1999
Crimes of Honour documents the terrible reality of femicide – the killing of sisters or daughters suspected of losing their virginity, for having refused an arranged marriage or having left a husband.
5. Fashioning Women in Law
KF 299 W6 F37 2002
Fashioning Women in Law highlights the inconsistency between the representations of women in advertising with where we think the women’s liberation movement has taken us. Seeing how women are commonly portrayed, and noting the general lack of objection to these portrayals, raises fundamental questions about the extent to which women are taken as serious, powerful professionals.
6. Finding Dawn
HV 6626.23 C2 F46 2006
Finding Dawn is a compelling documentary that puts a human face on a national tragedy: the murders and disappearances of an estimated 500 Aboriginal women in Canada over the past 30 years. From Vancouver’s Skid Row to the Highway of Tears in northern British Columbia, to Saskatoon, this film honours those who have passed and uncovers reasons for hope.
7. In the name of the family
HQ 1170 I58 2010
IN THE NAME OF THE FAMILY is the latest documentary from Toronto-based Shelley Saywell.
From South Asian and Middle Eastern immigrant families, …girls are caught between two cultures where parent-teenage clashes can lead to a specific form of domestic abuse.
Known as honour killing, this form of violence is not sanctioned by any religion, but has been culturally entrenched in some parts of South Asia, and the Middle East. In post-911 North America, this topic has become polarizing – either silenced or sensationalized.
8. Life with Billy/Life after Billy
HV 6626.23 C3 V34 2006
Jane Stafford’s trial in Nova Scotia received national attention. For the first time in Canadian history the battered wife syndrome was used as a defense for murder. In mid-February 1992, Jane died as a result of a gunshot wound, which the coroner reported as probable suicide. Those closest to Jane Stafford do not believe she took her own life.
9. Mrs. Goundo’s daughter
GN 484 M77 2009
Mrs. Goundo is fighting to remain in the United States. Threatened with deportation, her two-year-old daughter could be forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), like 85 percent of women and girls in Mali. Using rarely cited grounds for political asylum, Goundo must convince an immigration judge that her daughter is in danger.
10. Positive women, exposing injustice
KF 9304 P67 2012
Women’s voices have rarely been heard on this important issue. What happens if a woman does not disclose her HIV-positive status to a sexual partner? How does criminalization impact HIV-positive women in Canada, who are trying to live their lives in the shadow of stigma and fear?
11. A Question of Rights
We have all 5 films in the series, call numbers all begin with HQ 1236
Short films that explore why so much discrimination and violence is still directed against women. In the Series are: World of Difference (Introduction); Young Wives’ Tale (Ethiopia); Girls from Chaka Street (Latvia); House on Fire (Jamaica); and Caught in the Crossfire (Fiji).
12. The trouble with working women
HD 6061 T768 2009 disc 1 & 2
Two provocative programmes examine the ongoing gender inequities that exist in the workplace today.