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Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter

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Running Time: 44 min
Deborah Hoffmann with her mother, Doris Hoffmann, an Alzheimer's disease patient.

Deborah Hoffmann with her mother, Doris Hoffmann, an Alzheimer’s disease patient.

In her film Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, Deborah Hoffmann details  her mother’s memory loss before and after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  The film is shocking in its unexpected portrayal of everyday tragedy. Hoffmann explains her experiences with her mother (Doris Hoffmann) directly into the camera, as if to indicate that she herself is emotionally ready to tell the story to a third party. The struggle and sadness she felt as her mother gradually began to forget aspects of daily life seems to be conquered through this film.  Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter “was really done out of necessity,” Hoffmann states, because “it was an all-consuming situation that I needed to deal with in a film.”

Deborah Hoffmann with her mother's suitcase (from "the Suitcase Period"), packed with Lorna Doone cookies.

Filmmaker with her mother’s suitcase, packed with Lorna Doone cookies.

With a moving original soundtrack by Mary Watkins playing in the background, Hoffmann chronicles various stages of her mother’s descent into the illness.  Hoffmann titles each stage:  the Dentist Period is one in which Doris sees notes around her house saying that she has a dentist appointment, so she arrives at her dentist’s office every morning.  Or the Suitcase Period, in which Doris would pack suitcase after suitcase full of anything she thought she could bring on a trip, which often left Hoffmann with full suitcases of Lorna Doone cookie boxes to unpack.  Some of the stages seemed to indicate to Hoffman that her mother was trying to say something. The filmmaker interprets the suitcases as stating that Doris had lived alone in her home for long enough and that it was time for change.  Eventually, as Doris could no longer even remember who her daughter was, Hoffmann moves her mother to a home in which she is separated from her past – separated from all of her possessions that could only cause frustration with the inability to remember any of their origins.  Once settled in her new, more freeing environment (a location specializing exclusively in the care of Alzheimer’s patients), Doris “was used to it instantaneously.”

Hoffmann’s partner and the film’s cinematographer Frances Reid plays a fascinating role in the exploration of a person with Alzheimer’s disease.  Hoffmann explains that throughout her life, her mother did not comfortably support her in her queerness.  However as Doris ages, Hoffmann describes the way in which her life is more about the basics of love.  A scene in the film reveals Doris declaring that Frances is “very nice to me and to [Deborah] – we all love her dearly.”  Hoffmann’s work illuminates the beauty of the fact that discrimination and prejudice no longer exist in this elderly mind.

Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter received a nomination for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature and in 1995 Hoffmann received the Peabody Award “for a remarkable and profound story of a mother and daughter’s courage in facing a debilitating disease.”  The film aired on the 1995 season of POV, PBS’s showcase of acclaimed point-of-view documentary films, which created a partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association and the American Association of Retired Persons to “establish regional activities to raise awareness of resources available to Alzheimer’s care-givers and support groups.”  The film also won both the Teddy and Caligari awards at the Berlin Film Festival.  Before Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, Hoffmann was already an accomplished film editor with credits including The Times of Harvey Milk and Color Adjustment.

“Hoffmann has made a loving, optimistic and authentic film about her mother, and the struggles to adjust to the changes wrought by Alzheimer’s disease.”  ~William Fisher, Alzheimer’s Association, Greater San Francisco Bay Area Chapter

Motherland: Cuba Korea USA (Dir. Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, 2006)

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Running Time: 41 min
motherland

Second-generation Korean-Cuban Martha Lim Kim 

Korean-American documentarian Dai Sil Kim-Gibson opens Motherland with her own voice relating how her feeling of homelessness in her “adopted home,” the United States, led her to Cuba. There she meets Martha Lim Kim, a second-generation Korean-Cuban, and talks about Korea–the home of the past for both–and Cuba and US, their current homes. The conversation continues with Martha’s family and other Korean immigrants in Cuba. Their general pro-Revolution stance provokes Kim-Gibson to interview Korean immigrants in the US who fled Cuba after the Revolution. Their belief in the American dream and antagonism toward Cuba, inherited by their US-born children, makes Kim-Gibson look back to Cuba. At the end of the film, between the two (or three) countries, she seems to have found an answer that is not bound to any one country.

Although Motherland starts with a personal history, soon it becomes clear that the personal search for home inevitably coincides with political histories. Kim-Gibson, born in 1938, started her journey from her homeland North Korea to South Korea for “democracy” and then to the US for education, while Martha’s father fled Mexico to Cuba, where the revolution has accepted Martha and her children as true Cubans. The subject of Korean-Cubans branches from the documentarian’s interest in the less known peoples of the Korean diaspora such as the Sakhalin Koreans (A Forgotten People, 1995), the choice of this subject and her way of approaching it reflect her political frustration in the US.

Visual narration is as informative as the voice-over narration and interviews in Motherland. First, the documentary is bookended with shots of the filmmaker herself, first in Havana and in the end on the Brooklyn Bridge, providing a frame for the personal stories that share a common root, extend to three distinct countries, and interact with each other. The images of traditional Korea that accompany Kim-Gibson’s introduction to her personal history are followed shortly after by the shot of Martha in her traditional Korean dress. While these images project Korea as a place of the past, the houses of Martha and her sister reveal the recent history intertwined with their respective personal narratives. Martha’s house, a remainder/reminder of the colonial and capitalist Cuba, is compared with her sister’s house in Miami—a token of the middle-class, multiethnic American life. In addition to Kim-Gibson’s own footage, photographs from archives and family albums, as well as video records of historical events, are used extensively to tell personal stories.

Se Eun Gong 4/15/13

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (2012)

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Running Time: 232 min

America Ferrera speaking with Urmi Batsu in ‘Half the Sky’ (via avclub.com)

Half the Sky is a documentary about women’s rights that focuses on women in “developing countries” (countries of the Global South). The film is inspired by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s nonfiction eponymous book. The film itself examines complex moral and cultural issues that are addressed by women from within the community who have experience with those issues. Half the Sky aired as two two-hour segments on PBS in the United States. While it mainly focuses on and features the women who are making change for other women within their own countries, the documentary also features Nicholas Kristof and several actresses (Diane Lane, America Ferrera, Olivia Wilde, Gabrielle Union, Eva Mendes, and Meg Ryan), as well as an appearance by George Clooney and many women’s rights advocates and activists. Some issues of violence against women examined in this documentary include rape in Sierra Leone, sex trafficking in Cambodia, maternal mortality and female genital cutting in Somaliland, and intergenerational prostitution in India.

While this documentary does quite a few things right, there are many issues with its presentation and execution. I will discuss these problems – with Kristof’s reporting, the representation of “global” or “worldwide” women, the inclusion of American celebrities, and the lack of male representation – before I talk about the positive aspects of Half the Sky.

In Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof portrays himself as something of an Activist-Reporter. He creates a clear “us and them” dichotomy between (generally) white American women and the “worldwide” women of the Global South. Kristof’s continual discussion of “their culture” (my emphasis) demonstrates this dichotomy, especially when he claims that “[female genital cutting] may be [their] culture, but it’s also a pretty lousy aspect of culture.” Furthermore, Kristof unabashedly asks these women (and young girls) of the countries he is touring about the state of their genitals and their experiences as victims of rape; it is doubtful that he would ask these questions so publicly of white American women.

The inclusion of celebrities in this film is problematic. Kristof seems to think that these celebrities create a “bridge” for the presumed-typical white American viewer. While there may be something to be said for generating interest or support for an issue that obviously needs attention, taking female celebrities on what is essentially a poverty tour does not benefit the story Kristof should be telling. Perhaps these celebrities could have lent their star status in a different way (support through advertising, perhaps). Rather than contribute to the telling of individual cultural stories, the American celebrities highlight the dichotomy Kristof has created: sure, it may be aesthetically pleasing to watch Olivia Wilde dance with traditionally dressed Kenyan village women singing “the vagina song,” but there is no reason for that image to be an important moment in Half the Sky.

The portrayal of women of the Global South as “worldwide” women is another problematic topic within Half the Sky. These women are consistently portrayed as unloved, disrespected, and ignored by men. This portrayal only serves to further the “us/them” dichotomy. Additionally, men are not represented at all in Half the Sky. They are simply mentioned as careless, useless, brutal members of society who treat women with cruelty.

Finally, I want to point out some of the positive aspects of Half the Sky. Depicting women native to the countries being explored, women who have experienced the problems/horrors/issues that they are now fighting against, women who are part of the culture they are trying to bring change to? That is an extremely positive representation of women and of a solution for violence against them because that violence is being addressed by women who get it. They understand the culture, the atmosphere, the reasoning behind the actions. Seeing local women activists brings attention to the organizations that are truly fighting the problems in their native countries. While the “us/them” dichotomy in Half the Sky discourages the kind of global female empowerment and relationships that the film seems to attempting to encourage, the overall message is still a true one. Educating and empowering women improves the health of families, the strength of communities, and the growth (particularly economic) of nations.

Relevant, Interesting, and Informative Articles:
[1] “How Nicholas Kristof and Half the Sky Use Women Against Each Other” by Sayantani DasGupta on Racialicious
[2] “On the Ground: Westerners On White Horses…” by Nicholas D. Kristof on The New York Times Opinion Pages: Kristof’s Blog
[3] Half the Sky Documentary Reviewed by Azra on Patheos
[4] Information on the North-South Divide (Wikipedia)
[5] Half the Sky Information (PBS)
[6] Half the Sky Movement: Half the Sky Information

Julia Aversa

Future of Food, The

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Running Time: 91 min

 

Modern agriculture© Lily Films 2009

Modern agriculture involves the monoculture of a small number of crops, rather than a diversity of crop types.
© Lily Films 2009

Deborah Koons Garcia’s The Future of Food examines the recent Green Revolution, a dramatic change in production of food.  Using interviews from people who have worked in corporations that deal with food, government officials, and farmers, as well as footage of working farms, the film illustrates the evolution, or degradation, of food production.

The Future of Food opens with a description of the Green Revolution, during which food production became more mechanized and the use of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and fungicides increased the yield of common crops.  Agriculture and biotechnology melded soon after, and genetic modification produced crops that were resistant to herbicides, pests, and had higher yields.  At this point, however, the story reveals a darker reality of food production in North America.  Large corporations began to apply for patents on their genetically modified organisms, claiming ownership over their strains of crop.  Unfortunately, as seed spreads from one field to another by wind, insects, or other natural processes, patented plants  grew, unbeknownst to the farmers, on neighboring fields.  Corporations filed lawsuits against farmers, claiming that the farmers had stolen their plants.  Koons uses interviews with farmers who have been taken to court by large agriculture corporations, such as Monsanto, to illustrate the changing field of modern food production.  Many of her interviewees are female farmers who describe how their families and livelihoods have been affected by these lawsuits.

Koons then examines the potential health and environmental effects of genetically modified organisms.  Allergic reactions as a result from taking genes from an allergenic food and inserting them into another food have been reported.  Additionally, the effects of genetically modified plants reproducing and combining their genes with non-genetically modified plants have not been fully studied, and the potential consequences of hybrid plants have the potential to wreak havoc on small- scale subsistence farmers.

This film has a clear message, one that is distrustful of industry and big agriculture, and it questions the place of biotechnology in our food.  However, the film ends on a positive note, describing the rise of the organic movement, farmers’ markets, and community-supported agriculture programs.  Koons encourages viewers to use their consumer power to support local farms.

While there are not a lot of interviews coming from female experts, many personal anecdotes from women pertaining to how GMOs have resulted in an allergic reaction or how the Monsanto lawsuits have affected their lives are used in the documentary.  Using these interviews alongside the interviews coming from men make the effects of GMO more personal because we see that this technology affects everyone associated with it.

This documentary received mixed reviews, with some calling it one-sided, without addressing oppositional views [1].  Others praised the documentary and used it as a rallying point to protest industrialized agriculture [2] [3].

For more information, visit http://www.thefutureoffood.com/.

[1]  http://pubs.acs.org/cen/reelscience/reviews/future_food/

[2] http://www.sfgate.com/living/article/Fighting-for-the-future-of-food-Deborah-Koons-2637592.php

[3] http://movies.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/movies/14food.html?_r=0

Queen of Versailles, The (Dir: Lauren Greenfield)

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Running Time: 100 min
David Siegel and Jaqueline SiegelPhoto by Lauren Greenfield – © 2012 - Magnolia Pictures

David Siegel and Jaqueline Siegel
Photo by Lauren Greenfield – © 2012 – Magnolia Pictures

Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles challenges viewers to contemplate the emptiness and excess created by consumerism. Through following one ultra-wealthy family’s accumulation and subsequent loss of material wealth, Greenfield explores America’s pre-Recession moral decay and its consequent (and painful) hangover.  Part cinema verite, part candid interview, she investigates the ugly byproduct of America’s free market ideology – unashamed greed – and how we are all suspect to its charm.

“Everyone wants to be rich,” says David Seigel, one of the subject of Greenfield’s film, as he expounds on his business philosophy, “if they can’t be rich, the next best thing is to feel rich. And if they don’t want to feel rich, they’re probably dead.” Seigel, the owner and founder of the largest privately-owned timeshare company, uses this theory to amass his empire. While he profits from alluring working-class Americans to indulge their appetite for luxury, he seeks his own aspirations of building the largest house in America, modeled after the Versailles Palace.  In essence, Seigel’s business successes and personal aspirations epitomize America’s pre-Recession greed-driven culture.

But when the housing market crashes, his billions disappear. While Greenfield could have focused on David for her film, as his meteoric rise and fall have Shakespearean proportions, she instead makes Jackie, his wife, the primary subject of the film. Greenfield follows the tall, blonde fortyish shopaholic as she attempts to maintain cohesion within her family of eight children even as they become bankrupt. As the family falls deeper into economic trouble, we see Jackie becoming more responsible. Although she remains quixotically optimistic that their wealth will return and that they will complete their Versailles home, she forces herself to live a more constrained lifestyle.

The Queen of Versailles received high critical praise, including the US directing award at the 2012 Sundance. The film received further attention when David Seigel sued Greenfield for not obtaining proper release. The US District Court Judge Anne Conway sided with the filmmaker, writing “it rips the fibers of the imagination to stretch it so far as to believe that a sophisticated business executive within the tightly run organization of a self-proclaimed dictator would sign an agreement without reading it and without ever discussing it with his iron-fisted boss and father until after litigation commenced.”[i]

But as much as this film is a moral indictment against American consumerism, it is also a celebration of ambition, strength, charity, and redemption. No doubt Greenfield remains sympathetic to her subjects, particularly Jackie, whose unpretentiousness and undying optimism makes for a compelling watch. While the film indulges the audience’s sense of schadenfraude, it also forces the audience to cringe when we see their comeuppance.  But the film hits its audience the hardest when it reveals the emptiness in our material lives. This becomes most apparent when the Seigel family opens up their hundreds of Christmas presents. After the brief and fleeting moment of excitement of opening the presents, the family sits with empty expressions on their faces, surrounded by a sea of cheap plastic toys and glittering wrapping paper.  As A.O. Scott of the New York Times writes, “if this film is a portrait, it is also a mirror.”[ii]

[i] United States District Court Middle District of Florida Orlando Division. Westgate Resorts, Ltd. v. Lauren Greenfield, Frank Evers and Greenfield/Evers LLC. 2013-01-24. Retrieved 2013-04-09. http://www.entlawdigest.com/2013/01/29/qofversailles.pdf

[ii] Scott, A. O. “Let Them Eat Crow.” New York Times 20 July 2012. Web. 10 April 2013.

Southern Comfort (Dir: Kate Davis, 2001)

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Running Time: 90 min

Robert Eads and Lola Cola

English

Subject Headings: documentary, transsexual identity, health care, human rights

Southern Comfort is divided into the last four seasons of the life of Robert Eads, a cowboy from the Toccoa, Georgia backcountry.  Director Kate Davis spent one year living with Eads and filming his daily struggle with ovarian cancer.  More than a dozen doctors denied Eads treatment because he was a female-to-male transsexual.  Unable to receive treatment, the cancer ultimately claimed Eads’ life shortly after he spoke at the 1999 Southern Comfort conference in Atlanta, GA.  Southern Comfort, an annual conference for people affected by trans issues,

During the last year of his life, Eads pursued a close relationship with Lola Cola, a male-to-female transsexual. Davis documented their life together, as well as the tensions that resulted within Eads’ “family of choice.”  After bearing two sons, a period that he described as both the best and the worst in his life, Eads divorced his husband and lived as a lesbian before undergoing gender reassignment surgery to live as a woman.  At the time Davis was filming, Eads lived near several other transsexuals who came out publicly for the first time in the film.  Fiercely protective of one another, each member of the family sought to help Eads, who was a father figure and mentor to each.  Eads’ biological family, including his parents, son, and grandson, makes a brief appearance, but they still see him as a daughter and father and are unable to relate to the person he has become.  The loss of his biological family clearly pains Eads deeply, and he often mentions his grandson, to whom he has always been a man.

Davis highlights the frustration and anger felt by Eads and his friends over the medical establishment’s unwillingness to offer transsexuals parity. Those who underwent gender reassignment surgery shared stories about the expense and the doctors who did a poor job.  Footage of Southern Comfort reveals men and women discriminated against and threatened by a system ill equipped to address difference.  But as much as the film is about the difficulties faced by transsexuals in America, it also emphasizes the beauty and normalcy of transsexual relationships.  By showing both the unity and the divisions within Eads’ chosen family, Davis demonstrates that they are as human as her audience.  The film received numerous awards and critical acclaim, including a grand jury prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

Will Hopkins 2011

Further Reading:

Official web site: http://www.nextwavefilms.com/southern/

Southern Comfort web site: http://www.sccatl.org/

World Professional Association for Transgender Health: http://wpath.org/

Meyer, Carla. The transsexual life, Southern style / HBO documentary explores fascinating ‘chosen family’. SFGate.com. 2002. < http://articles.sfgate.com/2002-04-12/entertainment/17538451_1_transsexual-southern-comfort-ovarian>

Mitchell, Elvis. Genders That Shift, but Friends Firm as Bedrock. The New York Times. 2001. < http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B01E5DC1639F932A15751C0A9679C8B63>

Mirror Dance (Dir: Frances McElroy and María Teresa Rodríguez, 2005)

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Running Time: 53 min

Subject Headings: Exilic/Diasporic cinema, Identity, Documentary

Mirror Dance follows the lives of identical twin sisters Ramona and Margarita de Saá, both former prima ballerinas for the National Ballet of Cuba. After the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the twins became separated, as Ramona dedicated herself to the cause by remaining in Cuba, while Margarita immigrated to the United States following a marriage to an American. Set against the backdrop of unstable and tense relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the film examines issues of divided and reterritorialized identity on both a personal and national level.

The de Saá’s story unfolds amidst (mainly) verité sequences, formal interviews, family photographs and old archival footage of not only the twins as ballerinas, but also the volatile 1950s and 60s Havana in which they grew up. Following Fidel Castro’s pledged commitment to the arts, the twins flourished. Margarita, however, began to grow disillusioned with the Revolution, finally making the painful decision to leave her life, and sister, for the United States. She now runs the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet in Narberth, PA. Ramona, a self-described “revolutionary woman,” saw Margarita’s departure as a betrayal, and refused to have contact with her for over 40 years. The film therefore investigates the intersections between the personal and the political, questioning at what cost comes the formation of a national identity.

While the film seeks to universalize the de Saá’s tale of personal pain and loss as a result of international hostilities, it is also a distinctly personal story. On February 28, 2004, Ramona and Margarita were reunited in Cuba, both expressing the desire to remain in contact. Yet, Margarita does assert that she “would not have gone back to Cuba” without the impetus of the documentary.

In June 2004, politics once again intervened when the U.S. government tightened restrictions on travel to Cuba. The twins’ identity in relation to each other, their home country Cuba, and (in the case of Margarita) their exilic home remains complicated.

Further Information:

Preview Clip on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Y505Gnlds

Film’s Site on PBS Independent Lens: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/mirrordance/film.html

Filmmaker Bios: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/mirrordance/bios.html

Cuban Revolution Information: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/mirrordance/revolution.html

Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet: http://www.paacademyofballet.com/teachers2.htm

National Ballet of Cuba: http://www.balletcuba.cult.cu/

Bibliographic Sources:

Benamou, Catherine: “Cuban Cinema: On the Threshold of Gender.” In (pp. 67-98) Robin, Diana (ed. and introd.); Jaffe, Ira (ed. and introd.), Redirecting the Gaze: Gender, Theory, and Cinema in the Third World. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 1999. xi, 377 pp.. (Albany, NY: SUNY Series, Cultural Studies in Cinema/Video ). (1999)

D’Lugo, Marvin: “‘Transparent Women’: Gender and Nation in Cuban Cinema.” In (pp. II: 155-66) Martin, Michael T. (ed. and introd.), New Latin American Cinema, I: Theory, Practices and Transcontinental Articulations; II: Studies of National Cinemas. Detroit, MI: Wayne State UP, 1997. 322; 540 pp.. (Detroit, MI: Contemporary Film and Television). (1997)

Quirós, Oscar Enrique: “The Aesthetics of Cuban Cinema: The Emancipatory Role of the Arts in the Cuban Social Whole.” Dissertation Abstracts International, (54:9) 1994 Mar, 3244A. U of Kansas, 1993. DA9405783 . (1994)

López, Ana M.: “Cuban Cinema in Exile: The ‘Other’ Island.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, (38), 1993 June, 51-59. (1993)

Rachel Killackey 2012

Treyf (Alisa Lebow, Cynthia Mandasky, 1998)

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Running Time: 55 min

“Treyf” examines the relationship Alisa Lebow and Cynthia Madansky have with each other, Judaism, their heritage, and Israel. Lebow and Madansky met during a Passover seder in Brooklyn, New York. Throughout the documentary they explore their connection to Queerness and Judaism through footage of the Lower East Side in Manhattan, Jerusalem, synagogues, and their home.

A major theme of the film is the concept of “treyf”. It is a Yiddish term that means either food that is not kosher or person who is an abomination. While Alisa refuses to eat treyf food, Cynthia takes a pleasure in defying tradition and the way she was brought up. They are both secular Jews, so the choice is more about culture and personality than religion.
The women disagree with each other about almost every aspect of the documentary. While Alisa lived in Israel and still has fondness for it, Cynthia seems completely done with it. Cynthia has an obsession with the ultra-orthodoxy, which Alisa thinks of as an exotification. They grew up with a shared culture, but through their sexuality grew apart from it in different ways.
Despite the arguments, they make it clear that they come from the same place and are still tightly bound to the Jewish community and the lesbian community. By showing both of their perspectives, and by interviewing dozens of other queer Jewish women, Treyf manages to capture the way both communities affect who they are as people and the way they see themselves in the world. Even though there are different forms of Judaism, and different expressions of queerness, there is also a shared understanding, although it is by no means uncomplicated.

For further reading,  see Alisa Lebow’s thoughts on the creation of the documentary in her book,  First Person Jewish (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/L/lebow_first.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=SET9W5JTOUMC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=first+person+jewish&source=bl&ots=FjbuEBbf9N&sig=fQPpms1yCDFCWITUEu6-CtB5ZDE&hl=en&ei=VDu2Te3nJs6Ttwf219WLAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Lisa Yelsey Class of 2013

April 2011

The Business of Being Born (Abby Epstein, 2008)

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Running Time: 87 min
Producer Riki Lake and Filmmaker Abby Epstein

Producer Riki Lake and Filmmaker Abby Epstein

Format: Color, DVD

The Business of Being Born acts as a long-form argument for the expanding and liberalizing of the American birthing experience. The film follows Maya, one midwife, through a series of home births and private interviews. Meanwhile, we learn from spliced-in interviews with dozens of talking heads about the logistics of hospital births, startling statistics surrounding the probability of c-section, and the harrowing history of the birth experience in America. From the opening, Epstein makes it clear to us that we should question the hospital sterility of certain experts and return to a trust and knowledge of the woman’s body and intuition in birth. In this way, the film is somewhat necessarily gender essentializing, arguing for a natural, wise, and exceptionally gendered experience.

Epstein sets up a constant juxtapositional tug: the audience is swept back and forth from sterile, brightly lit, clearly suspect hospital interviews to graphic but ultimately victorious scenes of women’s home birth experiences. The sheer number of home births prominently featured in the film is impressive, most often including multiple cuts of interviews with the featured mother-to-be. More memorable than the home birth scenes, however, are the shots of hospital births presented. As various radical birth activists within the medical community narrate the seemingly impossible degree to which the typical hospital birth is unnatural, emotionally and literally scarring scenes of women in violent labor or graphic depictions of c-section procedures flash across the screen. Contrasting these scenes with Maya’s incredibly soothing, calm, and wise demeanor, it is clear whose side the audience is supposed to take.

Most interestingly, both Epstein and her producer, actress and talk show host Riki Lake, unexpectedly become pregnant over the course of shooting. The film features both women on screen prominently and often, tracing their own friendship and their prenatal planning. Garnering a lot of press was the scene in which Riki Lake appears totally nude in her own home giving birth, without makeup and shot on a home camcorder. The surprising normalcy of the scene, especially given the number of naked, graphic home-births featured earlier seems much more the point than does the shock value of a naked Riki Lake in labor. Epstein, too, decides on a home birth, but a rather surprising take-away message arises from her birthing experience. Her baby is in danger and premature, causing her, Lake(also present) and Maya to make the swift decision to transfer to the hospital where she delivers via emergency c-section, a procedure repeatedly demonized up until this point. We learn that Epstein’s baby was struggling with prenatal complications and that the c-section likely saved the baby. Only at this moment is the audience sure that the film acts not as a lengthy commercial for midwifery but as an engagement in a fraught argument, as Epstein struggles to reconcile her semi-traumatic birthing experience with the ultimately ideal outcome.

Watch the film on Netflix.

Further Reading:

Film Website: http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/index.php

Davis-Floyd, Robbie E.. Birth as an Americal Right of Passage. Berkely: University of California Press, 1992. Print.

Fox, Bonnie, and Diana Worts. “Revisiting the Critique of Medicalized Childbirth: A Contribution to the Sociology of Birth.” Gender and Society 13.3 (1999): 326-346. Print.

Holden, Stephen . “American Motherhood and the Question of Home Birth.” The New York Times 8 Jan. 2009, sec. Movies: The New York Times Online. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.

“International: Is there no place like home?; Home births. ” The Economist 2 Apr. 2011: Research Library, ProQuest. Web.  26 Apr. 2011.

King,  Kathleen J.. “Interview with Abby Epstein, Director of The Business of Being Born – Page 2 – DivineCaroline .” DivineCaroline: Relationships, Health, Home, Style, Parenting, and Community for Women – DivineCaroline . N.p., 1 July 2007. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.

Macdonald, Margaret. “Gender Expectations: Natural Bodies and Natural Births in the New Midwifery in Canada.” Medical Anthology Quarterly 20.2 (2006): 235-256. Print.

Martin, Karin A.. “Giving Birth like a Girl.” Gender and Society 17.1 (2003): 54-72. JStor. Web. 24 Apr. 2011.

Chloe Browne 2011

El General (Natalia Almada, 2009)

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Running Time: 83 min

“If we can see the present clearly enough, we shall ask the right questions of the past.” Attributed to John Berger, this quotation appears a few minutes into Natalia Almada’s El General, and aptly describes the film’s path.

The titular figure is Almada’s late great-grandfather, her bisabuelo, General Plutarco Elías Calles. Calles was a central figure in the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s who became president of Mexico; his violent opposition to the Catholic Church was just one issue that continues to make him a contentious presence in Mexican history. He was exiled by a successor, but his final resting place is a monument to the revolution in Mexico City.

At moments, the film seems as though it might be an act of reconciliation. Almada incorporates audio recordings that chronicle the beginnings of her grandmother’s attempt to write the general’s biography. These recordings constitute a window into el general, the father. But how can this close familial view exist peacefully alongside the image of el general, the dictator—as some have called him? Ultimately, these conflicting stories are said to be just that—stories. They do not need to be reconciled. As Berger’s words imply, Almada turns primarily to the reality of the present in Mexico City, looking there for remnants of a tumultuous historical past. And therefore, despite the power of Almada’s grandmother’s tapes and of Almada’s use of archive from public histories, private histories, and narrative cinema, El General’s most meaningful images are those of present-day Mexican laborers. Almada intimately interacts with them through interview, and follows them in long takes as they cart commodities through the city. Almada gives them voice and they have various things to say about Mexican history, but their very existence also becomes something of a testament to the general’s legacy.

Bibliography:

Brief interview with the filmmaker

Dissertation on the distribution of Mexican documentaries.

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Michelle Citron’s “Fleeing from Documentary: Autobiographical Film/Video and the “Ethics of Responsibility””

Ella Shohat’s “Post-Third-Worldist culture”