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The American Nurse (Dir: Carolyn Jones, 2014)

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Running Time: 79 min

The American Nurse

The American Nurse: Healing America is an American documentary directed by Carolyn Jones as part of a larger project covering American nurses. The American Nurse project, started in 2011, is a collection of photographs, short video interviews, and this film. The purpose of the project is to “meet nurses all across the country and hear their stories and give them a voice”, according to Jones. The collection of short interviews (most are about 1 minute long) and the book were both published in 2012, with the film the final chapter of the project.

The film looks into the day to day activities of 5 American nurses: Jason Short, Sister Stephen, Brian McMillion, Tonia Faust, and Naomi Cross. The nurses all work in very different environments ranging from the middle of nowhere in the Appalachians to a hospital in Baltimore, MD. Jones shows us the private and public lives of these nurses in an effort to give them more of a voice when a lot of the times these nurses come in and out of patients room without sharing much of their lives. Jones, who begins the film explaining that at first she thought nurses were just nurses until she had breast cancer, isn’t a main character in the documentary, choosing instead to focus the attention of the film onto the nurses. It’s rare to hear her voice at all. The documentary takes us through the joys and pains of being a nurse, and is a great look into a world that many of us are not aware of. Instead of being simply medical professionals who do their job robotically with no emotion, The American Nurse shows us that nurses are humans like everyone else, and that they feel for their patients as anyone else.

American Nurses is a great tribute to the men and women who work hard everyday to help their patients through difficult times. Jones’ film is a must watch for anyone interested in hearing about nurses in the United States.

NYT Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/movies/the-american-nurse-documentary-focuses-on-five.html

Hollywood Reporter Review: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/american-nurse-film-review-701975

 

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

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Running Time: 92 min

broadsheet.com.au

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (2014), Dir. Mary Dore

Synopsis: Dore’s film covers a huge range of issues in the rise of the women’s movement, mostly between 1966 (beginning a few years back with the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminist Mystique) and 1971. The documentary covers a range of issues the women’s liberation movement focused on, from abortion to birth control to equal pay to employment opportunities to self-defense and rape, and locates the beginning of the movement in the political energy of the Civil Rights, antiwar, and Black Power movements of the 1960s. The film also emphasizes the huge number of everyday, ordinary women who worked together to begin the movement, underscoring the role of consciousness-raising groups and collective organization rather than focusing on just a few women.

Formally, the film cuts often between interviews — always brief, interesting and relevant — and footage of past protests, speeches, and events, usually featuring the women interviewed. This effort to weave together interviews and past footage makes the film much more engaging than lengthy interviews or tape might be. SBWSA‘s interviews also lend a pleasing affective texture to the film, emphasizing the sense of women involved in the movement that it was long overdue as well as the catharsis and necessary support of consciousness-raising groups and a new (for white women, at least) understanding of the personal as political.

The film touches briefly on certain schisms within the women’s movement and towards the end focuses on the rollback of certain feminist gains such as abortion rights, but overall emphasizes the movement’s unity and triumphs — at the cost, perhaps, of truly delving into the painful and bitter exclusion of and alienation felt by Black women, for instance, from the feminist movement (the issue of lesbianism is given more time, but the Combahee River Collective’s statement and movement, though it emerges a few years past the film’s purview, would be an invaluable addition to the film — along with a few more minutes’ analysis of lesbian separatism, rather than what the documentary does, which is conclude that lesbianism was added and treated as important almost immediately by feminism after the Lavender Menace raised the issue). An unfortunate perpetuation of the universalism of the term “women” pervades the documentary, which, with a few notable exceptions in Fran Beal and Linda Burnham, focuses its interviews mostly on white women (a striking contrast with the footage and images from the past, which clearly show many Black women and other women of color involved in the organizing and activism taking place). The film could have made interesting connections between the ways in which certain spaces within the women’s movement would not permit the entrance of male infant children and modern day trans exclusion, or touched upon any number of issues which are brought up in the film but remain salient for the women’s movement (antifeminism from women, rape culture, etc.) but instead strikes a joyful and positive tone throughout. This is certainly in service of a noble goal of emphasizing the power of collective organizing, but misses the force which acknowledging difference and difficulty can generate.

Suggested uses: There is nothing new here — in fact, there is a lot missing — for those who have taken even an introductory Gender & Sexuality Studies class or studied the rise of feminism. Its most appropriate use might therefore be in high-school US history or possibly health classrooms, or as an engaging way in which to begin to study feminism’s development, though obviously much more research should still be done.

Bibliographic items: “The Woman-Identified Woman.” Written by the group of lesbian radical feminists calling themselves the Lavender Menace and responding to the exclusion of lesbians and lesbian issues from the feminist movement. The manifesto was passed out as part of a demonstration at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City in 1970 (which did not feature any openly lesbian women). Often cited as a major moment and text in second-wave feminism, perhaps the foundational document for lesbian feminism. The next year, delegates at the 1971 National Organization of Women’s national conference declared lesbian rights a key concern for feminism.

The Combahee River Collective Statement and the anthology Words of Fire, ed. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, both of which provide more nuanced looks than the documentary at Black women’s role in women’s liberation.

The Kickstarter campaign for the film contains interesting information about the filmmaking process and creators’ purposes.

Vessel (2014)

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Running Time: 90 min

Vessel (2014), directed by Diana Whitten, follows Dutch physician and former Greenpeace ship’s doctor Rebecca Gomperts and her organization Women on Waves as they sail from country to country with the hope of providing access to and information about safe medical abortions for women. The film unfolds in chronological order with after-the-fact interviews from Women on Waves volunteers interspersed throughout. The camera centers on Gomperts for the duration of the film but also captures conversations amongst the other volunteers. Whitten includes real-time interviews with the volunteers, as well as supplementary footage filmed by other documentarians and news outlets which gives an account of how citizens on land saw the ship. Whitten is careful to protect the identities of the women who board the ship to get an abortion, as the camera only ever shows their hands or blurs their faces.

The film, which premiered at South by Southwest Film Festival in 2014, consists of almost a decade’s worth of footage and begins with Women on Waves’ first voyage to Ireland. Gomperts’ original plan involved travelling to countries like Ireland where abortion is illegal, helping pregnant women to board the ship, and administering medical (pill-based) abortions in medical in international waters where they would be legally allowed to perform abortions under Dutch jurisdiction. Their approach evolves, however, as they are met with opposition from aggressive anti-abortion activists and national governments. Gomperts eventually decides to change their strategy, knowing that if they cannot get women to board the ship then they will have to help women gain access to the necessary pills on land. She begins by going on a talk show in Portugal and on live television she gives instructions for women to buy and use Misoprostol, a drug which induces abortion about eighty percent of the time. Emily Bazelon describes the shift in Gomperts’ technique in a companion piece written in the New York Times, “The Dawn of the Post-Clinic Abortion”:

As word of Gomperts’ TV appearance spread, activists in other countries saw it as a breakthrough. Gomperts had communicated directly to women what was still, in many places, a well-kept secret: There were pills on the market with the power to end a pregnancy. Emails from women all over the world poured into Women on Waves, asking about the medication and how to get it. Gomperts wanted to help women “give themselves permission” to take the pills, as she puts it, with as little involvement by the government, or the medical profession, as possible. She realized that there was an easier way to do this than showing up in a port. She didn’t need a ship. She just needed the Internet. (Bazelon)

The film captures Women on Waves’ transition to an internet base, Women on Web, as they try to increase their global reach. Text of women’s emails overlays footage of the volunteers responding while still aboard the ship. Women from on Ireland, Philippines, and the U.S. military email Women on Web desperate for information about abortion, and the volunteers reply with explanations of how to access and use Misoprostol. Women can also fill out a consultation on the website and the organization package sends a package with the pills by mail.

There are also several animations throughout the film that contain statistics and information about abortions. One animation shows a map of the world with descriptions about international abortion laws. Accompanying the text are white figures representing women from around the world; they fall and turn black under a statistic claiming that every ten minutes a woman dies due to unsafe abortion is on-screen. Another animation includes directions for how to use Misoprostol. This segment is highly informative, explaining the side effects of the pills, when it becomes necessary to see a doctor, what to say to a doctor, and even recommends having a friend close by or reaching out to Women on Web for emotional support.

Vessel is as much an instructive film as it is an arresting close-up look at the evolution of Gomperts’ grassroots organization. The film does an excellent job of capturing the challenges that confront both Women on Waves and women across the world in regards to choosing to terminate a pregnancy. Through depictions of Gomperts’ and Women on Waves’ creative solutions, Vessel also captures the resilience of women and their collective power that transcends racial, cultural, class, and religious divides.