Research Guides: Women's History Month Virtual Film Festival 2023: Titles

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Celebrating Women's History Month with films from the Kathryn A. Martin Library!

All of these videos are available for you to stream. Access is available for UMD students, faculty, and staff.

Create your own film festival! Choose a film or a few; learn and enjoy; watch something you know you'll like or take a chance and try something different.

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Women's History Month 2023 Theme: Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories

"From the earliest storytellers through pioneering journalists, our experiences have been captured by a wide variety of artists and teachers. These include authors, songwriters, scholars, playwrights, performers, and grandmothers throughout time. Women have long been instrumental in passing on our heritage in word and in print to communicate the lessons of those who came before us. Women’s stories, and the larger human story, expand our understanding and strengthen our connections with each other."

National Women's History Alliance

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The links below take you to the Library Catalog. Look for the link next to View Online and watch the film. You may be asked to login to gain access to the video.

How to be a Writer. Between the Lines. Imbolo Mbue
Publication Date: 2017
Imbolo Mbue is a native of the seaside town of Limbe, Cameroon. She holds a BS from Rutgers University and an MA from Columbia University. A resident of the United States for more than a decade, she lives in New York City. Behold the Dreamers, her critically acclaimed debut novel, won the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, was named by The New York Times and The Washington Post as one of their Notable Books of 2016, named as a Best Book of 2016 by NPR, Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian and the The St. Louis Dispatch. The novel also won the 2017 Blue Metropolis Words to Change Award and was named Oprah's Book Club 2017 selection. [30 minutes]
In the Rumbling Belly of Motherland
Publication Date: 2021
Revealing the ongoing dangers for women reporters, and the extraordinary risks they take, this film provides an in-depth look into Zan TV, Kabul's female-led news agency. A professional journalist herself, Brishkay Ahmed documents both the harrowing and inspiring work of young, female journalists over the course of the two-year lead up to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. the film reveals the daily hurdles Afghan female reporters and media staff face, underscoring the existential current events that threaten both Zan TV as a media outlet and the livelihoods of the women at its heart. [82 minutes]
A New Color
Publication Date: 2017
A New Color joyfully profiles the life and work of celebrated artist Edythe Boone whose colorful murals portray some of the major events of our time and illustrate the transformative power of art. From humble Harlem roots, the indefatigable Boone pursued her love of art and her dream of someday creating a new color -- "a color that no one had ever seen before." Boone moved her family to Berkeley in the 1970's from Harlem to avoid the growing crack epidemic. In the Bay Area, she was drawn to community mural projects that channeled her artistic talent into public advocacy for racial and social justice, including the landmark MaestraPeace mural on the San Francisco Women's Building. [56 minutes]
The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen
Publication Date: 2016
This documentary from award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Abod provides a window into the life of Angela Bowen, a woman who grew up in inner city Boston during the Jim Crow era and went on to become a classical ballerina, legendary dance teacher, black lesbian feminist activist organizer, writer and professor.. For six decades Bowen has influenced and inspired untold numbers, speaking out as strongly for the Arts, and Black and Women's Rights as she has for LGBT Rights. Bowen's stories reveal how the challenges of race, class, gender, age, and sexuality played into her decisions and strategies for survival. [73 minutes]
Reel Wāhine of Hawaiʻi.
Publication Date: 2018
Reel Wāhine of Hawaiʻi presents 6 short films about the history and accomplishments of Hawaiʻi women filmmakers. The project showcases pioneering filmmakers as they recount their role, philosophy, challenges and triumphs in building the Hawaiʻi film industry. It results from an intergenerational collaboration between young women graduates of Hawaiʻi Women in Filmmaking programs and a veteran team of filmmakers, eager to share their experience and expertise. [6 films, 9 minutes each]
The Rest I Make Up
Publication Date: 2018
Maria Irene Fornes was one of America's greatest playwrights and most influential teachers, but many know her only as the ex-lover of writer and social critic Susan Sontag. The visionary Cuban-American dramatist constructed astonishing worlds on-stage, writing over 40 plays and winning nine Obie Awards. At the vanguard of the nascent Off-Off Broadway experimental theater movement in NYC, Fornes is often referred to as American theater's "Mother Avant-Garde." When she gradually stops writing due to dementia, an unexpected friendship with filmmaker Michelle Memran reignites her spontaneous creative spirit and triggers a decade-long collaboration that picks up where the pen left off. [79 minutes]
Salata Baladi
Publication Date: 2008
Nadia Kamel’s Salata Baladi is a documentary with a simple premise: recorded family history. However, while the premise itself may be simple, Kamel’s film successfully touches on complex social and political tensions that have and continue to affect Egyptian society. Responding to an increase in negative rhetoric directed at perceived “others” in her native Egypt, Kamel set out to document her own diverse family history by recording the memories of her mother, Mary Rosenthal. [1 hour 45 minutes]
Shooting Women
Publication Date: 2008
This film explores the persistent issues of the glass ceiling, sexual harassment, and childcare for professional camerawomen around the globe---working from environments where raising such issues is seen as "unprofessional." It offers insight from top directors of photography like Ellen Kuras and Sandi Sissel, while giving voice to stories of groundbreaking women like African-American Jessie Maple Patton, who sued the American union and networks for the right to work. [54 minutes]
Swimming With Lesbians
Publication Date: 2007
How do we create a history from a past that was hidden? Swimming with Lesbians dives into the darkest depths to find the answer. The film looks at an upstate New York community's efforts to create an LBGT historic archive. Extraordinary lesbian activist Madeline Davis uncovers the lives and histories collected for this archive"”some sad, some quirky, some tender"”and all richly imagined through the Blue Sky lens. The film share's Davis's mission to create a lasting legacy for the LBGT community: "We are ephemeral. This is for the ages." [70 minutes]
Threads
Publication Date: 2017
Torn from her family, her paintings, and her beloved Calcutta after the partition of India, artist Surayia Rahman finds a new life in Bangladesh teaching impoverished mothers to embroider her story-telling designs. An inspirational example of the power of art and the impact of empowering women and girls around the world, Threads takes us on an intimate journey into the heart of an artist and celebrates an unconventional path to dignity and independence. [32 minutes]
Untold. Ethel Payne : First Lady of the Black Press
Publication Date: 2021
If you could put the President on the spot, what question would you ask? As the First Lady of the Black Press, Ethel Payne wielded her first amendment right to ask the tough questions and hold those in power to account. [3 minutes]
The Watermelon Woman
Publication Date: 1997
Cheryl Dunye's debut feature is as controversial as it is sexy and funny. Cheryl is a twenty-something black lesbian working as a clerk in a video store while struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, an obscure black actress from the 1930's. Cheryl is surprised to discover that Richards (known popularly as "the Watermelon Woman") had a white lesbian lover. At the same time, Cheryl falls in love with a very cute white customer at the video store (Guinevere Turner from Go Fish). Such are the complexities of race and sex in this startlingly fresh debut, which has been attacked by conservative Congressmen for having been funded by the NEA and lavishly praised in the editorial pages for being charming and courageous. [85 minutes]
Without a Whisper
Publication Date: 2021
Mohawk Clan Mother Louise Herne and Professor Sally Roesch Wagner shake the foundation of the established history of the women's rights movement in the United States. They join forces on a journey to shed light on the hidden history of the influence of Haudenosaunee Women on the women's rights movement, possibly changing this historical narrative forever. [26 minutes]