Women Make Movies: the Girls Project.

Performing the Border. Ursula Biemann, 1999

La Boda: Hannah Weyer, 2000

Escuela: Hannah Weyer, 2002

5 Girls: Maria Finitzo, 2001

Cusp: Ruth Sergel, 2000

Kinaalda: Lena Carr, 2000

Closer. Tina Gharavi, 2000

Girls Around the World:

The F Word: Erin Gallagher and Marcia Jarmel, 1994

The organization WOMEN MAKE MOVIES was founded in 1972 to support independent female video and filmmakers whose work offers alternative views on the issues and concerns of contemporary women. WWM describes itself as a multi-cultural and multi-racial non-profit organization that facilitates the production, promotion, distribution, and exhibition of independent videos and films by and about women, making a special effort to emphasize films made by and about women of color. As major distributors, they have more than 400 tides in their list, including drama, mixed genres, animation and experimental works.

The Girls Project, a new initiative by WMM, is a collection of videos and films focusing on the lives of young females around the world. WMM envisions these tapes as educational tools, "bringing independent media to young people," educating them about those issues common to all young females, as well as introducing them to the idea of making films themselves, inspiring girls to see themselves as "owners of their own images" (The Girls Project Catalogue, 2).

The subjects of the films range from religion, rituals and rites of passage to issues of gender and sexuality, school, friendship, family and politics, as well as the more ordinary concerns of girls. As teaching tools, many of these films will be useful and engaging for both students and instructors. Two of the most successful films, La Boda and Escuela, made by Hannah Weyer, focus on two daughters in the Luis de Guerrero family. They are migrant workers who live their lives between Texas and southern California, moving where they are able to find work. The first film, La Boda (2000), focuses on Elizabeth and the Luis family as they prepare for Elizabeth's wedding.

The Luis family is an intact, closely knit Mexican family with very strong ties to their larger community. Elizabeth, who is 22, recounts how she has moved forty-four times during her life from their home in Mission Texas to Southern California each year to find work. Although she hates the migrating, she does it with her family, and will do it soon with her new husband, because, as she says, she wants "to live better." Interspersing the wedding preparations with work in California, Weyer reveals the very hard life the migrants live. The camera follows Elizabeth, her mother, and her sisters as they cover their heads and faces with bandannas before they go into the pesticide-laden grape fields. They are neither bitter nor angry. Rather they see their work as necessary for their survival.

Through the voices of Elizabeth's mother and father, we learn that since they married, and while they raised their daughters and son, they have been migrant workers. But throughout these difficult times, they have been sustained by family and by community in both Texas and California who are in the same predicament. As the wedding preparations unfold, we see the entire community engaged: people send money to help pay for the wedding; one cousin is making all the dresses, while another is cooking the meat. At one point their small living room in bursting with people all working for the wedding. Elizabeth's mother explains that she has helped many people in the past and now they help her and her family--this is their way of life. Elizabeth is the centerpiece of this extended family, ready to follow her parents' path, but anxious about the impending wedding and the demands of marriage and sex.

While La Boda emphasizes community and family as a bolster against the stress of continual migration, Escuela (2002) focuses on Elizabeth's younger sister, Liliana, and her struggles to get her education while her family shifts back and forth between two states. From March to October she is in Southern California, attending high school in affluent La Jolla, but the rest of the school year she is in Texas. The film, in an easy, honest manner, presents Liliana as caught between her commitment to the struggles of her family and her frustration with a constantly interrupted education. Liliana can see the difference between the two schools, the advantages of one and the poverty of the other. "I don't like Texas anymore," she complains, as she loses courses she loves, and needs to be put in make-up classes. AS the film continues, we see her wearing more and more makeup, wanting to dye her hair and become a "civilized freak." Her rebellion is countered by interviews with Elizabeth, who dropped out of high school to work with her parents, and wants Liliana to finish school.

Kinaalda (2000) chronicles the four-day rite of passage ceremony for Navajo girls. Lena Carr, the filmmaker and narrator, had been unable to experience this rite herself and so in the film, she follows her niece, Tanya, living through the rite as an adult. We see Tanya learning to weave, listening to and learning from the elders, and we watch the elaborate and time-consuming baking of corn bread in an oven in the ground. Although the narrative is a bit slow and a little boring at times, the film, with its gripping subject matter, is a fine contribution to our knowledge of Navajo history and political repression, family and community life, and the lives of women. The ceremony is also a celebration of Navajo culture and the role women have always played.

Another very successful film, Five Girls (2001) by Maria Finitzo, follows the lives of five girls thirteen to seventeen years of age, who all live in and around Chicago, over a two-year period. The film covers a number of important issues for young people such as sex and gender, peer issues, economic stress, conflict with parents, aftermath of divorce, rebellion, dating, and cultural difference. For example, Haibinh is a fifteen-year-old who moved with her family from Viet Nam when she was ten years old. An honors student, she seems happy with home and school, yet she is torn between two cultures. Carrie, 17, finds herself isolated because she is political and bi-sexual. Aisha, 16, has to deal with her parents' separation and her father's very critical and strict attitudes. Amber's tale is one of the most riveting. A fight between Amber and her mother over the homecoming dance early in the film reveals the real-life conflicts between parents and daughters over economic concerns. The fight signals some of the many problems that Amber has at home--for example, as a child she witnessed her mother kill her father after years of physical abuse. When Amber leaves home to live with her grandmother and gets engaged to Anton, a former drug dealer, things look dark, but at the film's end Amber has entered college and left Anton behind. While we get a very good sense of what the girls are feeling, Finitzo also pays attention to the parents' views, which gives a tidier perspective. The film is very well made: it is an intelligent, honest and poignant portrayal of the difficulties of teenage life for American girls.

Girls Around the World (1999), produced by Brenda Parkerson, is a collection of films focusing on six different seventeen-year-old young women from Africa, Peru, Germany, Finland, and Pakistan. Each film, made by a different filmmaker, focuses on a young woman coming of age, facing major changes, and needing to make life choices about family, religion, and her future. All the films are intelligent, moving, and engaging and are all worthwhile teaching tools in educating young American students about the struggles of some of their global counterparts. Anne of Benin is the story of Anne Teko, a seventeen-year-old pop singer, living with her father and his five wives in a polygamous family with 30 siblings in Benin, Africa. Caught in a cultural conflict, she begs her father to let her study in France, although she and her family know they run the risk of losing her to a European way of life. The Daughter of War portrays the aftermath of violence in Peru and how it has affected young people, particularly Pilar, who served time in jail for being part of a gang, and who has a child by a young man who is sometimes abusive. Heaven and Earth concerns Ramona, a seventeen-year-old girl living in Munich who seems to find solace and the answers to life's big questions in her religion. Religion is also important to Anousheh in Don't Ask Why; she questions the Qur'an and its restricted views of women's roles. But Anousheh is conflicted, and although she is articulate about the "chauvinism" she experiences at the hands of her father and Pakistan's patriarchal power base, she admits that ultimately she will do what she is told. The final film, Frontier, takes the viewer to the remote regions of Finland where Katia lives with her family and neighbors in an isolated natural paradise. She and her friends are caught between loving their homeland, and the pressures of economic decline that demand they leave in order to find a career and establish a life.

Tina Gharavi's film Closer (2000) tells the story of Annalise, a seventeen-year-old working-class lesbian living in Newcastle, who is trying to deal with the difficulty of being gay in a provincial English dry. Although she has the support of her mother, Annalise has still faced derision and "quite a bit of grief," as she says, for being "very out." Because Annalise is so articulate and likeable, her narrative illuminates both the pressures of class and gender and her desire for great freedom. The film, experimental in technique, mixes documentary and docu-drama, which can be disconcerting at times. For example, Annalise's discussion with her mother about being gay is reenacted after the fact, with the camera crew visible. In some ways, some of the production techniques get in the way of this very compelling story. There is often too much music, too many close-up shots, too many slowed-down or sped-up shots.

Cusp (2000), a film by Ruth Sergel, focuses on twelve-year-old Alice. Dealing with body image and coming of age, the film is acted; it is not a documentary Alice is literally on the cusp of becoming a woman and is bound up in conflict with her mother, friends, and sexuality. Although the film is at times awkwardly acted, it gets better as it goes along. When Alice's mother asks her to put away the washed dishes after dinner and Alice refuses, a fight ensues. This is the most compelling scene of the film--it is intelligent, realistic, well acted, and fully captures the pain and anger of both parent and child.

The F Word (1994), by Marcia Jarmel and Erin Gallagher, is a brief 10-minute film that tries to define "feminism." Interviews with men and women who offer their own definitions are interspersed with written descriptions that scroll across the screen and are from folks as diverse as Pat Robertson and Rebecca West. Although the written definitions give a historical perspective, they interrupt the flow of the film. Nonetheless, The F Word would be a very useful teaching tool to spark discussions in women's studies classes as well as help students think about definition in a writing class.

Performing the Border (1999) by Ursula Biemann is a serious, academic examination of the politics surrounding the border between Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas. It is focused in particular on the dilemmas of Mexican women who work in the large factories on the border and who are often separated from their children. The "wound of the border" must be healed the narrator says, and, while the goals of the film are very worthy, the narration is a little too preachy and academic. The film seems more a lecture than a documentary, and its filmic qualities rend to be overdone.

All in all, The Girls Project is an excellent initiative. The films, interesting and engaging educational tools for both teachers and students, offer intelligent and sensitive insights into the problems of young females, and as such would be very useful for parents as well. The subjects of the films and the girls at their center are diverse and the scope of the films is both political and international. At the same time, the ordinary concerns of everyday life are presented with honesty and intimacy making these films moving, and compelling. They will be a very valuable addition to any educator's or school's library.

For more information, including teaching modules, study guides and resources, one can visit The Girls Project Online at www.wmm.com/catalog/girlsproject.htm.

BELLA MIRABELLA is Associate Professor of Humanities in the Gallatin School of Interdisciplinary and Individualized Studies at New York University. She is a member the editorial collective of Radical Teacher.