Over the past year, feminist documentary filmmakers have offered some of the most urgent, intimate and inventive storytelling in nonfiction cinema—interrogating power, preserving overlooked histories and centering voices too often pushed to the margins. From Ms.’ feminist media legacy, to reproductive justice, Indigenous sovereignty, maternal health and the transformative power of art, these films don’t just document the world as it is—they insist on what it could be.
Here are some of our favorite feminist documentaries from the past year.
Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print
Directed by Salima Koroma, Alice Gu and Cecilia Aldarondo
Reflecting on a past that’s still deeply relevant, the HBO documentary Dear Ms. delves into the vital impact of the magazine in its first several decades. Using iconic cover stories and articles as guiding lights, Dear Ms. is split into three segments; in each, a different director highlights an issue that helped define the magazine, its writers, its readership and the feminist movement.
Salima Koroma’s segment, “A Magazine for All Women,” homes in on Ms.’ founding and how editors poured their energy into covering as many topics relevant to as many women as possible—not always with complete success.
Alice Gu’s “A Portable Friend” uses letters to the editor to consider how both men and women responded to the magazine, reflecting on male feminists as well as unsparing articles like those on “battered wives” (a term Ms. brought into the mainstream) and sexual harassment.
Lastly, Cecilia Aldarondo’s “No Comment” focuses on how Ms. dealt with debates around sex, erotica and pornography, issues that still divide feminists. All three segments, though slightly different in style, utilize archival footage alongside present-day interviews with some of the original editors, publishers and writers, who meaningfully speak to both the magazine’s strengths and what they perceive as its missteps. The result is a measured, edifying and engaging look at how history is shaped, how debates form and evolve, and how progress should be measured not by which ideas win out but by how we reflect on them in the present.
Dear Ms. is available for streaming on:
Never Look Away
Directed by Lucy Lawless
Even with the 24/7 news cycle, it’s pretty rare to get a glimpse into the lives of the people behind the camera, many of whom put themselves at risk to record some of the world’s most divisive conflicts. Margaret Moth was one such figure. After becoming New Zealand news media’s first woman camera operator in the mid-1970s, she later worked for a station in Houston before beginning her fateful career with CNN in 1990. Moth continually threw herself into the line of fire, sometimes literally, and captured striking footage of wars, riots and other violent conflicts in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Georgia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zaire and the West Bank.
In 1992 in Sarajevo, where journalists were often targeted for attack, a sniper shot Moth in the face, shattering her jaw. Despite months of surgeries, permanent disfigurement and lifelong difficulty eating and speaking, Moth continued to work in war zones for another 16 years.
Never Look Away is a fast-paced debut for actor-turned-director Lucy Lawless, employing unflinching reenactments of some of the most harrowing moments in Moth’s reportage alongside an amazing trove of archival footage, photos and interviews with her former coworkers, friends and lovers. A rebellious loner with a difficult childhood who nevertheless deeply loved those closest to her, Moth was not always an easy woman to understand. But she was brave and stalwart, a true journalist who did what she said she most wanted: She lived life to the fullest.
Missing From Fire Trail Road
Directed by Sabrina Van Tassel
Highlighting the case of Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis from the Tulalip Indian Reservation, last seen walking down a Washington roadway the day before Thanksgiving 2020, the documentary, Missing From Fire Trail Road, articulates its messages through an intimate, vérité style. The film puts the search for one missing Indigenous woman at the center of a tragic nexus of cases of thousands of women and girls who are abducted, murdered, raped or abused every year on or near reservations, often by non-native men, with little to no response from law enforcement.
The intersection of tribal and state laws means that tribal prosecutors have no or limited jurisdiction over non-native perpetrators once they leave tribal land, making reservations potential hunting grounds for predators who rape or even kill with slim likelihood of being caught or convicted. While federal agencies like the FBI can investigate crimes on Indigenous lands, they rarely extend their resources toward these communities.
A skillful documentary with a hard-hitting message and intimate reporting, Missing From Fire Trail Road also includes dynamic testimony from Mary Ellen’s family and friends, lawyers and law enforcement, as well as activists like Deborah Parker (also the film’s executive producer) and even then-U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland.
Missing From Fire Trail Road is available for streaming on:
Zurawski v. Texas
Directed by Abbie Perrault and Maisie Crow
What happened to Amanda Zurawski is, tragically, now familiar to many in our post-Roe nation. Halfway through her second trimester of pregnancy, Zurawski started leaking amniotic fluid and was told at the hospital that her fetus would not survive. But due to Texas’ extremely restrictive abortion laws, doctors believed their hands were tied; they could not terminate the pregnancy despite its lack of viability or concerns over Zurawski’s health. Zurawski and her husband were told to go home and wait. Three days later, she developed sepsis and almost died, losing partial function of her reproductive organs in the aftermath.
The documentary Zurawski v Texas chronicles the legal battle sparked by Zurawski’s harrowing experience and that of others like her. Spearheaded by attorney Molly Duane of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the fight to get medically necessary healthcare in the form of lifesaving abortions in Texas becomes the fulcrum for a bigger story about the very real families who survive agonizing ordeals full of loss and grief—Zurawski vividly describes the “trauma and despair that comes with waiting” to find out if you’re going to lose your fetus or your life, or both—only to be told that those in power couldn’t care less whether you live or die.
Zurawski v Texas is available for streaming on:
Seeking Mavis Beacon
Directed by Jazmin Jones
Part of the charm of the documentary, Seeking Mavis Beacon, is that it’s just as much about the filmmaker and her friends’ Gen Z lives and insights as it is about their quest to find out more about the Black model pictured on the box of the famous 1980s software program Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. It’s no wonder director Jazmin Jones uses filmmaker Cheryl Dunye’s quote, “Sometimes you have to create your own history,” as inspiration for her journey.
Jones and her partner—19-year-old hacker, cybersecurity specialist and coding expert Olivia McKayla Ross—set up a studio, start looking for leads and contemplate an existential question: What does it mean to them to find Mavis Beacon? And what will it mean if they don’t?
What follows is a documentary full of beautiful chaotic energy, including an impressive selection of TikTok videos and archival footage merged in frenetic harmony alongside interviews with people on the street and varying degrees of experts who get Jones and Ross one step closer to solving what becomes both a galvanizing mystery and complicated obsession.
Seeking Mavis Beacon is available for streaming on:
American Delivery
Directed by Carolyn Jones
In the developed world, the maternal mortality rate has been falling—everywhere except the U.S., where it’s been steadily on the rise for 20 years, with the highest rates among Black women. Carolyn Jones’ American Delivery offers a deep dive into those statistics and what might be done to reverse them.
Instead of dwelling on the negative, the documentary follows several couples through their deliveries and into postpartum, highlighting the work of nurses and nurse-midwives in creating supportive environments and good outcomes for their patients. In fact, for women whose pregnancies are low-risk, nurse-midwives are the primary medical professionals for most births in Europe, where maternal mortality is far lower. Other European practices like prenatal and postpartum nurse home visits, universal healthcare and paid family leave may also be significant factors, especially compared with the over-medicalization of births in the U.S. As one nurse-midwife attests, just listening to women and empowering them throughout their delivery and after would be a phenomenal start.
American Delivery is available for streaming on:
Songs From the Hole
Directed by Contessa Gayles
On April 16, 2004, 15-year-old James “JJ’88” Jacob committed what he recognized after the fact as a senseless crime, shooting and killing another young man in the street. Three days later, his older brother was murdered. James received a prison sentence of 40 years to life, and his family spent the next two decades mourning this double loss of lives to gang violence. Ten years into his sentence, James was sent to solitary confinement, also known as “the hole,” for more than two months; in a state of near-total isolation, he “manufactured hope” by writing music and imagining what life could be like on the outside.
Songs From the Hole, part visual album, part documentary, intertwines James’ voice-over and interviews with his father, mother, stepmom, sister and fiancée with music videos shot and produced by following the scripts James wrote to accompany his rap lyrics. Contessa Gayles’ evocative and innovative storytelling draws out how James went from troubled teen to model inmate to musician, including a turning-point moment when he discovers that the man who killed his brother is serving time in the same prison alongside him. Songs From the Hole tells a remarkable story that’s as much about the power of art as it is about the promise of forgiveness, kinship and growth.
Songs From the Hole is available for streaming on:
A Photographic Memory
Directed by Rachel Elizabeth Seed
At 18 months old, director Rachel Elizabeth Seed lost her 42-year-old mother to a cerebral hemorrhage. Sheila Turner-Seed was a well-known journalist and photographer who freelanced and worked for Scholastic magazine. After Sheila’s death, Rachel’s father, Brian, also a photographer, sold pictures from her childhood as stock images to help support the family. Decades later, determined to get to know a mother she cannot remember, Rachel combs through a vast treasure trove of audio from Sheila’s expansive project “Images of Man,” a groundbreaking photo and audio series in which she interviewed famous photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Gordon Parks about their art and philosophies. Interspersing these photos and audio with interviews with her mother’s friends and colleagues, her own family members (including her father) and intimate readings from her mother’s journal entries, Rachel manages to paint a portrait of Sheila Turner-Seed that goes far beyond just a personal trip down memory lane.
A Photographic Memory is available for streaming on:
Thanks to Vivian Rose and Livia Follet for their editorial support.
Great Job Aviva Dove-Viebahn & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
