Women Make Movies
From cutting-edge documentaries that give depth to today’s headlines to smart, stunning films that push artistic and intellectual boundaries in all genres, Women Make Movies (WMM), a non-profit feminist social enterprise based in New York, is the world’s leading distributor of independent films by and about women.
As the leading distributor of women's films in North America, Women Make Movies works with organizations and institutions that utilize non-commercial, educational media in their programs. This includes media arts centers, museums, galleries, colleges and universities, as well as other non-profit organizations and agencies, ranging from hospitals to prisons to labor unions to the U.S. Army. Our collection of more than 500 titles includes documentary, experimental, animation, dramatic and mixed-genre work. The films and videotapes represent a diversity of styles, subjects and perspectives in women's lives. More than half of the works in the collection were produced by women of diverse cultures, and the collection includes a variety of works by and about lesbians, older women and women with disabilities.
Women Make Movies is proud to have films in their collection by renowned filmmakers such as Jane Campion, Julie Dash, Sally Potter, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Lourdes Portillo, Tracey Moffatt, Valie Export, Kim Longinotto, Pratibha Parmar, Ngozi Onwurah and Ulrike Ottinger, among others, as well as films that have garnered top prizes at prestigious film festivals such as Cannes and Sundance. The Production Assistance program continues to support the production and development of film and video projects. In the past four years over 200 projects were completed with the assistance of the Fiscal Sponsorship Program. Projects that WMM has supported and distributed have won all of the most prestigious media awards including the Academy Award, Emmy Award and the Peabody Award, among others.
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How to Lose Your Virginity
Directed by Therese Shechter • Documentary • 2013 • 66 minutes
Female virginity. The US government has spent 1.5 billion dollars promoting it. It has fetched $750,000 at auction. There is no official medical definition for it. And 50 years after the sexual revolution, it continues to define youn...
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The Passionate Pursuits of Angela Bowen
Directed by Jennifer Abod • Documentary • With Angela Bowen • 2016 • 73 minutes
An inspiring film by award winning documentary filmmaker Jennifer Abod, PhD (THE EDGE OF EACH OTHER’S BATTLES: THE VISION OF AUDRE LORDE). THE PASSIONATE PURSUITS provides a window into the life of Angela Bowen who g...
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Siberian Love
Directed by Olga Delane • Documentary • 2017 • 82 minutes
In rural Siberia, romantic expectations are traditional and practical. The man is the head of the household. The woman takes care of the housekeeping and the children. But filmmaker Olga Delane doesn’t agree. While she was born in this sm...
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Suzy Lake: Playing with Time
Directed by Annette Mangaard • Documentary • 2015 • 62 minutes
Photographer Suzy Lake is one of the formative feminist artists to evolve out of the heyday of the 1960’s and the Second Wave. A master of the art of self-portraiture, Lake influenced Cindy Sherman as well as a host of other female a...
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Dream Girls
Directed by Kim Longinotto & Jano Williams • Documentary • 1995 • 50 minutes
This fascinating documentary, produced for the BBC, opens a door into the spectacular world of the Takarazuka Revue, a highly successful musical theater company in Japan. Each year, thousands of girls apply to enter the...
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Kings Point
Directed by Sari Gilman • Documentary • 2014 • 30 minutes
During the 1970s and 80s, thousands of New York’s primarily Jewish senior citizens migrated to Kings Point, a retirement community in Florida. Lured by blue skies, sunshine and the promise of richer social lives, they bought paradise for ...
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Apache 8
Directed by Sande Zeig • Documentary • 2012 • 57 minutes
For 30 years, the all-female Apache 8 unit has protected their reservation from fire and also responded to wildfires around the nation. This group of firefighters, which recently became co-ed, soon earned the reputation of being fierce, lo...
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Night Cries
Directed by Tracey Moffat • Drama • With Marcia Langton, Agnes Hardwick, Jimmy Little • 1991 • 19 minutes
On an isolated, surreal Australian homestead, a middle-aged Aboriginal woman nurses her dying white mother. The adopted daughter’s attentive gestures mask an almost palpable hostility. Their...
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The Grace Lee Project
Directed by Grace Lee • Documentary • 2006 • 68 minutes
When award-winning Korean-American filmmaker Grace Lee was growing up in Missouri, she was the only Grace Lee she knew. As an adult, however, she moved to New York and then California, where everyone she met seemed to know "another Grace Le...
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Nice Colored Girls
Directed by Tracey Moffatt • Drama • With Gayle Mabo, Cheryl Pitt, Janelle Court • 1987 • 16 minutes
This stylistically daring film audaciously explores the history of exploitation between white men and Aboriginal women, juxtaposing the “first encounter” between colonizers and native women with ...
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Rough Aunties
Directed by Kim Longinotto • Documentary • 2009 • 103 minutes
Fearless, feisty and resolute, the “Rough Aunties” are a remarkable group of women unwavering in their stand to protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa. This documentary by internation...
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Your Name in Cellulite
Directed by Gail Noonan • Animation • 1995 • 6 minutes
A wickedly funny satire about the disparity between a woman's natural beauty and the ideal promoted by the mega-billion dollar advertising industry, this animated film shows us how far we will go to change the shape of our bodies to meet the...
