Winning Girl
This Sporting Life
•
56m
Directed by Kimberlee Bassford • Documentary • 2014 • 68 minutes
From award-winning Hawaiian filmmaker Kimberlee Bassford (PATSY MINK: AHEAD OF THE MAJORITY) comes WINNING GIRL, an inspirational film that follows the four-year journey of Teshya Alo, a part-Polynesian, teenage judo and wrestling phenomenon from Hawai‘i. Teshya is only 16 years old and 125 pounds, but on the judo and wrestling mats, she dominates women twice her age and pounds heavier! Now Alo has her sights set on taking the Olympic gold at both the judo and wrestling world championships - and in doing so would be the first to accomplish that feat. WINNING GIRL tells the dynamic story of an elite athlete on her ascent, a girl facing the challenges of puberty and growing up with an entire family dedicated to a single dream. A great companion piece to any discussion on Title IX and gender.
—Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Special Jury Award for Documentary Feature
Up Next in This Sporting Life
-
Fake it So Real
Directed by Robert Greene • Documentary • 2012 • 91 minutes
Fake it So Real follows a ragtag group of wrestlers in North Carolina over the course of a week leading up to a big show. The film explores what happens when the over-the-top theatrics of the wrestling ring collide with the realities of...
-
Althea
Directed by Rex Miller • Documentary • 2014 • 83 minutes
Althea Gibson broke records on and off the tennis court. A truant from the rough streets of Harlem, Gibson emerged as a most unlikely queen of the highly segregated tennis world in the 1950s. A sharecropper's daughter, Gibson's family migr...
-
Northern Light
Directed by Nick Bentgen and Lisa Kjerulff • Documentary • 2013 • 105 minutes
Set against the backdrop of a town's annual snowmobile race, NORTHERN LIGHT explores the working class experience in a series of captivating personal stories of recession-era America. The lives of three families change...