Women's History Month 2025
Newly updated for 2025! OVID celebrates Women’s History Month with a diverse collection of films about women. This cross-section of films includes a documentary on Chilean activists fighting for a better country, visual artists including Frida Kahlo and women campaigning for safe access to abortion.
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Stories of A
Directed by Charles Belmont and Marielle Issartel • Documentary • 1973 • 89 minutes
Shot in Paris in 1973, this feminist film on the fight for abortion rights was banned as soon it was released. A large-scale game of hide-and-seek ensued, as activists created an underground distribution network,...
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Women Against the Bomb
Directed by Sonia Gonzalez • Documentary • 2021 • 58 minutes
In 1981 a group of women occupy the British military base at Greenham Common to protest againsit stockage of U.S. nuclear missiles. Soon thousands of women from all walks of life will join the cause, challenging the state and the milit...
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Leila Khaled: Hijacker
Directed by Lina Makboul • Documentary • 2005 • 58 minutes
What kind of a person hijacks an airplane? The family of Leila Khaled, fled to Lebanon in fear of the armed Jewish group Stern Gang. This paramilitary unit first came to Palestine after WW2 to prepare the territory for those who had surv...
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Choice Thoughts: Reflections on the Birth Control War
Directed by Jacqueline Frank • Documentary • 1996 • 10 minutes
In a witty mix of rare archival footage and sound bites from religious and political leaders, filmmaker Jacqueline Frank takes a fast-paced look at 100 years of the fight for birth control and legalized abortion. Featuring a concise ...
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She's Beautiful When She's Angry
Directed by Mary Dore • Documentary • With Chude Pamela Allen, Judith Arcana, Nona Willis Aronowitz • 2014 • 92 minutes
A provocative, rousing and often humorous account of the birth of the modern women’s liberation movement in the late 1960s through to its contemporary manifestations in the new...
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You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South
Directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Veronica Selver • Documentary • With Myles Horton, May Justice, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Bernice Robinson • 1985 • 85 minutes
Lucy Massie Phenix's You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South is about individuals who have dared to change the world for the be...
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Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed
Directed by Shola Lynch • Documentary • With Shirley Chisholm, Amiri Baraka, Octavia Butler, Bobby Seale • 2004 • 77 minutes
Recalling a watershed event in US politics, this compelling documentary takes an in-depth look at the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman...
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And Then We Marched
Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 2017 • 4 minutes
Filmmaker Lynne Sachs shoots Super 8mm film of the first Women’s March in 2017 in Washington, D.C. and intercuts this recent footage with archival material of early 20th Century Suffragists marching for the right to vote, 1960s antiwar act...
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Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker
Directed by Joanne Grant • Documentary • 1981 • 63 minutes
FUNDI: THE STORY OF ELLA BAKER reveals the instrumental role that Ella Baker, a friend and advisor to Martin Luther King, played in shaping the American civil rights movement. The dynamic activist was affectionately known as the Fundi, a...
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When Abortion was Illegal
Directed by Dorothy Fadiman • Documentary • 1993 • 28 minutes
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short
The era of illegal abortion, roughly the period between the turn of the century and the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, has been a sealed chapter in women's history.
The prof...
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Dear Dr. Spencer
Directed by Danielle Renfrew & Beth Seltzer • Documentary • With Lili Taylor • 1998 • 25 minutes
From the early 1920s until his death in 1969, Dr. Robert Douglas Spencer practiced medicine in a small town in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. Dr. Spencer treated colds, set fractures, an...
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Camille Claudel (w/ Isabelle Adjani)
Directed by Bruno Nuytten • Drama • With Isabelle Adjani, Madeleine Robinson, Laurent Grevill, Philippe Clevenot, Gérard Depardieu • 1988 • 175 minutes
The biography of the iconic French sculptor Camille Claudel in a tale of love, betrayal and female empowerment. When her enthusiasm for the arts...
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Augustine (Alice Winocour)
Directed by Alice Winocour • Drama • With Vincent Lindon, Soko, Chiara Mastroianni • 2013 • 102 minutes
The powerful and darkly sensual drama Augustine is based on the true story of the unusual relationship that developed between Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, the pioneering 19th century French neurol...
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Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge
Directed by Marie Noëlle • Drama • With Charles Berling; Karolina Gruszka • 2017 • 100 minutes
The most turbulent five years in the life of a genius woman: Between 1905, where Marie Curie comes with Pierre Curie to Stockholm to be awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the radioactivity an...
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Mozart's Sister
Directed by Rene Feret • Drama • With Marie Feret • 2011 • 120 minutes
Mozart’s Sister is a re-imagined account of the early life of Maria Anna ‘Nannerl’ Mozart, five years older than Wolfgang and a musical prodigy in her own right. Once the featured performer, Nannerl has given way to Wolfgang ...
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Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
Directed by Marc Rothemund • Drama • With Julia Jentsch • 2005 • 117 minutes
The true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine is brought to thrilling life in the multi-award winning drama Sophie Scholl-The Final Days. Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Sophie Scholl s...
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I Am Somebody
Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1970 • 30 minutes
In 1969, black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in a confrontation with the state government and the National Guard. Featuring An...
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After Tiller
Directed by Martha Shane & Lana Wilson • Documentary • 2014 • 88 minutes
Since the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas in May 2009, there are only four American doctors left who openly provide third-trimester abortions. AFTER TILLER paints a complex, compassionate portrait of these phys...
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It Was Rape
Directed by Jennifer Baumgardner • Documentary • 2013 • 60 minutes
U.S. sexual assault statistics are startling—and have remained unchanged for decades. The latest White House Council on Women and Girls report reveals that nearly one in five women experiences rape or attempted rape in her lifeti...
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Painted Landscapes of the Times
Directed by Helene Klodawsky • Documentary • 1987 • 25 minutes
Sue Coe continues to shock and inform the art establishment with her graphic depictions of the world around her. This energetic and moving film introduces Coe’s passionate art and explores her vision. Produced early in her career, it...
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Violette Leduc, In Pursuit of Love
Directed by Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 2013 • 57 minutes
After decades of working in relative obscurity, author and memoirist Violette Leduc exploded onto the French literary scene in 1964 with the publication of her taboo-breaking memoir The Bastard. Engaging frankly with her experience ...
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Karayuki-San, The Making of a Prostitute
Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1975 • 75 minutes
From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, Japanese girls and women were trafficked out of Japan and sent to foreign countries like China, Singapore, and beyond to serve as indentured prostitutes. These women were called Karayuki-san.
Shoh...
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The Apology
Directed by Tiffany Hsiung • Documentary • 2016 • 104 minutes
THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former 'comfort women' who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
Some 70 ...
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Live Nude Girls Unite!
Directed by Vicky Funari & Julia Query • Documentary • With Julia Query, Siobhan Brooks, Kristina, Ellen, Star, Joyce Wallace • 2000 • 70 minutes
Winner of the Audience Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Live Nude Girls Unite! is "a partisan tale from the inside" (Boston Pho...