The Woman's Film

New Releases

The #1 Bus Chronicles
Abundant Land: Soil, Seeds, and Sovereignty
Before David
Berkeley Rebellion (Newsreel #20)
Big Willow
Black & White
black enuf*
Chasing the Moon
The Chinatown Files
Chircales
COVER/AGE
Drills of Liberation
Fixing the World (Arreglando el Mundo)
Foster Care Film Series: Volume 1
Four Days in May: Kingston 2010
Freckled Rice
Fresh Seeds in The Big Apple
I'm Free Now, You Are Free
Imelda Is Not Alone
In a Perfect World…
Keep Saray Home
The Keepsake
La Cocina de las Patronas
A Letter from Yene
Living Quechua
Making the Impossible Possible
Mama Gloria
Mississippi Triangle (110 minutes)
Mohawk Nation
Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy In/On Exile
Nailed It: Vietnamese & The Nail Industry
Nossa Terra
Nuyorican Básquet
An Opera of the World
Out of La Negrura/Out of Blackness in the Bronx
Resilience: Garment Workers
Resistance at Tule Lake
Rights, Camera, Action!
Stories Within: A Film by the Austin Asian American Community
Studio 17: The Lost Reggae Tapes
Su-Casa Senior Media Production Workshop Films: 2020 Films
Three Tours
Unspoken
A Week with Azar
The #1 Bus Chronicles
The #1 Bus Chronicles
Joel Katz
Producer: Delmira Valladares
2020, Color, US
The #1 Bus Chronicles uses a small sociological microcosm – a bus stop on an industrial highway in New Jersey – to intimately portray some of the most marginalized lives in America today - the ‘working poor’, the recently incarcerated, and immigration asylum seekers. In startlingly intimate encounters, strangers share hopes and dreams as well as stories of resiliency, suffering and loss. Many are ... More
Abundant Land: Soil, Seeds, and Sovereignty
Abundant Land: Soil, Seeds, and Sovereignty
Natasha Florentino
Producer: Armen Zohrabian
2017, 60 min., Color, US
Abundant Land is a one-hour documentary about a Hawaiian community on Moloka’i opposing the biotech industry’s use of the island to test genetically engineered seeds. Agrochemical biotech corporations are depleting Moloka’i’s topsoil and freshwater while contributing to dust storms that spread pesticides into the ocean and surrounding communities. Abundant Land offers a historical look at the intr ... More
Before David
Before David
Melissa Saucedo Gonzalez
Producer: Melissa Saucedo Gonzalez
2015, 20 min., Color, US
A short documentary film about pre-partum depression, its symptoms, and the difficulties it poses when a woman is going through extreme physical and emotional changes.

The film reflects on the constructed image of the pregnant woman in Western society, and on the expectations placed on women at a time when they are undergoing an extreme physical and emotional transformation. It challeng ... More
Berkeley Rebellion (Newsreel #20)
Berkeley Rebellion (Newsreel #20)
Producer: Newsreel
1968, 22 min., BW, US
Newsreel's short film shows two days of demonstrations in Berkeley over the issue of "the streets belong to the people" and the decision of the City Council to close off Telegraph Avenue for the 4th of July, 1968.

This film features scenes of members of the Young Socialist Alliance, including Peter Camejo, demonstrating their support for the French student movement of May 1968.
Big Willow
Big Willow
Jared Katsiane
2013, 11 min., Color, US
Can a young artist's creativity save his favorite willow tree from bulldozers?
Black & White
Black & White
Edgar Garcia Chavez
Producer: Edgar Garcia Chavez
2020, 5 min., Color, US
This experimental film dissects the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary’s definitions of the words "Black" and "White" – to prove how, historically, the meanings of both words have been ingrained with very specific connotations in relation to race and ethnicity.
black enuf*
black enuf*
Carrie Hawks
2016, 23 min., Color, US
A queer oddball seeks approval from Black peers despite a serious lack of hip-hop credentials and a family that ‘talks white’. Carrie Hawks' quest for a Black Card (undeniable acceptance of my racial identity) takes them from Missouri, to New York, and halfway around the world.

In this animated documentary, the filmmaker examines the expanding Black identity through a personal journey. ... More
Chasing the Moon
Chasing the Moon
Dawn Suggs
1991, 4 min., BW, US
This fascinating film presents the meditations of a Black lesbian grappling with the memory of an attack that makes her wary about being out on the street.
The Chinatown Files
The Chinatown Files
Amy Chen
2001, 57 min., Color, US
This documentary brings to the public, for the first time, a story that was classified as secret by the US government for over four decades. Exploring the roots and legacy of the Cold War on the Chinese American community during the 1950s and the 1960s, it presents first hand accounts of seven men and women's experiences of being hunted down, jailed and targeted for deportation in America. During ... More
Chircales
Chircales
Marta Rodríguez & Jorge Silva
1971, 42 min., BW, Colombia
This film portrays the life of a family of brick makers in the outskirts of Bogotá, Colombia, documenting the personal experience of the Castañeda family to expose the exploitation of manual laborers. Chircales offers the viewer an intimate look at their hardships.
COVER/AGE
COVER/AGE
Set Hernandez Rongkilyo
Producer: California Immigrant Policy Center
2019, 24 min., Color, US
COVER/AGE examines the lack of healthcare access for undocumented immigrants in California, and how two undocumented individuals are advocating to fight this exclusion. One protagonist is Emma, an elderly Pilipina caregiver, who has spent over a decade providing care for others. Over the course of the film, we see Emma get ready early in the morning to care for an elderly patient who is not much o ... More
Drills of Liberation
Drills of Liberation
Juan C Dávila Santiago
Producer: Juan C. Dávila Santiago
2021, 121 min., Color, Puerto Rico
"Liberation Drills" is the untold story of the Puerto Rican protest wave of 2016-2019, which culminated with the resignation of governor Ricardo Rosselló. In 2016, the US Congress appointed a seven-member board to control Puerto Rico’s government finances. The poor Caribbean colony has a massive economic crisis, and unpayable debt to Wall Street bondholders. When the Fiscal Control Board begins op ... More
Fixing the World (Arreglando el Mundo)
Fixing the World (Arreglando el Mundo)
Pablo Arribas
2020, Color, Chile
In October 2019, after decades of Pinochet’s dictatorship and more decades of democracy under a Military and Neoliberal Constitution, a popular movement of ordinary Chileans was about to prevail over a Constitution that protected the interest of powerful financial institutions over the need for basic rights like Education, Health Care, Social Justice, among others. At this moment, Chileans had be ... More
Foster Care Film Series: Volume 1
Foster Care Film Series: Volume 1
Yasmin Mistry
Producer: Yasmin Mistry
2017, 39 min., Color, US
In this award-winning collection, Charell, Ashley, and Camilla share their deeply personal stories about their experiences in the U.S. foster care system. Foster Care Film Series: Volume 1 celebrates the perseverance of these narratives, dispelling the negative stereotypes about foster care by showing how school, extended family and the kindness of strangers can help a child find their path in lif ... More
Four Days in May: Kingston 2010
Four Days in May: Kingston 2010
Deanne M. Bell, Deborah A. Thomas & Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn
Producer: Deanne M. Bell, Deborah A. Thomas & Junior “Gabu” Wedderburn
2018, 41 min., Color/BW, Jamaica
In 2010 Jamaican military and police forces declared a state of emergency in West Kingston to apprehend Christopher “Dudus” Coke—who had been ordered for extradition to the U.S. At least 75 civilians died as a result. This doc juxtaposes the harrowing testimonies of the survivors with footage from the U.S. drone that was surveilling the operation from above.
Freckled Rice
Freckled Rice
Stephen C. Ning
Producer: Stephen C. Ning & Yuet-Fung Ho
1983, 48 min., Color, US
This is a story of Joe Soo, a 13-year-old boy coming of age and coming to terms with his Chinese America heritage in Boston during the 1960s. His Boston encompasses Screamin' Jay Hawkins, the Kennedy years, "My Three Sons" and rock 'n' roll. It is a world his older brother has readily embraced and one his immigrant father fails to comprehend. An excellently executed drama, full of streetwise humor ... More
Fresh Seeds in The Big Apple
Fresh Seeds in The Big Apple
Allan Siegel & Maureen Sherlock
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1976, 25 min., Color, US
Made in cooperation with the parents and workers of two publicly funded daycare centers in Manhattan and Brooklyn, this historical Third World Newsreel production -- FRESH SEEDS IN THE BIG APPLE -- asks some fundamental questions about the state of early education in the 1970s. Why was daycare available to only six percent of the pre-school-age children in the city? What were the effects of the da ... More
I'm Free Now, You Are Free
I'm Free Now, You Are Free
Ash Goh Hua
Producer: Ash Goh Hua
2020, 15 min., Color, US
A short documentary about the reunion and repair between Mike Africa Jr and his mother Debbie Africa—a formerly incarcerated political prisoner of the MOVE9. In 1978, Debbie, then 8 months pregnant, and many other MOVE family members were arrested after an attack by the Philadelphia Police Department; born in a prison cell, Mike Africa Jr. spent just three days with his mother before guards wrench ... More
Imelda Is Not Alone
Imelda Is Not Alone
Paula Heredia
2023, 31 min., Color, US/El Salvador
Imelda Cortez, aged 19, arrives at the hospital bleeding after giving birth in a latrine. She is handcuffed to the hospital bed, arrested on suspicion of abortion, and later charged with attempted and aggravated murder.

Imelda's only hope at freedom is a local citizen’s movement that dares to defend women who are persecuted under El Salvador's total ban on abortion. The result is a sho ... More
In a Perfect World…
In a Perfect World…
Daphne McWilliams
Producer: Daphne McWilliams & Sam Pollard
2015, 76 min., US
IN A PERFECT WORLD… Explores all the requisite dynamics of what it is to be a man raised by a single mother. The inspiration for the film came from the director's own relationship with her son who has a largely absentee father.

Over the course of several years, independent filmmaker and producer Daphne McWilliams began interviewing men about the relationships they had with their mother ... More
Keep Saray Home
Keep Saray Home
Brian Redondo
Producer: Brian Redondo, Bethany Li & Kevin Lam
2020, 31 min., Color, US
Far from the southern border, in the outskirts of Boston, Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees are facing their own battle against family separation. ICE is detaining and deporting community members on a scale not seen before. Though families live in uncertain fear, refugees have developed a knack for pulling through. They learn to rally together and are doing everything they can to keep their famili ... More
The Keepsake
The Keepsake
Adaeze Elechi
Producer: Adaeze Elechi
2024, 32 min., Color, United States
After living with relatives in fast-paced Lagos City, Nigeria, 14-year-old Amarachi returns to her home village to live with her mother Ikechi for the first time in eight years. When Ikechi learns Amarachi is pregnant due to rape, the pair begins an emotional journey to heal from their individual and collective traumas, save what is left of their estranged relationship, and learn to live as a fami ... More
La Cocina de las Patronas
La Cocina de las Patronas
Javier García
Producer: Iliana Martinez, Ana Paula Uruñuela & SacBé Producciones
2016, 66 min., Color, Mexico
Day after day, for over 20 years, a group of women in Mexico, prepare and give meals to Central American migrants who travel atop La Bestia, a U.S.-bound freight train. They call themselves Las Patronas and their mission goes beyond humanitarian assistance, symbolizing a resistance against a system that criminalizes migrants.
A Letter from Yene
A Letter from Yene
Manthia Diawara
2022, 50 min., Color
A LETTER FROM YENE emerges from conversations with the community in the seaside town of Yene, Senegal, where Diawara lives for part of the year. The area was traditionally and primarily occupied by fishermen and farmers but has in recent decades been besieged by coastal erosion and uncontrolled urbanisation. Fish have become scarce and the pirogues, traditional fishing boats, cannot go far enough ... More
Living Quechua
Living Quechua
Christine Mladic Janney
2014, 18 min., Color, US
An uplifting journey through a diverse network of Quechua speakers and students in New York City, one Peruvian woman’s mission to revive her indigenous language becomes an inspiration for a historically marginalized community.

Elva Ambía Rebatta's first language is Quechua, but when she left her town in Peru as a young woman to find work in the United States, speaking Spanish and Englis ... More
Making the Impossible Possible
Making the Impossible Possible
Tami Gold & Pam Sporn
Producer: Gisely Colón López, Tami Gold & Pam Sporn
2021, 33 min., Color/BW, US
MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE tells the story of the student-led struggle to win Puerto Rican Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY, in the late 1960s. The documentary is a mosaic of voices, film footage, and photographs taken by student activists. This important intergenerational story highlights how students and faculty seized the moment to build upon an alliance of Puerto Rican, African American, ... More
Mama Gloria
Mama Gloria
Luchina Fisher
Producer: Yvonne Welbon & Zainab Ali
2020, 76 min., Color, US
At a time when Black transgender women face escalating violence and make up the majority of transgender people murdered each year, Gloria Allen’s story is an inspiring portrait of aging seldom seen. Born in 1945, Gloria came of age amid the legendary drag balls on Chicago’s South Side. She transitioned four years before Stonewall with the support of the women in her family, including her mother Al ... More
Mississippi Triangle (110 minutes)
Mississippi Triangle (110 minutes)
Christine Choy, Worth Long & Allan Siegel
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1984, 110 min., Color, US
This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and whites live in a complex world of cotton, labor, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese community, originally brought to the South to work on cotton plantations after the Civil War, is framed against the harsh realities of civil rights, religion, politics, and class in the South. Rare histo ... More
Mohawk Nation
Mohawk Nation
Allan Siegel
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1978, 45 min., Color, US
In 1974, a group of Mohawks reoccupied a part of their ancestral land and proclaimed it Ganienkeh. MOHAWK NATION, made in the mid-70s by the occupants themselves and the Third World Newsreel crew, is an intimate portrait of a people reclaiming their roots and searching for a better life.

Ganienkeh symbolizes the re-establishment of the Indigenous way of life, which is an attempt to liv ... More
Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy In/On Exile
Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy In/On Exile
Maryam Sepehri
Producer: Maryam Sepehri
2017, 61 min., Color, US/Iran
For Iranian scholar Hamid Naficy, exile is like an elevator that runs between “two cultural poles, two memories, two lives.” Naficy belongs to the Iranian generation that lived through the modernization of the country that preceded the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and the Islamization that followed it. Like many Iranians who were studying in the United States universities when the revolution began, ... More
Nailed It: Vietnamese & The Nail Industry
Nailed It: Vietnamese & The Nail Industry
Adele Pham
2018, 59 min., Color, US
Visit any strip mall in the United States, and there’s bound to be a Vietnamese nail salon. While ubiquitous in cities across the country, few Americans know the history behind the salons and the 20 Vietnamese refugee women, who in 1975, sparked a multibillion dollar industry that supports their community to this day. Weaving powerful personal stories with insightful interviews, Nailed It, a new d ... More
Nossa Terra
Nossa Terra
Mario Marret
1966, Color, Guinea-Bissau
Mario Marret's film NOSSA TERRA (1966) evolved from a close connection with the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) during the Guinea-Bissau war of independence.

In 2012, prints of NOSSA TERRA were found in the national film archive in Guinea-Bissau (INCA – Instituto Nacional de Cinema e Audiovisual), but they were in an irreversible state of decay. Third ... More
Nuyorican Básquet
Nuyorican Básquet
Julio César Torres González & Ricardo Olivero Lora
Producer: Freddie Marrero
2017, Color, Puerto Rico
Nuyorican Básquet chronicles the dramatic story of the Puerto Rican national basketball team’s participation in the 1979 Pan American Games.

Boasting a totally unique approach to the game, the Puerto Rican team had the curious distinction of being composed largely of players born in New York City, which generated questions about the nature of diasporic identity. Regardless of their birt ... More
An Opera of the World
An Opera of the World
Manthia Diawara
2018, 70 min., Color
Manthia Diawara’s film is based on the African opera Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, which recounts an eternal migration drama. The Bintou Were opera, filmed on location in Bamako, in 2007, serves as a mirror for Diawara to build an aesthetic and reflexive story, through song and dance, about the current and yet timeless drama of migration between North and South, and the ongoing refugee crises. The f ... More
Out of La Negrura/Out of Blackness in the Bronx
Out of La Negrura/Out of Blackness in the Bronx
Jane Gabriels
2018, 24 min., Color, US
Dance artists Sita Frederick, Ana "Rokafella" Garcia, and Marion Ramirez collaborate to create a performance work that explores Caribbean and Latina-American experiences through dance.

OUT OF LA NEGRURA/OUT OF BLACKNESS IN THE BRONX: A CHOREOGRAPHIC COLLABORATION ACROSS DIASPORA features NYC-based dance artists/choreographers: Sita Frederick, Ana "Rokafella" Garcia, and Marion Ramirez. ... More
Resilience: Garment Workers
Resilience: Garment Workers
Betty Yu
2001, Color, US
Garment worker parents fight sweatshop conditions in New York City.
Resistance at Tule Lake
Resistance at Tule Lake
Konrad Aderer
Producer: Michelle Chen
2017, 78 min., US
The dominant narrative of the World War II incarceration of Japanese-Americans has been that they behaved as a “model minority,” that they cooperated without protest and proved their patriotism by enlisting in the Army. Resistance at Tule Lake, a new feature-length documentary from Third World Newsreel and directed by Japanese American filmmaker Konrad Aderer, overturns that myth by telling the lo ... More
Rights, Camera, Action!
Rights, Camera, Action!
Third World Newsreel Workshop
Producer: Emerald Isle Immigration Center, Museum of the Moving Image and Third World Newsreel
2018, 21 min., Color, US
These 3 videos resulted from a two day workshop for Immigrant Women Activists in video production this July 2018, led by Emerald Isle Immigration Center with Third World Newsreel and the Museum of the Moving Image. 31 women of different backgrounds and ages participated, learning basic video production concepts and creating these videos. The videos premiered at the Museum of the Moving Image on ... More
Stories Within: A Film by the Austin Asian American Community
Stories Within: A Film by the Austin Asian American Community
PJ Raval
Producer: Hanna Huang & Andrew Lee
2022, United States
Stories Within delves into a diverse cross section of 14 individuals from the AAPI community in Austin. It allows each participant the opportunity to speak to their younger selves about the acts of racism and discrimination they’ll face and messages of empowerment to bring with them to the present. The series shatters the notion that Asian Americans have homogenous experiences and backgrounds. Sto ... More
Studio 17: The Lost Reggae Tapes
Studio 17: The Lost Reggae Tapes
Mark James
Producer: Reshma B / Mark James
Color, Jamaica
STUDIO 17: THE LOST REGGAE TAPES tells the compelling story of the Chin’s, The Chinese Jamaican family behind “Studio 17”. Located in downtown Kingston, Studio 17 became a legendary recording studio right at the heart of the music revolution that began after Jamaican independence from Great Britain in 1962.

In the late 1950’s Vincent Chin was working for a jukebox company, changing out ... More
Su-Casa Senior Media Production Workshop Films: 2020 Films
Su-Casa Senior Media Production Workshop Films: 2020 Films
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2020, 24 min., Color, US
From April to June, 2020, a dozen senior filmmakers learned about film theory, film scripting, and were taught to film and edit on their smart phones. Originally planned as an in-person workshop to be held at the Flushing Selfhelp Latimer Gardens Senior Center, this workshop transformed to a virtual course taught on Zoom as the COVID-19 pandemic spread. The seniors in fact made the pandemic the th ... More
Three Tours
Three Tours
Betty Yu
Producer: Betty Yu
2016, 49 min., Color, US
"Nicole Goodwin, Ryan Holleran and Ramon Mejia are three U.S. military service members who deployed to Iraq after 9-11 to fight in the “Global War on Terrorism.” Nicole and Ramon served in Iraq during “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” the initial invasion in 2003, while Ryan deployed during “Operation New Dawn” at the end of the war in 2011. Three Tours is a documentary film that captures the lives of t ... More
Unspoken
Unspoken
Patrick G Lee
2020, 17 min., Color, US
Through letter-writing, a community discussion, and a drag performance, six queer and trans Asian Americans grapple with their queerness and consider what family acceptance might look like.

UNSPOKEN’s interviewees hail from across the Asian diaspora — with roots in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, China, and Korea. Some are not yet out to their immigrant parents, and this film is their way of start ... More
A Week with Azar
A Week with Azar
Tara Najd Ahmadi
Producer: Jurij Meden and Tara Najd Ahmadi
2018, 11 min., Color, US
A Week with Azar is a short experimental documentary film, based on a true story of Azar, an Iranian computer engineer living in the United States, who in the winter of 2017 failed to see her ill sister in Isfahan (Iran) for the last time because of the Executive Order 13769, commonly known as the travel ban. According to this ban, the nationals of seven countries, including Iran, could not enter ... More
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TWN acknowledges that in New York we are on the unceded territory of the Lenni Lenape, Canarsie, Shinecock, and Munsee peoples and challenges the harm that continues to be inflicted upon Indigenous and People of Color communities here and abroad, which is why we all need to be part of the struggle for rights, equality and justice.

TWN is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Color Congress, MOSAIC, New York Community Trust, Peace Development Fund, Humanities NY, Ford Foundation, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and individual donors.