Stanford University
Camera as Witness: Women Around the World From Victims to Leaders
(FLM 16)
This course offers a unique chance to become familiar with global women’s issues, understand the aesthetic capacities of documentary filmmaking, and view films that are rarely screened. Honoring human rights issues, the course will present films ranging from Academy Award-nominated Regret to Inform (USA/Vietnam), to documentaries dealing with global economics, sexual slavery, and health in Who’s Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics, and images of women leaders from Rwanda after the 1994 genocide in God Sleeps in Rwanda. Additional films include Bhutto (Pakistan) and Frontrunner (Afghanistan). The themes vary from abduction of women in the streets of Kyrgyzstan in Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, female circumcision in Welcome to Womanhood, and AIDS in Africa in White Hotel, to democracy and cultural change in Cuba in Women and Fidel. We will also screen the film Satellite Queens, about a very popular TV show hosted by four women from different Arab countries. Students will have a chance to meet some of the filmmakers. The instructor will also offer some tips on grants, production, and distribution for those prospective filmmakers in the class.
