This fascinating political look at a little-known chapter in women's history tells the story of "Jane", the Chicago-based women's health group who performed nearly 12,000 safe illegal abortions between 1969 and 1973 with no formal medical training. As Jane members describe finding feminism and clients describe finding Jane, archival footage and recreations mingle to depict how the repression of the early sixties and social movements of the late sixties influenced this unique group. Both vital knowledge and meditation on the process of empowerment, Jane: An Abortion Service showcases the importance of preserving women's knowledge in the face of revisionist history. JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE was funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.


This fascinating political look at a little-known chapter in women's history tells the story of "Jane", the Chicago-based women's health group who performed nearly 12,000 safe illegal abortions between 1969 and 1973 with no formal medical training. As Jane members describe finding feminism and clients describe finding Jane, archival footage and recreations mingle to depict how the repression of the early sixties and social movements of the late sixties influenced this unique group. Both vital knowledge and meditation on the process of empowerment, Jane: An Abortion Service showcases the importance of preserving women's knowledge in the face of revisionist history. JANE: AN ABORTION SERVICE was funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
1995-10-06
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0.0Seven women and one non binary person share their personal experiences with masturbation through short anecdotes and a revolutionary washing machine.
6.7Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment
7.0For the last quarter century, Houston native Arden Eversmeyer journeyed across the country to record hundreds of oral "herstories" with a mostly invisible population that is rapidly disappearing. Old Lesbians honors Arden's legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she preserved in the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project, from first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out, and finally from loss to connection.
4.6Oxana is a woman, a fighter, an artist. As a teenager, her passion for iconography almost inspires her to join a convent, but in the end she decides to devote her talents to the Femen movement. With Anna, Inna and Sasha, she founds the famous feminist group which protests against the regime and which will see her leave her homeland, Ukraine, and travel all over Europe. Driven by a creative zeal and a desire to change the world, Oxana allows us a glimpse into her world and her personality, which is as unassuming, mesmerising and vibrant as her passionate artworks.
0.0Filmmaker Judith Helfand turns the camera on herself to document her battle with cancer caused by DES, a drug prescribed to her mother during pregnancy. Refusing to confine the tears, rage, laughter and hope to dinner table conversations, Helfand invites us to witness her personal journey from radical hysterectomy patient to vocal opponent of toxic exposure. From her suburban home to the halls of Congress, the intensely private becomes widely public, and an American family is transformed and strengthened.
8.5Béatrice Dalle, Lio, Brigitte Fontaine, Corinne Masiero, Aïssa Maïga, Virginie Despentes, Maria Schneider, Gisèle Halimi, Juliette Gréco, and Adèle Haenel—these women lived on their own terms, defying conventions and embracing lives often deemed "scandalous." Labeled frivolous, hysterical, or simply too free and too loud, they faced criticism yet used controversy as a force for change, challenging norms and advancing women's rights. This documentary retraces seventy years of their bold and unconventional journeys, telling the story of the fearless women who shaped history and fought for a more equal world.
5.0Juno Award-winning musician Kinnie Starr is on a quest to find out why only 5% of music producers are women even though many of the most bankable pop stars are female. What does it take for a woman to make it in music?
0.0Widerstandsmomente (Moments of Resistance) carries voices, writings, and objects from the anti-Nazi resistance into the present. Politically engaged women of today respond to historical resistance and make links to current events. A line is drawn from what was before and what is today to what might be: a society based on solidarity without discrimination or exclusion.
French documentary campaigning for the liberalization of abortion and contraception, directed by Charles Belmont and Marielle Issartel in 1973.
0.0The 1920s saw a revolution in technology, the advent of the recording industry, that created the first class of African-American women to sing their way to fame and fortune. Blues divas such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Alberta Hunter created and promoted a working-class vision of blues life that provided an alternative to the Victorian gentility of middle-class manners. In their lives and music, blues women presented themselves as strong, independent women who lived hard lives and were unapologetic about their unconventional choices in clothes, recreational activities, and bed partners. Blues singers disseminated a Black feminism that celebrated emotional resilience and sexual pleasure, no matter the source.
8.0At a public hospital in Nicaragua, Ob/Gyn Dr. Carla Cerrato must choose between following a law that bans all abortions and endangers her patients or taking a risk and providing the care that she knows can save a woman's life. In 2007, Dr. Cerrato’s daily routine took a detour. The newly elected government of Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist revolutionary who converted to Catholicism to win votes, overturned a 130-year-old law protecting therapeutic abortion. The new law entirely prohibits abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, or when a woman’s life is at stake. As Carla and her colleagues navigate this dangerous dilemma, the impact of this law emerges—illuminating the tangible reality of prohibition against the backdrop of a political, religious, and historically complex national identity. The emotional core of the story—the experiences and situations of the young women and girls who are seeking care—illustrate the ethical implications of one doctor's response.
5.7An intimate study of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century tracking feminist icon Susan Sontag’s seminal, life-changing moments through archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her own words, as read by Patricia Clarkson.
0.0A film about what it means to be a woman cycling in different countries around the world. When Manon left to cycle from Brussels to Tokyo, she took a camera with her and met other women cyclists along the way. Hear their stories!
3.3In 1971, graduate student Gloria Orenstein received a call from Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington that sparked a lifelong journey into art, ecofeminism and shamanism. This short film uses art, animation and storytelling to celebrate this wild adventure. Now more than 40 years later, award-winning Dr. Gloria Feman Orenstein is a feminist art critic and pioneer scholar of women in Surrealism and ecofeminism in the arts. Her delightful tale brings alive an often unseen history of women in the arts.
0.0TOMBOY explores the obstacles that young girls encounter on the recreational stage, the stereotypes, language issues and cultural disparities that follow, and ultimately the insufficient media coverage and compensation that afflicts elite professional athletes seeking full recognition for their talents. The journey of the female athlete is often discouraging, and despite progress achieved during the Title IX era, gender equity in athletics has a long way to go.
8.0Some time after her death, film director Jill Craigie (1911- 99), re-opens an old suitcase, prompting memories of the extraordinary life and loves of this forceful, charismatic woman, whose work has been long neglected. Craigie was one of the first women to direct documentaries. Working outside the British Documentary Movement in the 1940s and early 1950s, her films such as To Be Woman (1951), on equal pay, and Out of Chaos (1944), the first film about artists at work, featuring Henry Moore and Paul Nash, tackled new subjects for the cinema through a unique blend of drama, polemic and humour. Independent Miss Craigie uses the director’s unseen papers, and her films, to reveal her energetic struggles to get her radical projects made and distributed, including her last one, on the Yugoslav conflict, made when she was 83, with her husband, former Labour leader, Michael Foot.
6.0The bleached palette and home-movie aesthetics of Super 8 footage provide the image track for this testimonial about an illegal abortion in Mexico City in the 1960s, delivered in voiceover by the filmmaker’s mother. In its account of this intimate and disorienting memory, Lesser Choices summons a time of profound uncertainty—a moment from an era without rights—and offers a warning to the present.
10.0“Touch one, touch us all” is a slogan of the women who took over the streets in Brazil and organized themselves in social networks to face male chauvinist and conservatism. Through testimonies of women who have been subjected to violence, the documentary reveals that, despite legal achievements, the woman still remains vulnerable. Amongst other deponents are Maria da Penha, Joanna Maranhão, Luíza Brunet, and Clara Averbuck.
0.0Documentary on Sakine Cansız (Sara), the Kurdish revolutionary and PKK co-founder killed in Paris in January 2013 by Turkish agents.
3.5As a result of the Holocaust and later, AIDS, the male homosexual community has sustained bitter losses and, according to Praunheim, lesbian women have now placed themselves at the head of the so-called queer movement. The female protagonists in the film represent two different generations; they also incorporate the past and present status of homosexuals in society.