Beyond Ratings

Kieslowski’s later film Dworzec (Station, 1980) portrays the atmosphere at Central Station in Warsaw after the rush hour.

A woman's voice narrates in a voiceover the state of her body after a male sexual assault.

This film follows the lives of undocumented Vietnamese workers in Taiwan doing odd jobs to survive, after having been forced to flee their employers due to harsh working conditions and lack of medical care. How will living this way for more than a decade shape their lives?

Using original animation, archival footage and personal interviews, this full-length documentary portrays the multiple relationships Canadian Muslim women entertain with Islam’s place of worship, the mosque. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. In North America, a large number of converts are women. Many are drawn to the religion because of its emphasis on social justice and spiritual equality between the sexes. Yet, many mosques force women to pray behind barriers, separate from men, and some do not even permit women to enter the building. Exploring all sides of the issue, the film examines the space – both physical and social – granted to women in mosques across the country.

A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.

Shoal Lake 40 women talk about their struggles, and those of their parents and grandparents, in trying to raise their families in a hazardous state of enforced isolation. Everyone in the community has a harrowing story of a loved one falling through the ice while trying to get across the lake, with pregnant women and new mothers fearing for their babies and having no choice but to make the trek in dangerous conditions. The film shows the key role of the community’s women in demanding funding for the road from three levels of government, and how their reconnection to culture and ceremony give them the strength to keep going.

Radical feminist Andrea Dworkin's expose on the pornography industry.

Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize, this tribute film was created as a gift for Lorraine Pintal, director of Montreal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. Featuring some of the most memorable characters and performers of Pintal’s career, the film’s succession of surreal scenes from different dramatic worlds introduces viewers to the exceptional woman of theatre, stage director, and friend whom they consider to be the “ghost light” of Quebec theatre.

In a company trading maté, workers are treated as slaves. Some of them try to escape, but those who are caught suffer severe punishments.

The documentary by Mari Soppela focuses on glass ceilings, a metaphor for the invisible borders between men and women in work life. Talk about glass ceilings is usually associated with women’s opportunities to advance to well paid managerial positions, but the documentary connects itself more broadly to the structural problems of work life from women’s perspective. Glass ceilings are long trials about equal pay, having to continually prove one’s skills, and 85-cent euros. The topic cannot be handled without intersectional crossings: what are invisible glass ceilings for some, are solid concrete for others.

"Granddaughters of Witches"? A discussion about the reality of the modern woman. Featuring anthropologist Carla Cristina Garcia and artist MC Tha.