Feminists: What Were They Thinking?
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
Johanna Demetrakas
Casts & Crew
Laurie Anderson
Judy Chicago
Jane Fonda
Sally Kirkland
Lily Tomlin
Wendy J.N. Lee
Meredith Monk
Michelle Phillips
Cheryl Swannack
Phyllis Chesler
Also Directed by Johanna Demetrakas
Star-studded show recorded at the Big Sur Folk Festival, Big Sur, California, September 13th and 14th, 1969. Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian, and others. This film captures a remarkable moment in folk, rock, and pop history - the famous folk festival that brought traditional acts like Dorothy Morrison & The Combs Sisters and Carol Ann Cisneros together with the psychedelic rockers of the day who were most deeply rooted in the folk revival. Older songs like ‘Oh Happy Day,’ ‘Rise And Shine,’ ‘All God’s Children,’ and ‘Swing Down, Sweet Chariot’ meet Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock,’ Joan Baez’s ‘Sweet Sir Galahad,’ ‘Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released,’ CSNY’s ‘Down By The River,’ and many more of the now-classic songs of what was then called the ‘new rock.’ The scene is notably intimate and - aside from one fan’s dustup with Stephen Stills - mellow, with many rare, close-up moments with the stars.
A 1998 editorial in Time magazine made the claim that the city of Los Angeles "might just have the most inept public-transport system on the planet earth. . . . The neglected bus system, which still handles 91% of all transit riders,is now roughly as efficient as travel by burro." Academy Award–winning cinematographer and director Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, Latino) has now fashioned a new documentary tracing three years in the life of a group of bus-rider activists passionately engaged in the struggle to bring affordable, safe, and adequate mass transit back to their city. What might at first sound like a well-intentioned but rather parochial subject for a film has resulted in a truly inspiring lesson in how working-class, predominantly minority citizens forge an effective social movement and how, like Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycotters of the 1950s, a group of committed individuals can successfully challenge the powers that seek to control their lives.
Henry, a hitman hired to take out a socialite, finds himself falling for Jenny, a parole officer, instead.
A prodigious historical documentary about one of the most important feminist cultural events of the 1970s in the United States. "Womanhouse" was a feminist art installation and performance space organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Feminist Art Program. Held in 1972 at 533 N. Mariposa Street, Los Angeles, Ca..
Crazy Wisdom is the long-awaited feature documentary to explore the life, teachings, and "crazy wisdom" of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a pivotal figure in bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Called a genius, rascal, and social visionary; 'one of the greatest spiritual teachers of the 20th century,' and 'the bad boy of Buddhism,' Trungpa defied categorization.
Odette Springer is working in the B movie industry as a singer/composer, hating it but needing the work. She begins making this documentary about the low budget sex and slasher flicks and the people who work on them. Along the way, she meets unrepentantly boorish producers, directors arguing the legitimacy of what they're doing and numerous actresses who feel trapped, with no other way to succeed in Hollywood. The project is eye-opening to the viewer...and to Odette herself.
For five years, feminist artist Judy Chicago worked with a community of four hundred other artists, craftspeople and researchers to create The Dinner Party, a monumental tribute to women of spirit and accomplishment throughout the ages -- women whose names have been banished "right out of history". For over four of those five years, filmmaker Johanna Demetrakas followed the progress of The Dinner Party, recording for posterity the alternately painstaking and exhilarating process of creating this work of unprecedented scale and beauty.