Introduction
This article examines the significant role female documentary filmmakers have played
in globally advocating and mobilizing social, cultural, political and legal change.
It delineates some thematic and representational interests and participation of women
documentary filmmakers as change agents. It examines the ways in which female documentarians
have undertaken advocacy for political or legal change. Consideration is given to
barriers female documentarians encounter in relation to achieving access, both to
technology and self-representation (regarded here as an important factor to counter
patriarchal ideology). Whilst women have been marginalized in many international film
and television industries, the field of documentary production has been one where
they have been able to achieve relatively high numerical participation in comparison
to other areas of film and television production (French 2014a, 661). It is therefore an important genre for female creative expression, and a site of
access for women. Documentaries by women include powerful examples of the dissemination
of knowledge about violence against women (in order to end it). In ways unique to
their contexts and individual concerns, their films have uncovered knowledge about
the relations of power in the world, communicated the need for women’s rights and
values to be respected, and revealed significant representational and ideological
issues. Female documentarians have used their practice to lobby for women’s access
to social, political, cultural, creative and economic spheres whilst advocating for
positive change in women’s social and economic conditions.
The approach for selecting the female filmmakers considered here was that the selected
films were those that advocated and mobilized social, cultural, political and legal
change. The second part of the design for selection of filmmakers was to include a
global sample (films made about or by women from a variety of regions). This was done
to achieve cross-cultural perspectives informed by a variety of cultures, races, and
nationalities with an aim to achieve a global snapshot of women documentary directors
as change agents (representative films or filmmakers are from Africa, America, Canada,
India, Iran, Liberia, Nigeria, and the UK). Thirdly, the films selected for inclusion
here are interested in examining women’s issues, rights and empowerment, and also
proposed strategies for change (or embodied activism). The discussion of the various
films and filmmakers offers a flavour of the kinds of issues preoccupying women documentarians,
and their roles as agents for change. This is undertaken with the acknowledgement
that there is no homogeneity in the work of women documentary filmmakers, who make
every kind of film, across all cultures and according to their own interests, aesthetic
approaches, individual life situations and cultural contexts.
The methodology deployed here is a mixture of feminist critical discourse analysis
(utilised to examine the relations of gender, power and ideology in maintaining gendered
social order or gender-based discrimination), content analysis, and consideration
of the aims expressed by the filmmakers themselves. There are three central ways in
which the analysis is carried out; the first is the degree to which the women documentary
filmmakers can be understood as “advocate change agents”. Documentary filmmaking frequently
possesses an activist orientation and there are many female documentarians that could
be described as “advocate change agents”. This idea of being an advocate change agent
is understood here as describing filmmakers that open “channels for women’s voices
to be heard both in mainstream and alternative media”, that effect policy change to
“make the media more egalitarian” (Byerly and Ross 2008, 185-186). Women have acted as “advocate change agents” through their documentary practice.
A key approach in this article is an understanding that each filmmaker, or her subject
is contingently located (e.g. multiple factors, such as culture, class, sexuality
or race are interacting and are as influential as gender). This locates the perspective
here as an intersectional feminist approach.1 Female documentarians have made a particular contribution to understanding women’s
contingent circumstances; for example, representing the discourses and ideological
constructions that describe and contain women in individual cultures, and in revealing
their oppression. In reference to feminist strategy, Luce Irigaray observed that (for
her), the most important agenda is to:
expose the exploitation common to all women and to find the struggles that are appropriate
for each woman, right where she is, depending upon her nationality, her job, her social
class, her sexual experience, that is, upon the form of oppression that is for her
the most immediately unbearable. (Irigaray 1985, 164).
Documentary filmmaking is particularly well suited to this aspiration but it also
is able to connect these individual struggles through global circuits of filmmaking.
This is important because, as Gallagher has observed, the quest for change must, in
order to be successful, “link particular local experiences and struggles to the pursuit
of global norms and ethics that promise social and gender justice” (Gallagher 2014, 13).
Transnational feminists have focused on global intersections, and the continuing effects
of imperialism and colonialism, and more specifically, located kinds of feminisms
have emerged (e.g. Islamic feminism). This has resulted in films where women portray
their experience, histories and contexts as informed by intersections between different
aspects of identity. Through this they have represented that strategies for change
are not universal, and it is necessary to understand individual social and cultural
contexts.
Speaking out: advocates for social and political change
There are many films by women filmmakers about women who advocate for social justice,
and through that alter the cultures in which they live. For example, British filmmaker,
photographer and author Joanna Lipper (who has experience in teaching a course in
‘using film for social change’ at Harvard University and currently heads Vertumnus
Productions in the UK) says she is interested in “films about complex, multifaceted
women who defy expectations and create their own destiny rather than surrender to
circumstances” (Fredrick 2014). This led her to make a film about Nigerian woman Hafsat Abiola, who founded an
organisation with the goal of increasing women’s participation in politics and “inspiring
them to pursue leadership roles” (Link 2016). Lipper’s film The Supreme Price (2014) follows Hafsat Abiola, who took up the work of her parents after their deaths:
her mother was assassinated by the military dictatorship and her father died in custody.
Abiola aims to oppose Nigeria’s position on women and Lipper, whilst not Nigerian
herself, offers her viewpoint visibility and expression through the production via
a strategy of Abiola’s first person voice-over. The film observes that the government
is 98% male and does not recognize the rights of women, or the fact that a woman dies
of pregnancy-related complications every ten minutes. Abiola says, “if women do not
come out and speak and demand that their lives be valued, it will continue, nothing
will change. I want to empower the strongest voices”; consequently, Abiola formed
an organisation called KIND, to help create a “better world for the girls of Nigeria”.2 The film itself promotes Abiola’s project through screenings at documentary film
festivals in Africa and internationally. It won several awards, and achieved public
prominence in Africa with a nomination for “Best Documentary” at the African Movie
Academy Awards (AMAA). This kind of visibility of documentaries by women is one powerful
and important way they are able to make an impact, create awareness of female oppression
in specific cultural contexts, and promote change and women’s empowerment globally.
Another example can be seen in the work of British filmmaker Kim Longinotto whose
films are centered on women, generally in cultures other than her own, and her work,
which is transnational is focused on examining the experience, histories and contexts
of her subjects as informed by intersections between different aspects of identity
(including lesbian and transvestite/transsexual culture). A 2009 retrospective of
14 of her documentaries at the Museum of Modern Art in New York featured her work
as Longinotto’s “cinéma vérité portraits” that seek out and observe “difficult aspects
of women’s realities around the world” (MOMA 2009). Through Longinotto’s work across a number of countries, it is clear that strategies
for change are not universal, and it is necessary to understand individual social
and cultural contexts. In her film Pink Saris (2010), Longinotto follows four young
women who sought the help of Indian activist Sampat Pal Devi. As a twelve-year-old,
Devi was a child bride. She has now escaped that life and is famous for advocating
for women through founding the organisation “Gulapi Gang”, a group of activists in
distinctive pink saris. Their activities include opposing domestic abuse, violence
against women, child marriage, and caste oppression in rural India. Longinotto has
stated of this film:
my dream is that this film will get to places, and be seen by other girls and be part
of a change of consciousness […] it’s not going to change overnight, they are very
deep rooted. They are problems to do with how people are thinking. What we want is
for a girl to be born and not to be murdered as Niranjan’s baby was […] and for her
to be able to choose not to have a baby […]. (Longinotto 2010).
In the film, Sampat says that if girls spoke up “the world would change”. She calls
for the girls to speak up, because “if you’re shy, you’ll die”.
In another of Longinotto’s films, Sisters in Law (with Florence Ayisi 2005), the filmmaker examines rape, adultery and abuse cases
considered by a female judge in Kumba, Southwest Cameroon (Africa). Longinotto has
described how the main character (Vera Ngassa) says to Reverend Cole: “You’re living
in the wrong century. You know the twenty-first century is one where women have equal
rights to men”, and Longinotto says “I love the way she put it like that. She didn’t
attack Islam; she attacked his kind of backward thinking” (Smaill 2007). This is an effective strategy to advocate for change and also reveals the intersectional
nature of her thinking (both patriarchy and religion coming into focus). Like Lipper,
Longinotto also offers a narrative in this early film that in order for change to
occur, women and girls must speak up-and they give them a platform to do that (an
important role for the documentarist). Smaill has noted that Longinotto’s “camera
usually focuses on women who are the agents of change” (Smaill 2012). Moreover, Longinotto has said she wants her films to “reaffirm in a small way what
the powerful are often trying to crush” (Macdonald and Cousin 1996, 379). Both Longinotto and Lipper are interested in representing exceptional women, and
whilst I am cautious of generalizing, it is apparent from the body of films by women
filmmakers discussed here that women documentarians are likely to be interested in
championing the achievements and issues of female subjects. Lipper and Longinotto
show where the oppression exists in the individual lives of their subjects. They also
focus on activism, what women can achieve collectively and on how female subjugation
is directly related to political power. These representations potentially provide
role models, inspiration and strategies for change.
Thematic preoccupations and ‘joining together’ for political change
Another tendency observed as more common in the work of women documentary filmmakers
is an inclination to uncover social problems; for example, Iranian scholar Hamid Naificy
has pinpointed thematic concerns that recur in the work of female documentarians.
He identified an interest by women in topics such as: marriage, divorce, runaway children,
spousal and children’s abuse, murder, violence against women, gender-based discriminatory
laws, policies and institutions as “among important familial and social issues that
surfaced because of oppressive Islamicate values and gender-based discriminatory laws
policies, and institutions”. (Naificy 2011, 148). An example is Kim Longinotto and
Ziba Mir-Hosseini’s 1998 documentary Divorce Iranian Style. In Iran, divorce is difficult for women and the law favours men (it is fundamentally
patriarchal), and this film exposes the different standards or barriers for women
in the Iranian court system. The film takes an intersectional view in emphasizing
through its title, Divorce Iranian Style, that there are “national and cultural differences in women’s access to basic rights”
(White 2006, 120-121).
Therefore, the film can be understood as picking up on the idea framed by Chandra
Mohanty that “what binds women together is a sociological notion of the ‘sameness’
of their oppression”-that is, their shared oppression because of patriarchy (White 2006, 120-121), but at the same time, individual contextual circumstances vary enormously.
Whilst there are some things that women share as women, women globally are subject
to specific oppressions in their individual lives. Iranian filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad
has made documentaries about the devastating effects of war on women, familial and
gender issues in the particular context of Iran and the politics of her country. Bani-Etemad
is one of the most prominent female writer directors in Iran, working across both
fiction and non-fiction genres and she is well-known for her focus of female characters
and social issues in her country. Her film We Are Half of Iran’s Population (2009) was made (we are told in the film), so that “women’s voices might be heard
by presidential candidates, that their concerns would be addressed”. Although the
film was not given permission for release before the 2009 election, it was screened
to three of the presidential candidates. However, the epigraph to the film notes that
not only were the subjects’ questions not answered, but also, they are now imprisoned.3 It offers the viewpoints of Iranian women’s rights activists (both secular and religious),
and aims to give space to the problems more specifically of concern for women in Iran.
The film is structured to give voice to women’s demands in the form of questions that
highlight breaches in human rights, and it makes arguments for gender justice. As
stated in the film: “The outlook of society on men and women has to change. Education
is needed for different levels of society…”. The two pivotal demands women made to
the presidential candidates were: that Iran join the Convention for the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women, and that efforts be made to eliminate discriminating
laws against women (including adding gender equality).4 The film underlines specific issues of injustice for women, for example, some female
university students could not undertake the courses their grades warranted because
of gender quotas that discriminate against Iranian women and therefore, the places
are awarded to lower scoring Iranian men. It also promotes a message of the importance
of joining together, of the power of the solidarity of women. In order to meet its
specific political, social and cultural change agenda, the film was widely distributed
with an unusual copyright notice: ‘copy and distribute’.
Another example can be seen in the work of Canadian documentarian and writer/researcher
Audrey Huntley. She is of Indigenous (Anishnawbe) ancestry and has been undertaking
community based research in Canada since 1998. Whilst working for CBC Television in
2004, she undertook a trip across Canada and commenced interviews with communities,
relatives and activists that were broadcast as an on-going series called Traces of Missing Women. These interviews reveal the hundreds of Indigenous women and girls who have gone
missing or have been found murdered in Canada. Huntley’s film is intersectional in
that it examines a gendered issue through the lens of the “colonialist patterns that
infuse all Canadian social relations” in interviews with 45 family members of missing women
(D’Arcangelis and Huntley 2012, 41). Subsequently she made her film Go Home Baby Girl (2006), the story of Norma George, who is one of hundreds of native women missing
or murdered over the past three decades. The film tells the audience that Amnesty
International has called these disappearances “a human rights tragedy” and that “government
policies have made native women especially vulnerable”. Her productions revealed the
unequal power relations of Canadian women and led to public awareness and shifts in
policy. This work was influential in the establishment of a “National Inquiry into
the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls” in Canada. Huntley also co-founded
the organisation “No More Silence” and in 2015 spoke at The Hague at the Nobel women’s
conference on the Defence of Women Human Rights Defenders, calling global attention
to murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls in Canada and advocating for cultural,
economic and political self-determination of Canadian First Nations (Huntley 2015).
Breaches of human rights and the issue of violence against women has been of particular
interest to women filmmakers; for example, Nishtha Jain also made a film about the
Gulabi Gang (Gulabi Gang 2012). Jain is an Indian filmmaker who has observed that “it is not just how women
look at women but where you’re located, the filmmaker: what class, what country you
are coming from and whom you are looking at” (Jain quoted in French 2014c). Her intersectional view is informed by her own location within the Indian class
system where she has a position of privilege due to her class and economic position.
It is therefore significant that this film is made by a filmmaker from that culture
who understands its nuances, its language and who describes herself as interested
in “humanist filmmaking” (which is a strong tendency in documentary, including in
the work of women). According to Jain, the mission of the Gulabi Gang is to “spread
awareness and fight against violence against women” (Jain quoted in French 2014c),
in representing this, Jain is an ‘advocate change agent’. Jain’s film, like Longinottos,
also follows activist Sampat Pal Devi, the leader of the group. In one village, Devi
discovers the murder of a sixteen-year-old who, married off at only 11, has been quietly
disposed of (murdered) by her husband. He no longer wants her and so burns her to
death, calling it a cooking accident. The society and her family, both of which are
ideologically deeply patriarchal, conspire to accept it. Devi does not, and she uncovers
the terrible violence that has been done, revealing the context of such atrocities
as commonplace across rural India. Jain has claimed that as a documentary filmmaker
she is “wanting to transform, wanting to engage, and not just to show” (French 2014c).
This transformative agenda enables change through challenging the social systems and
structures and by demanding new ways of thinking about entrenched social practices.
Through representing women who stand up for change, the transformation that Jain and
her subject (Devi) wants to enact is modelled and advocated. In collaboration, the
subject and the filmmakers promote a hope and a vision, potentially mobilizing change
through stories of women’s oppression, which provides the information or facts of
women’s lives as evidence of the need for change.
Another filmmaker interested in breaches of human rights is Turkish born British academic
Dr Eylem Atakav, who looked at child marriage in the film Growing Up Married (2016). While set in Turkey, this film has transnational implications because forced
and child marriage is a global issue; there are 39,000 child brides each day (Kent 2016). Atakav’s film reveals the impact of child marriage on four women who live in her
parent’s Turkish neighbourhood. They were married as children and in all cases this
has had a devastating effect on their lives. Atakav began the project as part of her
research work as an academic in developing an intersectional course (Women, Islam
and the Media) for the University of East Anglia, Norwich UK. A number of academics
are using films to express their research findings, as such they are what would be
called ‘pracacademics’ (academics whose work includes creative practice) rather than
filmmakers, although they are still credited for their filmmaking roles of director,
etcetera. Atakav’s works is having impact. She has now presented the film several
times to the UK parliament, influencing policy for a bill to be introduced in 2018
on forced and child marriage.
Access
Political change is also dependent on access to information and communication technologies,
which is an important factor in economic power and central to supporting women’s economic
progress or change to achieve it. Whilst the spread and global interconnectedness
of media, information and communications technology “has great potential to accelerate
human progress, to bridge the digital divide and to develop knowledge societies” (UN
2015, declaration 15), access to the media and information and communication technologies
(ICTs) continues to be an issue for women and girls, and there is an uneven distribution
and use of them (UN Women 2017). Global gender equality is affected by access to the
means to express one’s self creatively, to political spheres, technology, education,
and media and information literacy. There is evidence that these things are connected,
and it is a question of access rather than competency. For example, in her article
in the Harvard Business Review, business woman Julie Sweet (CEO of Accenture in North America) observed that:
when men and women have the same level of digital fluency-defined as the extent to
which they embrace and use digital technologies to become more knowledgeable, connected,
and effective-women are better at using those digital skills to gain more education
and to find work. (Sweet 2016).
Advances in technology have assisted all filmmakers, including female documentarians,
who have been increasingly able to gain access to documentary film production because
of cheaper, smaller and more portable equipment. In providing access, these technological
innovations have reduced the impact of the digital divide, reducing social inequity
in terms of access and use of communication technologies for expression, and enabling
greater numbers of people to achieve media literacies. This has empowered females,
increased media literacies and reduced gender inequalities (French 2015). This includes women from cultures that have traditionally had less access to technology.
For example, in Africa “the ‘digital revolution’ is of particular significance as
it has enabled access to filmmaking that was unthinkable and unprecedented a decade
or so ago when filmmaking was still a perilous career choice” (Bisscholff 2014, 100). Women documentarians have embraced the opportunities that these new technologies
have afforded.
The digital turn has had many negative effects, as noted by Keating and Murphy (2015), including those that impact the most on women (e.g. a growing culture of over-sexualisation
and the accessibility of pornography). However, according to Karen Hua from Forbes Magazine, “digital culture has [also] had a huge influence on the push for global gender equality”
(Hua quoted in Keating and Murphy 2015). This has resulted from an increased understanding of the power of the media. It
is also due to gender imbalances in participation, production and representation being
highlighted globally through the internet, which has enabled global movements such
as “Women & Girls Lead Global”,5 an organisation that uses documentary film and television, new media and engagement
activities to reveal the plight of women in various countries.
“Women & Girls Lead Global” deploys storytelling to promote social inclusion (a society
that is inclusive in the sense all people are valued and respected) and social change
(used here to describe the way in which the women documentary filmmakers in this article
work to promote gender equality in social values and norms). The website showcases
documentaries on issues that affect women and girls (including child marriage, gender-based
violence, girls’ education, reproductive health, and women’s leadership). One of these
films is Gini Reticker’s Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008). Reticker, an American producer and director has made scores of documentaries
about women’s struggles, issues and influence (including several related to women
and war in other countries). Her film The Trails of Spring (2015) chronicles the journey of a rural Egyptian woman (Hend Nafea), who becomes
a human rights activist. Her film, featured on “Women & Girls Lead Global”, is set
in the West African Republic of Liberia, and recounts the ordinary Liberian women
who came together as “Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace” to end decades of civil
war. As observed in the United Nations resolution 1325 (2000), women’s experiences
of war are different to those of men, and women are a powerful and yet untapped force
for peace (Ban Ki-Moon 2012). In Pray the Devil Back to Hell the women were armed only with their unity and white T-shirts that signified peace.
The film promotes the idea that grass-roots activism can promote change:
The film comprised archival images of mayhem and misery - bloodied bodies being carried
through the streets, drugged child soldiers turning glazed eyes to the camera - and
interviews with key figures in the peace movement. It was the story of a growing number
of women finding a way to speak truth to power by directing an essentially maternal
force […]. (Mangan 2009).
“Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace” were instrumental in the election of Ellen
Johnson Sirleaf, the 24th President of Liberia (2006-2018) and the first woman president
of an African nation. Sirleaf, who won a Noble Peace Prize, was renowned for her work
to ensure the safety of women and participation in peace-building.
New technology and democratized access to digital media powerfully impact strategies
aiming to heighten global awareness of local issues and are integral to efforts seeking
to inspire empathy, political engagement, social activism and charitable giving. (Lipper 2015) Documentaries such as Pray the Devil Back to Hell are significant for creating momentum for political change, and organisations like
“Women & Girls Lead Global”, in gathering, promoting and distributing documentaries
form a powerful force for change (others include the US based “Women Make Movies”
and in Australia the Documentary Australia Foundation which helps raise money for
documentaries on social change).
Cultural change - representation and ideology
Representation is a key controller of women’s access to power, leadership and self-determination
and this is the subject of American filmmaker, writer and actor Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s
2011 documentary Miss Representation. Newsom has an academic and business background. The film considers the question
of what it means when women are under-represented in positions of power, and how the
media has contributed to this. Newsom is particularly well placed to examine this
issue because she has high level access due to her participation in political circles
through her marriage to former San Francisco Mayor, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom.
Newsom structured the documentary through her own familial frame, describing her fears
for her own daughter in the context of her struggle with self-worth, something impaired
by the media. (She laments the damage our culture does to women and girls through
media representations that have, for example, encouraged widespread self-objectification.)
Newsom makes the argument that the media does not adequately represent what it might
mean to be a powerful woman (through the viewpoints of some of America’s most powerful
women, such as Condoleezza Rice, Gloria Steinem and Geena Davis). Framing the discussion
around the political economy of the media in Western capitalist society, the film
scrutinises the sexism, language, and values propagated in the media (for example,
the lack of representation of women’s capacity as leaders and the tendency to reduce
them to their bodily attractiveness). It also takes up the question of participation,
of access to creating the media. It effectively achieves this through the viewpoints
of women in the media, such as news anchor Katie Couric (CBS Evening News), who observes in the film that “the media can be an instrument of change and can
awaken people and change minds, it depends on who is piloting the plane”. Also in
the film, actress Jane Fonda comments that the “media creates consciousness … if what
gets put out there is determined by men, we’re not going to make any progress” (both
Fonda and Couric’s comments provide a reinforcement of rationale for why there is
a need to have women participating equally in creating media). Miss Representation received wide exposure through the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2011. Her journey did
not end with the film; after its success, Newsom launched a project called ‘The Miss
Representation’, a non-profit organisation seeking to use film and media as a catalyst
for cultural transformation which states on its website that its mission is to inspire:
individuals and communities to challenge and overcome limiting stereotypes so that
everyone - regardless of gender, race, class, age, religion, sexual orientation, ability,
or circumstance - can fulfill their human potential.6
Conclusion
Women share with each other the experience of being less powerful than men and of
living in the world as women. However, every woman is subject to the material conditions
(the life she lives, in the location and time she lives in), and the deeply entrenched
patterns of power that she is subjected to. It is understandable that female documentarians
are interested in stories about female experience, success and empowerment, as well
as those of how women suffer discrimination and violence, and struggle for female
rights and values to achieve change in the social and economic conditions of women.
As this article has illustrated, there are many examples of the ways women have, through
the documentary form, been successful change agents globally and provided significant
advocacy for social, cultural, political and legal change. Whilst some of their productions
may not reach global audiences through festivals and extensive publicity internationally,
they non the less can, and have, achieved impact and variously mobilise social, cultural,
political and legal change. Documentary production is therefore a site of empowerment
through the media because it promotes knowledge that supports gender equality. It
is both a site of struggle, and of women’s media activism both locally and globally.