Films for the Feminist Classroom

📚✨ New Review Spotlight for Issue 13.2

What happens when students refuse to stay silent in the face of censorship and systemic bias?

In this powerful review, Renate L. Chancellor explores Banned Together (2024) and Change the Subject (2019)—two documentaries that center student-led activism and the fight for intellectual freedom, equity, and representation.

From high schoolers challenging book bans in South Carolina to college students confronting dehumanizing language in library systems, these films reveal how grassroots efforts can spark national conversations and real change.

More than just documentaries, Banned Together and Change the Subject are vital teaching tools. They invite us to rethink whose voices are heard, how knowledge is shaped, and what it means to participate in a democracy.

At a time of increasing censorship and polarization, these stories remind us: advocacy matters, students’ voices matter, and change is possible.

👉 Read the full review here: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/rev_Chancellor_13-2.html

📸Still from Banned Together (dir. Kate Way and Tom Wiggin, 2024).

🎬 New Film Review in Issue 13.2

What does home mean in Indigenous storytelling?

In this review, Jennifer L. Gauthier examines four short films by Indigenous women filmmakers—Indigenous Plant Diva (2008), Nowhere Land (2015), Stories Are in Our Bones (2019), and This Is the Way We Rise (2020). Together, these films explore the deep connections between land, identity, family, and cultural survival.

Through personal narratives and powerful visual storytelling, the filmmakers address themes of displacement, environmental protection, intergenerational knowledge, and Indigenous sovereignty. At the same time, they demonstrate how film itself can be a tool of resistance—reclaiming history, amplifying Indigenous voices, and strengthening cultural connections to home.

Gauthier’s review highlights how these short films can spark meaningful classroom discussions about Indigenous media, storytelling, and the healing power of place.

🔗 Read the review at the link in our bio or visit: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_Gauthier_13-2.html

📸Still from Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio: This is the Way We Rise (Ciara Lacy, 2020).

🎬 New Film Review in Issue 13.2

In this review, Amber Dean examines two documentaries addressing the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW): Bring Her Home (2022) and Sisters Rising (2020).

Through the voices of Indigenous activists, artists, lawmakers, and survivors, these films highlight the ongoing impacts of colonial violence while honoring the resilience and leadership of Native women working to support survivors, seek justice, and raise awareness. The documentaries reveal how activism, storytelling, and community healing are central to confronting gender-based violence in Indigenous communities.

Dean’s review also offers thoughtful guidance for educators on teaching these powerful but difficult films, emphasizing the importance of careful facilitation and contextualizing the issue through Indigenous feminist scholarship.

🔗 Read the review at the link in our bio or visit: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_Dean_13-2.html

📸Still from Bring Her Home (dir. Leya Hale, 2022).

🎨 New Film Review in Issue 13.2 Special Feature

How does contemporary Indigenous art carry the voice of Indigeneity today?

In this review, Kate Morris explores three films—Haida Modern: The Art & Activism of Robert Davidson (2019), Meddle (2020), and Native Art Now! (2017)—that highlight the powerful intersections of art, culture, and activism in Indigenous communities.

From Robert Davidson’s role in revitalizing Haida visual culture to Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’s provocative museum installation and a wide-ranging survey of contemporary Native American artists, these films reveal how Indigenous art responds to histories of colonialism while asserting sovereignty, creativity, and cultural renewal.

Together, they offer rich teaching opportunities across disciplines—from art history and film studies to environmental studies and Indigenous studies—while foregrounding the voices and visions of Indigenous artists working today.

🔗 Read the review at the link in our bio or visit:http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_Morris_13-2.html

📸Still from Haida Modern (Charles Wilkinson, 2020).

🎬 New Film Review in Issue 13.2 Special Feature

In this review, Liza Piper examines two documentaries about the movement at Standing Rock: Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock (2017) and We Are Unarmed (2022).

Both films center Indigenous voices and perspectives on the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, when thousands gathered at Standing Rock to defend water, treaty rights, and tribal sovereignty. Through powerful footage and firsthand accounts, the documentaries highlight the spiritual foundations of the movement, the solidarity of Indigenous nations and allies, and the violent state response faced by water protectors.

Piper’s review explores how these films help students understand the broader histories of colonialism, environmental justice, and Indigenous resistance while demonstrating the role of media in documenting and shaping social movements.

🔗 Read the review at the link in our bio or visit: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_Piper_13-2.html

📸Still from We Are Unarmed (dir. Gwendolen Cates, 2022).

🎬 New Film Review in Issue 13.2 Special Feature

How have Indigenous women shaped movements for sovereignty, environmental protection, and community self-determination?

In her review of End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock (2021) and Mankiller (2017), Isabel Dulfano explores how documentary film highlights the powerful leadership of Native women—from grassroots Water Protectors at Standing Rock to the legacy of Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Together, these films illuminate Indigenous women’s activism across generations, emphasizing community leadership, environmental stewardship, cultural preservation, and resistance to colonial policies that threaten Native lands and sovereignty.

Dulfano’s review offers educators ways to use these documentaries to help students understand Indigenous women’s leadership, the movement, and the broader history of Native resistance.

🔗 Read the review at the link in our bio or visit: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_Dulfano_13-2.html

📸Still from End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock (dir. Shannon Kring, 2021).

🎬 New in Issue 13.2 Special Feature

In “Genealogies of Film as Social Protest,” Theresa Warburton offers a lesson plan that explores Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum (2019) in conversation with Alanis Obomsawin’s documentaries Incident at Restigouche (1984) and Is the Crown at War with Us? (2002).

The lesson introduces students to the concept of visual sovereignty developed by Seneca scholar Michelle Raheja, encouraging them to analyze how Indigenous filmmakers use cinematic craft to challenge colonial narratives and represent Native communities on their own terms. By connecting Barnaby’s Indigenous horror film with Obomsawin’s earlier documentaries on Mi’kmaq fishing rights, the session traces a genealogy of film as social protest across genres and generations.

Warburton’s modular approach provides instructors with tools to center Indigenous scholarship, contextualize contemporary conflicts, and help students engage Native films beyond anthropological frameworks.

🔗 Read the essay in Films for the Feminist Classroom Issue 13.2 Special Feature: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/lesson_Warburton_13-2.html

📸 Still from Blood Quantum (dir. Jeff Barnaby, 2019).

🎬 New in Issue 13.2 Special Feature

In “Teaching Indigenous Asian History: Dersu Uzala and The Last Moose of Aoluguya,” Shu Wan shares a comparative film assignment designed to help students critically analyze representations of Indigenous peoples in Northeast Asian history.

By pairing Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975) with Gu Tao’s documentary The Last Moose of Aoluguya (2013), students examine how imperialism, modernization, and state power shape portrayals of Nanai and Evenki communities. The assignment encourages students to reflect on the differences between cinematic storytelling and historical realities, and to consider how Indigenous voices are represented—or marginalized—in film.

Wan also describes how students connected the films to broader global histories of colonialism, nationalism, and Indigenous dispossession, demonstrating the power of comparative film analysis in the history classroom.

🔗 Read the essay in Films for the Feminist Classroom Issue 13.2 Special Feature: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_Wan_13-2.html

📸Still from The Last Moose of Aoluguya (dir. Gu Tao, 2013).

🎥 New in Issue 13.2 Special Feature

In “Brazilian Indigenous Women’s Film Production as a Tool for Pluralizing Visual Experiences,” Paride Bollettin explores how films created by Indigenous women in Brazil can transform how students engage with visual media in the classroom.

Drawing on a course in visual anthropology at Masaryk University, Bollettin introduces students to films from Katahirine: the Audiovisual Network of Indigenous Women, a platform showcasing the growing body of work produced by Indigenous women filmmakers. Through documentaries, experimental films, and video art, these creators share embodied perspectives on culture, territory, ancestry, and political struggle.

Classroom discussions revealed how these films expand students’ visual and sensory experiences while challenging dominant ways of seeing, knowing, and representing Indigenous lives. The essay highlights how Indigenous women’s filmmaking pluralizes audiovisual storytelling and opens new pathways for more inclusive and participatory forms of knowledge.

🔗 Read the essay in Films for the Feminist Classroom Issue 13.2 Special Feature: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_Bollettin_13-2.html

📸Image is from ijamytyli.org

🎬 New in Issue 13.2 Special Feature

In “Teaching YINTAH: Centering Indigenous Resistance in an Abolitionist Classroom,” Samantha McAleese reflects on incorporating the documentary YINTAH into a university course on abolition and the carceral state.

The film follows more than a decade of Wet’suwet’en resistance to pipeline development and centers the leadership of land defenders Tsakë ze’ Freda Huson and Tsakë ze’ Molly Wickham. In the classroom, YINTAH helped students connect concepts such as extractive capitalism, settler colonialism, policing, and media narratives to lived struggles for Indigenous sovereignty.

Through reflection assignments and discussion, students grappled with the relationships between governments, corporations, police, and the media—and many described the film as one of the most impactful parts of the course.

📚 McAleese’s essay demonstrates how Indigenous media can deepen students’ understanding of abolition, colonialism, and resistance while helping educators decolonize the classroom.

🔗 Read the essay in Films for the Feminist Classroom Issue 13.2 Special Feature: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_McAleese_13-2.html

📸Still from YINTAH (dir. Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Mitchell, and Michael Toledano, 2024).

Yintah EYESTEELFILM

📽️ New in Issue 13.2 Special Feature

In “Indigenous Cinema: Decolonizing the Screen: On Keeping the Fire Burning,” waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy (Ojibwe, Lac Seul FN) reflects on teaching a long-standing university course on Indigenous cinema and the role film plays in challenging colonial narratives within academic institutions.

Tracing the course’s origins with Métis filmmaker and scholar Christine Welsh, Sy highlights films by Indigenous creators that examine representation, resistance, identity, and Indigenous feminist and Indigiqueer perspectives. The essay also reflects on the responsibilities of teaching Indigenous cinema within settler-colonial institutions and on the importance of sustaining Indigenous knowledge across generations.

🔥 As Sy writes, the work of teaching and creating Indigenous media is part of “keeping the fire burning”—ensuring that Indigenous stories, scholarship, and creative practices continue to thrive.

🔗 Read the essay in Films for the Feminist Classroom Issue 13.2 Special Feature: http://ffc.twu.edu/Issue_13-2/feat_Sy_13-2.html

📸 Still from Keepers of the Fire (dir. Christine Welsh, 1994).