The Day I Will Never Forget

Showing at Hot Docs Film Festival: The Day I Will Never Forget, directed by Kim Longinotto

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

A nine-year-old stands in a pristine white dress and recites a special poem she has written for her mother. The poem is not about her first day of school or the birth of her sister. It’s about the frightening and painful day she was lured by her mother, pinned to the ground, and forcibly circumcised. In this award-winning film, Longinotto travels to Kenya to explore the practice of female genital mutilation and the pioneering women who are bravely campaigning communities to reverse the tradition. Longinotto explores the issue from different points of view: a healthcare worker who gently persuades her patients to rethink the practice, a group of girls who obtain legal action to prevent their parents from circumcising them, and an elderly woman who’s been using inappropriate instruments to ply her trade as a circumciser. Ultimately, the film is hopeful as we see young women fighting for change, education, and understanding. - Shannon Abel

Sisters In Law

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Sisters in Law, directed by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Winner of the Prix Art et Essai at Cannes, and screened to acclaim at more than 120 festivals worldwide, Sisters In Law is one of Longinotto’s best known works. Sisters features the awe-inspiring work of two visionary women determined to change their community in Kumba, Cameroon. State Prosecutor Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba help women fight difficult cases of abuse, battling against the fact that there have been no convictions in spousal abuse cases for 17 years in Kumba. Six-year-old Manka is covered in scars and has run away from an abusive aunt; Amina seeks a divorce to put an end to brutal beatings by her husband; pre-teen Sonita has daringly accused her neighbour of rape. With fierce compassion, the two feisty and progressive-minded women dispense wisdom, wisecracks, and justice in fair measure, handing down stiff sentences to those convicted. - Shannon Abel.

Pride of Place

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Pride of Place, directed by Kim Longinotto and Dorothea Gadzidis

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Pride Of Place is Longinotto’s first film, made with Dorthea Gazidis while studying camera and directing at England’s National Film School. For Longinotto, it was a revenge film. As a teenager, she was forced to attend a girl’s boarding school in an isolated castle in Buckinghamshire. At 17 she ran away, only to return years later to make Pride Of Place, an indictment of her alma mater. The film is dark and expressive. Longinotto gives us a look at the school from the students’ point of view—as a miniature fascist state with absurd rules, cruel punishments, and little room for individual expression. One year after the release of the film, the boarding school was closed down. With Pride Of Place, Longinotto explores a theme she returns to repeatedly in subsequent films: the individual’s revolt against oppressive authorities and stifling traditions. - Shannon Abel

Gaea Girls

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Gaea Girls, directed by Kim Longinotto

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Gaea Girls, Longinotto’s last film shot in Japan, takes us deep inside the gruelling and often humiliating training regime of female Japanese professional wrestlers. The lives of the trainees are Spartan; they train in a corrugated warehouse and sleep in a tiny shack. And the training is intense, with workouts that could easily rival Rocky’s "Eye of the Tiger" montage. The film focuses largely on young trainee Takeuchi as she prepares to become an official Gaea wrestler. Takeuchi is subjected to beatings and ritual humiliation by the team’s top wrestler and charismatic mentor, Nagayo. Gaea Girls is an intensely emotional and complicated experience, a testament to Longinotto’s formidable filmmaking skills. In the end, you can’t help but wonder which path would be better for Takeuchi—to succeed and enter the brutal, unforgiving world of wrestling, or to fail and be spared? - Shannon Abel

A clip:

Rough Aunties

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Rough Aunties, directed by Kim Longinotto

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Fearless, feisty, and resolute, the "Rough Aunties" are a remarkable group of women unwavering in their stand to protect and care for the abused, neglected, and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa. This latest documentary by internationally acclaimed director Kim Longinotto follows the outspoken, multiracial cadre of Thuli, Mildred, Sdudla, Eureka, and Jackie who work for Bobbi Bear, a child welfare organization, as they wage a daily battle against systemic apathy, corruption, and greed to help the most vulnerable and disenfranchised of their communities. Despite the harsh realities of violence, poverty, and racism in the women's work and in the heartaches of their personal lives, the portraits that emerge on screen are filled with grace, wisdom, friendship, and a deeply stirring conviction. Once again Longinotto offers an intimate portrait of change from Africa, this time from post-apartheid South Africa, a nation being transformed by hope and energy into a new democracy.

Eat the Kimono

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Eat the Kimono, directed by Kim Longinotto and Claire Hunt

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Eat The Kimono, made with Claire Hunt for their company Twentieth Century Vixen, is one of many Longinotto films exploring Japanese fringe culture. Kimono follows Hanayagi Genshu, a controversial Japanese feminist, activist, avant-garde performer and dancer, as she tours various cities in Japan. As a dance student, Genshu achieved notoriety when she stabbed her teacher, the owner of a famous dance school, and spent eight months in jail for the attack. After her release, Genshu spent her life defying her conservative culture’s contempt for independence and unconventionality through her riveting performances and lectures. She denounced Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal and dismissed death threats made against her by right-wing groups. “You mustn’t be eaten by the kimono,” says Genshu, making reference to the traditional Japanese dress designed to restrict a woman’s movement. “You must eat the kimono, and gobble it up.” - Shannon Abel

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, directed by Kim Longinotto

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Longinotto brings us another incredible film about struggling children living in extraordinary circumstances, but this time back on her home turf. Mulberry Bush in Oxford is a boarding school catering to children who have been expelled from regular schools for extreme behaviour. The three-year program gives them the chance to turn their lives around and re-enter the regular school system. Longinotto spends a year at the school following the progress of four charming but troubled boys. All have severe problems with anger and violence; they punch, kick, spit, and curse at the remarkably patient teachers who are trained never to raise their voices. The film compassionately captures the battle these children go through to give voice to the hurt they carry inside. A sensitive and heart-rending study of the results of family dysfunction, Hold Me Tight also bears witness to the effects—good and bad—that adults have on growing children. - Shannon Abel

Divorce Iranian Style

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: Divorce Iranian Style, directed by Kim Longinotto

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Longinotto’s first film in Iran, Divorce Iranian Style, takes us into a divorce court where Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini spent several weeks deftly documenting the intricacies of marital relations and gender politics in Iranian culture. The film focuses on women in the Imam Khomeini Judicial Complex in Tehran who are trying to divorce their husbands, a highly controversial and difficult endeavour. The filmmakers were allowed unprecedented access and took a vérité approach, letting the activities of the court tell the story. Longinotto, who operated the camera, relied on Farsi-speaking Mir-Hosseini to touch her arm to re-direct her attention to a character or signify the end of a scene. The situations of the women seeking divorce vary, but throughout this exceptional film one thing remains clear: all the women are strong, determined, and outspoken, an image of Iranian women heretofore not seen in the West. - Shannon Abel

Kim Longinotto Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art

The retrospective opens tonight, so it might be a little late to catch the first film (Rough Aunties, which just won the World Cinema Jury Prize in Documentary at Sundance), but it continues for two weeks, so don't fear! There is plenty of internationally-acclaimed-documentarian goodness to go around. 

Full schedule, and more information about Kim Longinotto here.