Production
The women of Belfast played a unique role in holding together their families and communities during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Filmed during the fragile 17-month paramilitary cease-fire, Daughters of the Troubles: Belfast Stories looks at the challenges facing women trying to put their direct experience of grassroots problems on the agenda of the established political parties. Their strength, first exhibited on the community level, started to reach a wider public.
For more than a century, New York’s Greenwich Village was home, playground, and inspiration to many of America’s leading writers and artists—Henry James, Edith Wharton, Eugene O’Neill, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Willa Cather, e.e. cummings, Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Dylan, among many others. How these writers used and were shaped by the Village is the subject of this lively history, which includes readings and commentary by today’s Village authors E. L. Doctorow, Galway Kinnell, Grace Paley, and Louis Auchincloss.
Nowhere is the adage that truth is stranger than fiction more apt than the life of Nancy Zeitlin, the woman behind the Palestinian Equestrian Team. Ever the rebel, Nancy challenged familial and societal norms. At various points of her life, she was married to a Christian, an Orthodox Jew and finally, a Palestinian. As a single mother, Nancy became a leading figure in the Israeli equestrian world, but a chance encounter with horse-loving Palestinians prompted her to establish the first Palestinian equestrian team. Professionally and personally, Zeitlin continues to bridge religious and cultural divisions in Israeli society, through a love of horses.
The story of the settlement of Irish immigrants in the North Bronx, New York, and how the once predominantly Irish neighborhoods are changing because of the influx of other groups.
Stunning images of women working on a moon-like landscape frame the unrelenting cycle of work of the women of Ada who harvest salt with their bare hands. The natural forming salt lagoon has provided income for the local women for over three hundred years. A sound track by Patty Stotter, traditional work songs and a song written by Ghanaian musicians, join with the vivid imagery by Marcia Rock. The result is a glimpse into the heart of the women's daily lives revealing their dignity and determination.
