Films for the Feminist Classroom (FFC) is hosted by the Multicultural Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Texas Woman’s University. FFC, an online, open-access journal, publishes film reviews that explore the value of films as pedagogical tools in the feminist classroom. Special features, such as interviews with filmmakers, reviews of film festivals, and discussions about pedagogy, further promote and support our aims to be a resource for educators, librarians, and others in educational spaces. We also hope to enhance feminist curricula, bringing films and other video media into classrooms through thought-provoking, relevant, and dynamic content. Formerly, the Rutgers-based editorial offices of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and Women’s and Gender Studies Department hosted this journal.

Issue 12.1

We are thrilled to announce the publication of issue 12.1 of Films for the Feminist Classroom!

Films are portals, bringing viewers into new ideas, knowledge, and visions of liberation. Crossing into a film’s world often reveals the depth and breadth of the issue(s) it explores. This became apparent during conversations with filmmakers Victoria Mills and Kathy Leichter, whose film Like Any Other Kid was reviewed in issue 11.2. Issue 12.1 offers one result of these conversations in the special feature “Juvenile (In)justice,” which explores the varied ways that young people experience the prison industrial complex. Consisting of an interview, lesson plans, and additional resources, this special feature invites readers to look differently at the causes and effects of imprisoning youth and elaborates different strategies for working toward a more just justice system. Through the contributions, we learn from a range of perspectives: an activist who experienced incarceration, an advocate who has worked in the carceral system, a professor whose academic and activist work explores incarceration, and filmmakers whose work raises our consciousness about a range of topics, including and expanding beyond incarceration.

The additional lesson plans and film reviews in issue 12.1 map connections between the individual, community, and institutional scales. What happens, the lesson plans ask, when women experience and perpetrate violence? From different directions, they guide students to think more deeply about representations and perceptions of women in relation to Western cultural ideals and conventions. Some reviews draw attention to gender, as well, asking questions about femininity and embodiment in relation to topics like age, drag performance, motherhood, and trans identities. Other reviews more explicitly engage broad social structures, bringing to light injustice and struggles for justice in the areas of labor practices, the environment, technology, healthcare, and police violence. While most films in this issue contain an activist component, some highlight individuals who have centered advocacy and activism in their daily work. Featuring people in positions within government, the arts, and community organizations, these films deepen our knowledge about well-known figures and introduce us to lesser-known activists—within the United States and beyond.

Issue 12.1 highlights the following films—and more: My Name Is Pauli Murray; The Vow from Hiroshima; Black Motherhood through the Lens; 9 to 5: The Story of a Movement; Young Lakota: A Native American Leader Fights for Reproductive Rights; Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement; Overload: America’s Toxic Love Story; Profiled; I Am a Girl; Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart; Kings, Queens, & In-Betweens; and Transkids.

Films for the Feminist Classroom welcomes proposals for film reviews, special features, and lesson plans that include film or video media as well as suggestions about regional and international film festivals to cover in future issues. Please see our call for proposals and contact us at ffc@twu.edu for more information.