Miracle (1975)

Claire es una maravillosa comadrona con un talento natural para traer niños al mundo. Pero con los años su tierna y delicada artesanía es cuestionada por los más eficientes y modernos métodos de los hospitales. Un día recibe una llamada de Béatrice, la frívola ex mujer de su fallecido padre, que quiere verla con urgencia tras 30 años de mutua indiferencia. Su encuentro conducirá a la revelación de ciertos secretos que darán sentido a una parte importante de sus vidas.

The planet’s busiest maternity hospital is located in one of its poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. There, poor women face devastating consequences as their country struggles with reproductive health policy and the politics of conservative Catholic ideologies.

Natalia is a 17-year-old mom living with her mother and son, Antos. She wanted to have a baby because it was a “cool” thing to do, and because she feels she has someone to love; someone who can love her in return. Everything changes when Natalia’s mother decides to move out, giving Natalia a chance to lead a “normal life.”

Saeko and Yukako live together in a small apartment complex in Tokyo. After the Tohoku earthquake in 2011, both live in a state of unease. Saeko, who is in a divorce, is worried that her daughter is exposed to radiation. Yukako is also afraid of radiation and tries to convince her husband to move. The two become friends after Yukako tries to save Saeko after a suicide attempt.

Given the fetishizing and normalizing character that is given to motherhood in patriarchy in order to perpetuate the social order, do we truly choose to be mothers? Why is care, of fundamental vital labor, presupposed as an especially appropriate task for women?

That Mothers Might Live is a 1938 American short drama film directed by Fred Zinnemann. The short is a brief account of Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis and his discovery of the need for cleanliness in 19th-century maternity wards, thereby significantly decreasing maternal mortality, and of his struggle to gain acceptance of his idea. Although Semmelweis ultimately failed in his lifetime, later scientific luminaries advanced his work in spirit like microbiologist Louis Pasteur, who provided a scientific theoretical explanation of Semmelweis' observations by helping develop the germ theory of disease and the British surgeon, Dr. Joseph Lister who revolutionized medicine putting Pasteur's research to practical use. In 1939, at the 11th Academy Awards, the film won an Oscar for Best Short Subject (One-Reel).

It is 1968 and Marianne is nineteen years old. She has been sent to a home for young girls, far from her family and friends. Here she meets other girls whose secrets have turned their lives upside down.

Helena, a woman in her early 40's, is obsessed with getting pregnant. After failing her last try, her neighbors get back from the hospital with their new born baby. Helena breaks in to their house when they´re gone, steals the baby monitor and starts listening to what happens next door.

This student film by the award-winning Helena Třeštíková bears many of the hallmarks of her later work. Made as a graduation piece when she was at the FAMU Film and TV Academy in Prague, we see the director developing the distinctive observational style of filmmaking that she has used so effectively throughout her career. Over the course of several months, she follows a young pregnant woman as she becomes slowly acquainted with the joys and responsibilities of motherhood.

Set in a small, typical Belarusian village – granny Sima’s only concern is for the future of her alcoholic son, Vanya. Accompanied by her best friend, a white goat called Manya, she starts a war with her neighbor, Glasha, who happens to be the village Vodka maker…

In parallel stories, a social butterfly and a lower middle-class wife brace themselves for the challenge of birthing a child in the modern era.

Being mother is the most natural thing in the world. Or so it seems. Yet the demands on women with children have rarely been as overloaded and contradictory as they are in today’s Western world. Promises of happiness are often followed by disadvantages, excessive demands and feelings of guilt. The mother has become an artificially glorified ideal, which nevertheless is often legitimized by the „nature of the woman“. We live in a time when three people could claim to be the same child’s mother: egg donors give their genes to beget children, surrogate mothers deliver babies which they give away immediately after birth, and men raise children by themselves – without a woman at their side. Hence the question arises: What makes a human being a real mother?

Jeanne take her daughter for the week-end in Majorque. While everything goes to rack and ruin, mother’s only concern is to photograph Kiki, the classroom mascot.

Illa de Arousa, 1971. María es una mujer que se gana la vida mariscando. También es conocida en la isla por ayudar a otras mujeres en sus partos con especial dedicación y cuidado. Tras un inesperado suceso, se ve obligada a huir y comienza una peligrosa travesía que le hará luchar por su supervivencia. Buscando su libertad, María decide cruzar la frontera por una de las rutas de contrabando entre Galicia y Portugal.

Grabado el 12 de julio de 1986 en el Wembley Stadium en Londres, Reino Unido.

El formato Jackass, donde Johnny Knoxville y sus amigos se someten al peligro de forma voluntaria, se adapta al cine 3D. En su primera semana en USA ha obtenido un enorme éxito de taquilla: nada menos que 50 millones de dólares, la película con mejor entrada del otoño 2010.

En 1972 se estrenó una película que convulsionó la realidad social estadounidense: Garganta Profunda. Estrenada en el mismo momento en que los movimientos nacionales para la liberación sexual, la igualdad de derechos y los valores contraculturales estaban alcanzando su punto álgido, esta película sexualmente explícita se convirtió inesperadamente en el epicentro de una tormenta social y política sin precedentes. El gobierno de Nixon y el FBI iniciaron una cruzada contra la película y sus creadores. Inside Deep Throat (Dentro de Garganta Profunda) es un documental en el que los directores Randy Barbato y Fenton Bailey nos proponen un viaje a los años 70, a la situación social, cultural y política de los norteamericanos, y al intenso impacto que provocó una película pornográfica, cuyo título llegó incluso a servir de referente al escándalo de Watergate que acabó costando la presidencia a Nixon.

Documental de ficción que gira alrededor de la supuesta revelación del gran secreto que deben seguir los seres humanos para alcanzar lo deseado. En Estados Unidos llegó a estar en el puesto nº1 de los DVD más vendidos.