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PATOIS 2024: Reproductive Justice Films and Discussion

Special Reproductive Justice Event featuring films and local reproductive justice organizers.

WITH A VENGEANCE: The Fight for Reproductive Freedom (40 minutes) (1989)
An urgent and timely history of the struggle for reproductive freedom since the 1960s, reflecting the wider history of the contemporary women's movement. Rare archival footage and interviews with early abortion rights activists, including members of Redstockings and the JANE Collective, are intercut with young women who testify to the need for multi-racial grassroots coalitions. Flo Kennedy and Byllye Avery exemplify African American women's roles as leaders, making connections between racism, reproductive freedom and healthcare for the poor.
Directed by Lori Hiris

In Accordance With (7 minutes) (2020)
At a border check point, pregnant people are forced to endure invasive and emotionally abusive measures in order to get an abortion. The dialogue in this film is taken verbatim from State-mandated anti-choice materials, and imagines a world in which the territory of the body and the territory of the nation are collapsed into one space. Ultimately, the film explores whether this fictional world is really that different from the one we live in now.

This film is almost entirely scripted from real anti-choice, State-mandated legal materials called "Women's Right to Know Act" pamphlets, which are currently provided to women in clinics across the U.S. to dissuade them from having abortions. With individual states using Covid-19 as an excuse to ban abortions, the uncertainty of the presidential election looming, and Amy Coney Barretts supreme court confirmation pending, legal abortion is in the cross hairs yet again. Abortion is already severly restricted in the U.S., especially for people of color and those with lower incomes, but in Post Roe America these restrictions could expand to outright bans in up to 21 states. We hope to use this film to further understanding about what it is like for pregnant people to access abortions in this country and generate empathy and passion to move the movement for legal, safe, and easy access to abortion forward.

Directed and Produced by Sarah Ema Friedland and Alessandra Lacorazza, in co-production with the Meerkat Media Collective