Cambridge Documentary Films

Taking advertisements from magazines, newspapers, album covers and shop front windows, KILLING US SOFTLY presents specific examples of the ways in which advertisements reinforce stereotypes, affect our self-image and how we relate to each other, our concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normality. Using an intriguing mixture of statistics, humor, insight and outrage, Jean Kilbourne questions how far the use and abuse of women in advertising is connected to the sexual exploitation of women at large and the increasing incidence of child abuse.

This follow-up to Jean Kilbourne's award-winning 1979 documentary, KILLING US SOFTLY, further probes the harmful effects of stereotypical and sexist images in advertising. Kilbourne conducts a lecture within the film, displaying still images of women, men, children, and violent crime via a slide projector. By emphasizing the dehumanization of women by television's body-image obsession, she teaches viewers how America is taught to categorize women primarily as sex objects.

Documentary about the magnitude and severity of domestic violence. This film features four women imprisoned for killing their batterers and their terrifying personal testimonies. It won an Oscar at the 66th Academy Awards in 1994 for Documentary Short Subject.

That documentary helps to shape consciousness about sexism and violence against women.

Eugene Debs & the American Movement is an educational video that documents fifty years of long-suppressed history. Using extensively researched photographs, drawings and newsreel footage, it tells a story of the bloody strikes and brutal government reaction to the American workers' attempts to organize. This film is movingly narrated in Deb's own words, read from his speeches and writings, by his friend and comrade, Shubert Sebree.