Home » Videomakers » Julie Gustafson (Page 2)

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  [Desire: Julie’s Mother 1]

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, Julie Gustafson, Roots of Video

  Videomaker Julie Gustafson and her teenaged subject/collaborator Cassandra Swaing show Julie’s mother footage from the documentary Desire, featuring Cassandra (as well as Cassandra’s own videos), in which Julie discusses her own life, including her marriage and her abortions.

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  [Pursuit of Happiness: Molly Rush]

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, John Reilly, Julie Gustafson, Outside Agitators, Politics, Roots of Video

  Raw footage of an interview with activist Molly Rush for the video Pursuit of Happiness, produced and directed by Julie Gustafson and John Reilly. 

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  [Giving Birth: Margaret Mead 2]

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, John Reilly, Julie Gustafson, Roots of Video

  An interview with cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead for the documentary Giving Birth: Four Portraits, directed by Julie Gustafson and John Reilly.

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  [Casting the First Stone: Anti-abortion Demonstration]

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, Julie Gustafson, Politics, Roots of Video

  Footage taken at an anti-abortion demonstration for the documentary Casting the First Stone, directed by Julie Gustafson. Includes an interview with Frances Sheehan and a press conference with Randall Terry.

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  [Politics of Intimacy: Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey 2]

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, Julie Gustafson, Roots of Video

  Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey is a psychiatrist and the author of The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality. In this tape, she is interviewed by videomaker Julie Gustafson for the documentary THE POLITICS OF INTIMACY. 

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  [Politics of Intimacy: Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey 1]

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, Julie Gustafson, Roots of Video

  Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey is a psychiatrist and the author of The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality. In this tape, she is interviewed by videomaker Julie Gustafson for her documentary THE POLITICS OF INTIMACY. 

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  Desire

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, Julie Gustafson, Roots of Video

  Independent videomaker, Julie Gustafson, invites a diverse group of teenage girls from New Orleans to make autobiographical videos exploring their developing sexuality and identity. An unprecedented long-term collaboration, DESIRE weaves together the girls’ video work, the stories of their changing lives, as well as the family, social and economic contexts in which their desires and choices are shaped.

  The film begins in a primarily African-American housing project named ‘Desire’ and follows the lives of teenagers across diverse racial, political, class, and cultural backgrounds. Cassandra, Kimeca, Tracy, Peggy, and Tiffinie collaborate to tell their own stories of struggle and wrestling with questions of sexual identity, body image, family, future plans, and the pressures of finding one’s way in the world. As the film unfolds over the next five years, DESIRE honors each of the young women’s challenges and achievements, making clear that their ‘choices’ are linked not just to hopes and dreams, but to actual educational and economic opportunity– too often tinged with the racial disadvantage. In one remarkable scene, Kimeca, turns the camera on Gustafson, prompting her to share her own story of teenage pregnancy and the difficult decisions she made about abortion.

  As John Anderson from Variety said: “Top-flight editing and a pace that never falters help “Desire” movingly tell the stories of its five subjects.” Justin Lane Briggs of The New School concurs: “The films the girls make themselves are shockingly honest and revealing…The result is a poignant and moving work, which stirs up a massive cloud of thoughts and issues without ever settling on one side of them… Cassandra and Tiffanie will haunt your dreams.

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  Casting the First Stone

  CLIR, Global Village, Global Village, Julie Gustafson, Roots of Video

  Set against the background of the Supreme Court’s historic decisions on women’s reproductive rights, this documentary looks at the abortion controversy through the eyes of six women activists on both sides of the barricades in Paoli, PA. CASTING THE FIRST STONE focuses on six women who regularly confront each other from opposite sides of the picket line. Three believe that abortion should be an inalienable right. The other three believe it constitutes murder. Shelley Miller, director of a Paoli, PA women’s health clinic, endures constant harassment from anti-abortion groups camped outside the clinic’s doors. Joan Scalia, a Catholic and mother of six, defies her husband to join the most audacious of these anti-abortion groups called Operation Rescue. Sharon Owens, a clinic counselor, minister’s wife and adoptive mother of three, is closer to the middle. She cannot decide when human life “begins,” but feels a religious obligation as a Christian “to be in the place where hard decisions are being made.” Chronicling the daily lives of these and other women, director Julie Gustafson visits anti-abortion blockades, counseling sessions, a visit with a young mother whom protestors persuaded to have her baby, and Planned Parenthood’s emergency board meetings following the Supreme Court’s 1989 Webster v. Missouri decision that allowed states to deny some of the protections set by Roe v. Wade. Appearances include Randall Terry of Operation Rescue, Bill Baird, a longtime pro-choice activist and Faye Wattleton of Planned Parenthood.

  CASTING THE FIRST STONE makes clear that the conflict over abortion is not just political but also about the role and the rights of women in society. Clinic counselors, shaped by first wave feminist activism of the 1960s and 70s argue they are not promoting abortion but are “providing women with choices.” Other pro-life women reply, “You know what offends me about feminists? They say they are speaking for me.”