Our Best of Documentary Jury winners: BELLY OF THE BEAST (feature) and EQUALITY TEA (short)

Throughout America, women organized tea parties for meetings and fundraisers to support the suffrage movement. The Woman’s Suffrage Party sold ceylon, young hyson, gunpowder, and oolong tea under their charitable brand “Equality Tea.” Yet the history of tea is steeped in inequality, driven by colonialism, war, and appropriation. In her short film, Equality Tea, Jaime Sunwoo brews tea while drawing parallels between the fraught histories of the tea trade and the suffrage movement.

Equality Tea

In her short film, Equality Tea, Jaime Sunwoo brews tea while drawing parallels between the fraught histories of the tea trade and the suffrage movement.

The pastoral farmlands surrounding the Central California Women’s Facility, the world’s largest women’s prison, help conceal the reproductive and human rights violations transpiring inside its walls. A courageous young woman who was involuntarily sterilized at the age of 24 while incarcerated at the facility, teams up with a radical lawyer to stop these violations. They spearhead investigations that uncover a series of statewide crimes, primarily targeting women of color, from inadequate access to healthcare to sexual assault to illegal sterilization. Together, with a team of tenacious heroines, both in and out of prison, they take to the courtroom to fight for reparations. But no one believes them. As additional damning evidence is uncovered by the Center for Investigative Reporting, a media frenzy and series of hearings provide hope for some semblance of justice. Yet, doctors and prison officials contend that the procedures were in each person’s best interest and of an overall social benefit. Invoking the weight of the historic stain and legacy of eugenics, Belly of the Beast presents a decade long, infuriating contemporary legal drama.

Belly of the Beast

When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations in women’s prisons, they wage a near impossible battle against the California Department of Corrections.

Q&amp;A conversation with Christen Marquez, producer for Belly of the Beast, and Kurt Schneider who directed the short Our Daughters.

Q&A for Belly of the Beast

Q&A conversation with Christen Marquez, producer for Belly of the Beast, and Kurt Schneider who directed the short Our Daughters.

United States of America

Best of Documentary Award Winners

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