Powerful Feminist Stories

Documentary highlights from the Shawna Shea Film Festival

Six from Recovery City directed by Lisa Olivieri

Last week I was in attendance at the Shawna Shea Film Festival in Southbridge, Massachusetts. My documentary One World is Writing was screened as part of the Experimental Shorts Program, and I was able to see a handful of other films. It is an international festival that screens small budget independent films and has been running for 14 years. The festival was started as part of a memorial to Shawna Shea, who was passionate about film and art, but passed away at age 16 in a car accident. Funds raised from the festival go towards local scholarships and film fellowships. I want to spotlight the winners for outstanding short and feature documentary, which have very different visual styles, but share some important themes.

An Ongoing Conversation on Embracing Our Physical Form

Short directed by Julia DeSantis

An Ongoing Conversation is an artistic and thoughtful exploration of beauty standards and how they impact young women. Director Julia DeSantis describes her own struggles with body image and includes interviews with several of her peers reflecting on how their appearance and beauty standards impact their sense of self-worth.

The documentary effectively weaves together a creative mix of styles – still photography, old family footage, staged scenes, and interviews. The choreographed moments bring attention to the subjects’ clothes and body parts in a way that is artful and defiant with the subjects sometimes looking directly at the camera. It helps us think about what leads to certain styles and body types being labeled as desirable or undesirable.

Some of the most impactful stories come from DeSantis herself. She refers back to old home movies in which she was a child and confidently performs for the camera, smiling when her father directs her to. DeSantis questions the pressure to always smile for the camera. Another notable moment in the documentary is when DeSantis describes her interest in fashion and making clothes. At first it seemed a method of self-expression, but then she stopped because she felt her designs were only reinforcing superficial ideals of beauty. This and several other moments highlight the unique alienation women can feel towards their bodies – they are so bombarded with others’ ideas of beauty that they cannot find their own definition.

Recovery City

Feature directed by Lisa Olivieri

Recovery City is a moving narrative that highlights the power of community and the flaws in the state’s support systems. This feature documentary follows four people in Worcester, Massachusetts who have recovered from addiction and how it has impacted their lives. Six is a single parent trying to get custody of their four young children.¹ Bridget runs a support group for recovering addicts. Janis and Rebecca are recovery coaches working in collaboration with the Worcester Police Department.  

The documentary begins following Six a few years after recovery and shows them taking steps to try to regain custody of their children. It follows Six through a long bureaucratic process as they try to persuade the Massachusetts Department of Children and Family Services (DCF) that they recovered and can responsibly care for their children. One scene highlights the arduous nature of these demands by having each detailed item of Six’s action plan from the agency appear on screen. The text comes up each time Six performs a task at work and is sometimes in rhythm with the noise of a large paper pressing machine.

The start of the documentary states that DCF declined to participate in the project. The agency is not portrayed in a neutral way. Almost everything we hear about DCF comes from the perspective of Six, who has good reasons to be frustrated with the agency. Six talks about the sometimes sexist and callous remarks from social workers. DCF also fails to take action soon enough when one of Six’s children was in an unsafe living situation with their father. It can be easy to vilify an incompetent social worker, but if they are part of a systemic problem in a state agency, then elected leaders need to take action. This was not addressed directly in the documentary, but during a Q&A session at the festival screening Six did speak about it. They said after the documentary was released, Olivieri had been in contact with DCF and the agency would be showing the film to staff members as part of an ethics training. It is also Olivieri’s intention to screen Recovery City for a group of Massachusetts legislators.

The relentless efforts of Bridget, Janis, and Rebecca to help other women recover offers us hope, but the documentary is still realistic about the immense challenge of recovering from addiction. There are a handful of difficult scenes on the streets of Worcester, in which unhoused women express a deep desire to enter recovery, but admit they are not yet ready. There is a particularly poignant scene in which a woman in tears approaches a group participating in recovery march and expresses despair that she has failed to recover and that some people said she should just die. The group welcomes the woman to the march and brings her back to the park where they continue to celebrate.

This is one of several examples of compassionate care. It is also a secret glimpse into what a more feminist society might look like. What would women change if they were in charge? How would they approach societal problems differently?  In one scene Bridget leads a group discussion in which women speak about how their addiction started as a way to deal with extreme stress, domestic abuse, and traumatic childhood experiences. A few spoke openly about the lasting damage of incidents of sexual abuse as children and adolescents. These are often viewed as private and domestic matters, but they have huge consequences on society – they impact generations and have a direct effect on an individual’s ability to work and participate in their community.

What makes Recovery City so impactful is that it is an empowering local story of four citizens in Worcester, but questions the larger societal forces that lead to addiction and the systemic failures to adequately help them.

1. In the documentary Six is referred to by their former name Christine.