BEI BEI
(Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt, USA, 2019, 88 minutes)
By 2011, Bei Bei Shuai, a 35-year-old Chinese national, had been living in the United States for 10 years when she attempted to kill herself after a traumatic breakup. Her 53-year-old boyfriend, a married coworker, had promised to help raise their child, but then changed his mind at the last minute. She survived the suicide attempt, but her newborn daughter died shortly after birth, and Indianapolis authorities charged her with feticide.
Co-directors Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt (The Education of Shelby Knox) catch up with Bei Bei after she has served 435 days in jail. Initially, she didn't seek a plea agreement for fear of deportation. With the pro bono assistance of trial attorney Linda Pence, she is released on bail.
Pence sees it as the culmination of the personhood laws that sprung up in the wake of Laci Peterson's murder. Republican Senator Mike Murphy explains to the filmmakers why he co-authored such a law, while VP Mike Pence (no relation to Linda) features in archival footage, during his tenure in Congress, arguing that a fetus should have full legal protections.
Upon her release until trial, Bei Bei returns to the restaurant she managed. She says she used to think she was weak, but now realizes she was suffering from depression. There were also cultural factors at play, like the shame in raising a child by herself. With Linda Pence's help, Bei Bei beats the legal odds, but a dispiriting postscript notes that the fight continues as over 1,000 US women have been arrested under fetal harm laws.
(Rami Katz, 2018, Canada, 35 minutes)
Jack O’Dell, a 95-year-old civil rights activist, looks back at his momentous life in Canadian filmmaker Rami Katz's illuminating documentary. Katz, who shot the film primarily in black and white, constructs it around an interview with O'Dell, an insightful speaker, now based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
O'Dell recalls that he grew up in Detroit with family members who weren't afraid to speak out about injustice, like his father, uncle, and cousin, who all sued a segregated golf club in Florida. If life in prewar Detroit wasn't perfect, he felt like he was part of a community. Once he left to attend college in the South, however, he experienced segregation for the first time.
From there, he went on to the US Merchant Marine through which he became involved with the NMU (National Maritime Union) and the Communist Party, sparking his interest in non-violent direct action.
While working in New Orleans in 1956, he received a summons to testify at the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. At that point, he decided that he would rather concentrate on activism than politics, since he felt that civil rights had a better chance of catching on in the United States than socialism.
In the 1960s, he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to assist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with his efforts on behalf of voter registration. "We were all working," he says, "for the elimination of the insult of segregation." His communist past, however, caught the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, leading President John F. Kennedy to recommend that King cut ties with O'Dell, which he did.
The documentary ends with a recap of O'Dell's post-SCLC activities in addition to his thoughts about direct action today. This is a short, but potent documentary. According to the Cinema Guild website, "Jack O’Dell passed away in 2019 at the age of 96, after this film was completed."
(Christina D. King and Elizabeth A. Castle, 2019, USA, 64 minutes)
Filmmakers and producers Christina D. King and Elizabeth A. Castle profile two generations of Native American activists in Warrior Women, which aired on PBS stations (the documentary draws from Castle's book, Women Were the Backbone and Men Were the Jawbone: Native American Activism During the Red Power Movement).
Throughout the film, the directors alternate between archival footage, present-day appearances, and a round table with Madonna Thunder Hawk, her daughter Marcella, her sister Mabel Ann, and her niece Lakota.
Madonna grew up on a Lakota reservation in South Dakota. When the government built a series of dams along the Missouri River, her family had to move 50 miles away. Their people lost millions of acres of land in the process. She also attended an Indian boarding school, which discouraged cultural traditions, but the experience only served to embolden her.
When the government relocated her to the Bay Area in the 1960s, she learned about organizing from the Black Panthers and the United Farm Workers, and participated in the AIM (American Indian Movement) occupations of Mount Rushmore and Alcatraz before returning to South Dakota to advocate for civil rights, inspiring Marcy to do the same. Since her mother wasn't always there for her emotionally, Marcy reflects, "It's easier for me to think of her as Madonna, the activist, rather than as my mom."
Now Marcy also balances activism with motherhood, while Madonna continues to encourage Native American self-reliance through education, land ownership, and food production.
Just as Madonna oversaw a survival school in the 1970s, Marcy has launched one of her own. Concludes her mother, "That's what we really need; we need the younger generation to pick up the reins." Warrior Women is an encouraging look at a necessary and enduring movement.
Bei Bei is available to stream through Kanopy and Vimeo, The Issue of Mr. O'Dell is available to stream through YouTube and Kanopy and on Blu-ray and DVD for educational use through Cinema Guild, and Warrior Women is available on DVD and streaming for educational use through Good Docs.
Images from DOC NYC (Bei Bei), the IMDb (Bei Bei poster), Cinema Guild (Jack O'Dell), AP / The New York Times (O'Dell in 1956), ITVS (Madonna Thunder Hawk and Marcy Gilbert), and Good Docs (Warrior Women poster).
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