Superheroines in the City: VOD and Web Series Picks
Our VOD and web series picks this month are city-set explorations of women fighting back. The VOD selections document the internal struggles of young women reconciling society’s expectations with their own individual desires. In the award-winning “A Suitable Girl” we follow three highly-educated young women in Mumbai and New Delhi, India who are dealing with the pressure to marry at the expense of their career goals. And “Some Girls” centers on a group of Latina youth who explore their Dominican and Puerto Rican identities in a suicide prevention program.
Both of our web series picks shed comedic light on women taking action in the world. In “Super Narcoleptic Girl” a female superhero with narcolepsy has the superpower of making people dance. And as the bell hooks-inspired title makes clear, “Gabby Antonio Smashes the Imperialist, White Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy!” charts a Filipina activist’s comedic struggles at a non-profit in Portland, Oregon.
Here are our latest VOD and web series selections.
VOD
“A Suitable Girl” (Documentary)— Directed by Smriti Mundhra and Sarita Khurana
Winner of the Best New Documentary Director Award at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, “A Suitable Girl” follows three young women: Ritu, Dipti, and Amrita. Told in a vérité style of footage gathered over a four-year period, the doc depicts how the trio navigate the complex marriage matchmaking network and mounting pressures to marry.
“Many young women in India today have one foot on the side of traditional gender roles — daughter, wife, mother — with the other planted on the side of 21st century opportunities — education, career, financial independence,” states the film’s Directors’ Statement.
Created by an all-women of color team, the film uses a considered hand when portraying the different choices the young women make as they come to terms with adulthood. It also avoids the usual clichés about tradition vs. modernity and instead focuses on the inner world and decision-making process of women living in urban India today.
You can rent or buy “A Suitable Girl” on Amazon, iTunes, and other digital platforms.
“Some Girls” (Documentary) — Directed by Raquel Cepeda
What is it like to be a young Latina growing up in the Bronx? Filmmaker Raquel Cepeda’s documentary feature “Some Girls” offers a much needed window into the worlds of a group of young women we rarely see on film.
With the attempted suicide rate of Latinx youth at around 15 percent in New York City, “Some Girls” follows a group of Latina teenagers from a suicide-prevention program in the Bronx on “a journey of self discovery.” Cepeda combines woman-on-the street interviews, animation, and coverage of the group’s meetings to depict the girls’ examination of their individual connections to Puerto Rican, Dominican, and South American heritages, culminating in a group trip to the Dominican Republic.
A journey of reclamation, truth-telling, and discovery, “Some Girls” is a powerful visual testimony of what can happen when adults create safe spaces where young Latina youth voices can be heard.
The doc is available to rent or purchase via Vimeo and its website.
Web Series
“Super Narcoleptic Girl”— Created and Written by Sarah Albritton and Catherine ‘Povs’ Povinelli
“Super Narcoleptic Girl” is a Chicago-set comedy about an unlikely superhero named Keelyn whose superpower is making low-level villains dance. Giving visibility to narcolepsy-sufferers, the web series is silly and serious at the same time, offering a welcome alternative to the sleek, perfect superheroes movie theaters are chock-full of these days.
Check out Season 1 of “Super Narcoleptic Girl” on the series website, YouTube, or Facebook.
“Gabby Antonio Smashes the Imperialist, White Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy!”— Created by Luann Algoso; Directed by Dawn Jones Redstone; Written by Luann Algoso and Dawn Jones Redstone
“Gabby Smashes” follows the struggles of an idealistic Filipina working in the “non-profit industrial complex” in Portland, Oregon. The show has been compared to the comedy hit “Portlandia,” except series creator Luann Algoso cast Asian American and Pacific Islander actors in all the lead roles.
While there are more complex roles now than ever before for Asian American actors, there is still a long way to go, and “Gabby Smashes” offers a welcome, darkly comedic representation of a 20-something Asian American woman navigating life in one of America’s most rapidly gentrifying cities. It’s a viewpoint that we’ve simply never seen before on-screen, and hopefully the first of many more to come.
Watch the pilot episode of “Gabby Smashes” on the series website.
