Women of the world

A broad overview of women’s everyday problems, from Chile to Mexico. Difficult childhood, marriage, home, children, daily life, hunger and malnutrition, work in the fields and the problems of the land, crafts, weaving, traditional costumes, markets, poverty and underdevelopment, cultural subordination and ethnic alienation; but also the solidarity between women and their desire for emancipation. A journey made in a number of chapters, from the primitive Yanomami in Amazonia, to women who in their political and social activities, in the field of health, research and education are conquering ever-increasing space and fighting with great moral strength for a better future.

1993, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Length: 26'
Betacam format
500 years after the so-called “discovery” of the American Continent the majority of its inhabitants live in abject poverty and often desperate and total destitution. The Tarabuco live in the Bolivian Andes, in the valleys near Sucre; we visit the community where Jesusa Flores lives. Through the daily lives, stories and hopes of these young women, we are able to enter their world and present reality.

1993, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Length: 25'
Betacam format
Women are the hub of economic and social center life and are the heirs and guardians of cultural traditions. When we enter the homes of these women, and listen to the stories of their lives, we discover that in the past for twenty years the country has been thrown into turmoil by a long period of violence. Many men have been killed or have disappeared, leaving families destroyed, children orphans and above all widows without tears, who tell us these terrible events with proud reserve and without resignation.

1993, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Length: 29'
Betacam format
With the 1992 agreements between the government and the guerrillas and after twelve years of violent civil war, marked by the cruelty of the army and of the death squads, Salvador is now entering a period of relative peace. The women of Salvador are a central element in this reconstruction, as they themselves tell us, with their testimonies and painful memories.

1993, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Length: 29'
Betacam format
Mexico is the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country, poised between the underdevelopment of the rural areas and the ambitions of a large nation. All these contradictions are present in the state of Puebla, inhabited by different ethnic groups, each one having preserved its language and traditional costumes. From their work in the fields to cooking, from the markets to the traditional crafts of the Nahua and Otomi’ women, there emerges a portrait of native Mexican women, in a difficult equilibrium between tradition and modernity.

1994, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Length: 27'
Betacam format
Fifty years of conflict and twenty-seven of Israeli military occupation: the 1993 peace agreements have today opened up the road towards partial autonomy. Women have often replaced men, in prison or in exile, and are in the front line in the process of transformation. They fight against the occupation of the land, keeping their cultural traditions alive and setting up cooperatives and developing their children’s education in schools and universities where thousands of students prepare for a better future.

1995, by Doriana Cereda and Marco De Poli
Collaboration by Luisa Morgantini
Length: 29'
Betacam format
In an economy that is still predominantly rural, the women play an active part in the hard work in the fields, but also make their homes the centre of a female universe which is slowly changing. Literacy and the health service are being developed and many women are starting to form cooperatives: the first step towards an economic and social independence which will improve their lives and valorize their situation.

1995, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Collaboration by Daniela Pizzi
Length: 27'
Betacam format
After more than thirty years of economic sanctions, the Cuban government has started up a cautious process of liberalization: rapid transformations to which the women have adapted, inventing as necessary ingenious solutions to cope with the crisis. From the markets where the peasants sell their products at free prices to the restaurants in private homes, from street trading to the rapidly spreading phenomenon of the "jineteras"; artists, doctors, researchers and classical ballerinas, we follow the thousands of ways Cuban women have of trying to survive.

1995, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Length: 29'
Betacam format
The IV United Nations' Conference on Women brought China back into the focus of international attention. But beyond the context of the Conference, what is the reality of China's 600 million women, at a time when the country is undergoing major economic and social transformations to emerge from a medieval type of situation to a convulsive development? To answer this question, we travelled from the plateaux of Tibet to the new coastal areas of industrial development, interviewing peasant women and women executives, teachers and traders, students and office workers.

1995, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Collaboration by Daniela Pizzi
Length: two 28' parts
Betacam format
The video starts with an introduction of the significance and historical value of the Conference. Women have been struggling for decades to achieve their common objectives of peace, equal opportunities and development. We have collected witnesses of many of the 30,000 participants - who have came to the Forum from all the world around - especially of those from the countries where freedom of thought and speach are not allowed.

1995, by Giovanna Cossia and Daniela Pizzi
Collaboration by Paola Melchiori
Length: 33'
Betacam format
In one of the world’s poorest countries, which has only recently emerged from a long “revolutionary” military dictatorship, women have resolutely taken the helm in the long and hard process of development. In the rural areas, they experiment with new “poor” technologies to improve production and rationalize consumption; in the capital, Addis Ababa, women meet to find solutions to the food shortage and set up craft cooperatives, and are beginning to form associations to breathe in new oxygen to a backward and stagnant economy, and try to improve living conditions for themselves and their children.

1995, by Marco De Poli
Collaboration by Renato D'Anna
Length: 27'
Betacam format
From the sea promenade of Bombay, centre of industry and commerce in a country of nearly one billion inhabitants, to the maze of small streets of the suburbs, full of precarious huts where most of the families live crowded in a few square meters. In the region of Andhra Pradesh, hundreds of tribal groups carry on their primitive life, living in small villages on harvest’s and forest’s produce.

1996, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Collaboration by Daniela Pizzi
Length: two 27' parts
Betacam format

India first part

India second part
Most of Somali people are still nomad, living in torrid and large desert areas, always in search of poor pastures and water. Women also share this hard life, but Islam culture has brought forth strong differences between their condition and men’s one, which deeply affect their body. At the age of eight/nine females are subjected to the infibulation, a sexual mutilation by which the vagina is sewn. Through the everyday life, stories and hopes of these young women we enter a different world, which reminds us of the universal values of rural civilization.

1997, by Marco De Poli and Giulia Bessio
Collaboration by Daniela Pizzi
Length: 27'
Betacam format

Every morning, two women out of three in the world wake up with the same problem: what am I going to eat today? And - if the woman is also a mother - what am I going to give my family and my children to eat? Women have a central role in the production of food; still only 2% of the lands cultivated by women belongs to them. Women do not have access to credit, to development programs and new technologies. Men migrate towards urban areas and women's tasks become heavier. The FAO organized the first World Summit on food security in Rome, in November 1996; where, alongside heads of state and of governments from all over the world, 1200 representatives of grassroots movements from 80 countries met in the NGO Forum. And women were the protagonists.

1997, by Giovanna Cossia and Giulia Bessio
Collaboration by Cristiana Nocchetti
Length: 27'
Betacam format
Realized on behalf of the FAO the documentary aims to point out the enormous contribution given by women in producing and supplying food in the 5 continents: Latin America and the Caribbean (15'), Africa (13'), Europe (11'), Near East (11'), Asia (11').

1999, by Giovanna Cossia and Marco De Poli
Collaboration by Marie Randrijamamoni
Length: 60'
Betacam format
Watch all the 5 documentaries