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Prostitution (16)
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Buying SexTeresa MacInnes & Kent Nason 2013 1 h 15 minThis feature documentary explores the state of prostitution laws in Canada. It captures the complexity of the issue by listening to the frequently conflicting voices of sex workers, policy-makers, lawyers, and even the male buyers who make their argument for why prostitution is good for society. Warning: This film deals with mature subject matter. Viewer discretion is advised.
Following the release of Buying Sex, Professor Alan Young, counsel for the applicants in Bedford v. Canada and a participant in the film, contacted the NFB to complain that the film provides an incomplete and inaccurate account of the case. The NFB acknowledges that the constitutional challenge is not the focus of the film. Rather, the aim of the film is to examine the current controversy in Canada around the decriminalization of prostitution, of which the Bedford case is one aspect. The goal is to create a film which encourages Canadians to engage in an informed debate about sex work from a national and international perspective. The NFB believes the film achieves this purpose. In the spirit of furthering an informed debate on these issues, including the constitutional challenge, and in response to Prof. Young's concerns, the NFB provides below links to the legal briefs filed by the parties before the Supreme Court of Canada as well as links to the judgments of all three Canadian Courts. The third judgment, from the Supreme Court of Canada, was released in December 2013, following the completion of the film. The Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the three prostitution related laws challenged by Prof. Young, but suspended its judgment for one year to allow Parliament to consider whether to enact new laws, thus ensuring that the debate surrounding the decriminalization of prostitution will continue in Canada for some time. -
Bevel Up: Chapter 6 - LeeNettie Wild 2019 3 minStreet nurses Caroline Brunt and Liz James inject Lee, a sex worker, with an antibiotic for syphilis. They also call Lee’s boyfriend and arrange to test him as well.
*Watch the complete documentary.
*View all 10 educational playlists.
*Explore the Teacher's Guide for this chapter. -
Donna's StoryDoug Cuthand 2001 50 minThis intimate documentary paints a portrait of one Cree woman who left life on the streets to re-emerge as a powerful voice counseling Indigenous adults and youth about abuse and addiction. Raised in foster homes and caught up in drugs and prostitution by the age of 13, Donna Gamble shares her exhilarating and tumultuous journey and what motivated her to turn her life around. Together with her mother and daughters, Donna is working to shatter the cycle of addiction that has plagued their family for generations.
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A Kind of FamilyAndrew Koster 1992 53 minThis feature documentary tells the complex and touching story of Winnipeg city councilor Glen Murray and his 17-year-old adopted son Mike, whose struggles with addiction and behavioural problems cyclically repeat. Glen, now an Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament, was one of the first openly gay elected politicians in Canada. He adopted Mike during an era when homophobic stereotypes often prevented gay men and women from adopting children. Glen and Mike's relationship is always tenuous and always turbulent as they struggle to define themselves together and alone.
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Men for SaleRodrigue Jean 2009 2 h 24 minIn this feature-length documentary, 11 male sex-trade workers are followed over the course of a year. They share their struggles to survive alcohol and drug-related addictions, abuse and stigmatization – but most of all, their troubled pasts.
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Nose and TinaNorma Bailey 1980 27 minThis short documentary tells the unusual story of Nose and Tina, 2 people in love. He is employed as a brakeman, she as a sex worker. The film captures the domestic details of their life together and documents their hassles with work, money and the law.
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Of Hopscotch and Little Girls...Marquise Lepage 1999 52 minHopscotch is universal. Girls around the world trace squares on the ground, then hop through them, trying hard to reach the end. Girls share other interests too; they all like to talk about school, what they want to be when they grow up, who they will marry, how many children they will have, their hopes for a better life for themselves and their family.
But all too often, through poverty, perversion, spite, ignorance or superstition, adults shatter these dreams by denying girls the right to an education, entering them into forced labour, subjecting them to mutilation, sexual abuse and other injustices.
Soni, Kamlesh, Mou, Yui, Dalal, Esmeralda, Fatou, Adiaratou, Safi and Maude range in age from 8 to 14. Some are frail, some strong; all are beautiful. Whether they live in India, Thailand, Yemen, Peru, Burkina Faso or Haiti, they all speak of having much of their childhood stolen from them. Because they are girls. With subtitles. -
Reflections on Practice: Sex Work & HealthNettie Wild 2007 3 minStreet nurse Liz James reminds us that sex workers who use drugs are “just people” with stories and experiences like everyone else. Liz explains that the key to creating a safe and open health-care relationship is to be compassionate while still asking frank and direct questions.
*Watch the complete documentary.
*View all 10 educational playlists.
*Explore the Teacher's Guide for this chapter. -
The Sex TradeEve Lamont 2015 1 h 16 minThis feature documentary is a study of the sex trade, a reality that has expanded worldwide to become a true industry, both online and off, over the course of the past few decades. Part investigative report and part editorial, the film is a foray into a brutal world whose key players trivialize the impact of their actions by claiming that prostitution is simply a service like any other. But who’s really benefiting? To meet customer demands and keep this lucrative business rolling, unscrupulous pimps and sex traffickers target women and girls, who are afraid to speak out. High-end and street prostitution, escort agencies, massage parlours, strip clubs, the porn industry, sex tourism - the sex trade is sprawling, and has even spread beyond major urban areas. Behind the glowing signs of clubs and bars and on various websites, men are paying for sex and buying the consent of the women. With incisive comments from experts and enlightening interviews with people who have left or are still in the sex trade, the film takes a behind-the-scenes look at this industry to reveal a modern form of slavery.
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Street KidsPeg Campbell 1985 21 minIn this short documentary, a succession of black and white photographs provides a gritty look at juvenile prostitution and at the young people, male and female, struggling to get off the streets. Highlighting the links between being sexually abused as a child, loss of self-esteem, and turning to the streets, the film quickly dispels the images of glamor and big money usually associated with prostitution, and shows the positive efforts of child-care workers to help juvenile prostitutes find a way out.
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Sexy Inc. Our Children Under InfluenceSophie Bissonnette 2007 35 minSophie Bissonnette's documentary analyzes the hypersexualization of our environment and its noxious effects on young people. Psychologists, teachers and school nurses criticize the unhealthy culture surrounding our children, where marketing and advertising are targeting younger and younger audiences and bombarding them with sexual and sexist images. Sexy Inc. suggests various ways of countering hypersexualization and the eroticization of childhood and invites us to rally against this worrying phenomenon.
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TradeKireet Khurana 1997 6 minA young girl is taken away to a large city by train, but she knows nothing about the man her parents entrust her to. During the journey she recalls good times she spent with her family at a village fair, where she had a pretty flower tattooed on her hand. On their arrival, the child is dazzled by the lights of the city. She trustingly follows this stranger, who is leading her to a brothel. When she sees money passing from the hands of the madam to the pimp, she remembers that her father took a large sum of money from this same stranger. She realizes with horror that she has been sold.
A prisoner in the brothel, the young girl is dressed up in beautiful clothes before being shut in a filthy room. A wealthy customer appears. Through the blinds, she sees him hand a wad of bills to the madam. The man enters her room, drooling in his excitement. The child screams for help with all her might, but her cries mingle with the whistling of the train as it flies into the night... An animated film without words for 12- to 17-year olds. -
Topics: Sex Work & DrugsNettie Wild 2007 10 minFour sex workers—Sherri, Tina, Dee and Mum—explain the relationship between sex and drugs, revealing how it affects their health and can threaten their lives.
*Watch the complete documentary.
*View all 10 educational playlists.
*Explore the Teacher's Guide for this chapter. -
Tokyo GirlsPenelope Buitenhuis 2000 57 minThis feature documentary is a candid journey into the world of 4 young Canadian women who work as well-paid hostesses in exclusive Japanese nightclubs. Lured by adventure and easy money, these modern-day geisha find themselves caught up in the mizu shobai—the complex "floating water world" of Tokyo clubs and bars. Drawn by fast money, some women become consumed by the lavish lifestyle and forget why they came; one hostess calls this "losing the plot." With a pulsating visual style, Tokyo Girls captures the raw energy of urban Japan and its fascination with the new.
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Where Did You Sleep Last Night?Cliff Skelton 2001 22 minThe sexual exploitation and recruitment of teens into the sex trade is a reality in our suburbs today. This graphic drama is a tool for teachers, counsellors and youth groups wanting to explore and address this issue.
Jodie is a teenager bored with life, her family, her school and even her friends... until she meets Silas. With a new car, pockets full of cash and all the right lines, he's everything Jodie ever dreamed off. But Silas is no ordinary boyfriend. He's a pimp.
Where Did You Sleep Last Night? illustrates how sex trade recruiters lure teens away from friends and family, gain their trust, then force them into an often violent life on the streets - sometimes in only 24 devastating hours. Viewer discretion is advised. Previewing recommended. -
Who CaresRosie Dransfeld 2012 1 h 19 minIn this cinema vérité documentary, director Rosie Dransfeld captures the gritty and dangerous world of Edmonton's sex trade workers where, in a post-Pickton era, women now voluntarily provide police with DNA samples for future postmortem identification.
