If you’re in London over the next few weeks, head down to the ICA and watch some of the hard-hitting gender-related documentaries showing during the Kim Longinotto season.

Last night I checked out Sisters in Law, a brilliant documentary about female police officers, lawyers and judges making their mark on the Muslim town of Kumba, Camaroon. As rapists are jailed and wife beaters forced to relinquish their hold, the film is horrifying, but also uplifting as justice is done and seen to be done. Only in the last minutes of the film is it revealed that progress is far less effortless than it appears.

Divorce Iranian Style sits alongside Gaea Girls, about Japanese women who wrestle, and The Day I Will Never Forget, an expose of female circumcision in Kenya.

Alternatively, check out this double bill:

Dream Girls follows the women who perform in the Takarazuka Revue, a liberating performance spectacle in which the all-female cast act out romantic fantasies by playing young male characters. Shinjuku Boys takes us into the New Marilyn nightclub, where women take on the role of male hosts for their female clientele.

Posted by Jess McCabe on 18 August 2006, at 9:10 AM