My Name is Andrea – DocPoint – Helsinki documentary film festival

A highlight of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival – – is My Name Is Andrea, a documentary about the writer and activist Andrea Dworkin, directed by Pratibha Parmar. Its extraordinary collection of archival clips shows Dworkin (1946-2005) in action, speaking with philosophical insight and ardent eloquence about the condition of women in American society. Intertwining Dworkin’s speeches and writings with her life story, the movie details her radical ideas and the horrific personal experiences underlying them. She considered the constant threat of rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence to be at the core of women’s oppression; she called heterosexual intercourse intrinsically violent, deemed pornography propaganda for denying women civil rights, and viewed misogyny as inseparable from white supremacy and plutocracy. For her ideas, she was mocked; for her advocacy, she faced death threats.

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Dworkin was militant, vulnerable and visionary, and, for reasons that Parmar’s film makes clear, particularly attuned to brutality and the social structures that support and enable it. You might not welcome all her conclusions, but she asked the right questions: “Do we participate in this violence all around us that we hate, or do we try to live a different way and try to do a different kind of work?”

Sheri Lindon, The Hollywood Reporter

Content warning: depiction of rape

Language: English
Subtitles: no subtitles
Length: 91 min
Age Limit: K12
Year: 2022
Production Country: USA

Director: Pratibha Parmar
Producer: Shaheen Haq
Production Company: Kali Films
Screenplay: Pratibha Parmar Based on the writings of Andrea Dworkin
Editing: Anne Fabini, Pratibha Parmar
Cinematographer: Kartik Vijay
Music: Nitin Sawhney
Sound Design: Udit Duseja