Creepy comments and weird whispers: friends trade tales from the patriarchy on Halloween
‘Maybe next year we’ll have less stories to tell.’
Pumpkin Movie opens with the Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari, blue-lit in front of her laptop, in a shadowy room festooned with Halloween lights and a black-and-white horror film on TV. This mix of the mundane and the eerie is the staged setup for a conversation about something that’s far from fictional – the misogyny they experience every day. Over a Skype call, with Romvari in Vancouver and her friend in Halifax, they trade a year’s worth of sexist encounters while carving pumpkins and drinking wine. What emerges is both a deeply personal and edgily playful exploration of the forms of casual misogyny that don’t make for headlines, but pervade everyday life.
Director: Sophy Romvari
Website: CBC Docs

videoKnowledge
A Kichwa activist on ayahuasca’s rise – and what it really means to her people
15 minutes

videoAnthropology
Margaret Mead explains why the family was entering a brave new world in this 1959 film
29 minutes

videoSports and games
Young Palestinians find fleeting moments of freedom at a West Bank skate park
13 minutes

videoHistory of science
Meet the Quaker pacifist who shattered British science’s highest glass ceilings
14 minutes

videoGender
A catchy tune explains the world’s ‘isms’ – according to your mum doing the laundry
5 minutes

videoHuman rights and justice
Surreal, dazzling visuals form an Iranian expat’s tribute to defiance back home
10 minutes

videoHistory
Hags, seductresses, feminist icons – how gender dynamics manifest in witches
13 minutes

videoLove and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes

videoEngineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes