PERIOD: THE END OF MENSTRUATION?

PERIOD: THE END OF MENSTRUATION?

    Price: $310.00

    Code: 2225

    Directed by Giovanna Chesler
    2006, 54 minutes
    Purchase: $310 Classroom Rental: $125

    **If you are interested in purchasing a copy of Period: The End of Menstruation? for home use - at the regular home video price - please call us directly at (800) 723-5522.

    Seasonale. Depo-Provera. Lybrel. As pharmaceutical companies develop new drugs that allow women to stop their periods for months and years at a time, Period: The End of Menstruation? investigates the social, cultural and medical implications of this increasingly popular new trend.

    In 1998, 10 million women and girls around the world were on Depo-Provera (the shot that stops menstruation). With the 2003 release of Seasonale, a pill designed to allow only four bleeding episodes each year, Barr Labs garnered $50 million in sales in one year. In the months ahead, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals plans to introduce Lybrel, the first approved continuous use oral contraceptive that will allow women to become period-free.

    This timely and necessary documentary interviews physicians, health practitioners, cultural critics, and a variety of women from around the country who fall on both sides of the menstrual suppression debate: from those who maintain that technology should make menstruation virtually obsolete to those who see menstruation as defining the essence of being female.

    Raising important questions about feminism, sexuality, gender and the body, the film opens up a discussion that challenges essentialist viewpoints around what is ‘natural' and ‘normal' and what it means to bleed. Period: The End of Menstruation? draws attention to a pressing health issue that affects millions of women on a global scale.

    Subjects & Collections



    Festivals & Awards

    * Official Selection, National Women's Studies Association, Annual Film Festival, 2006
    * Official Selection, Festival of Women’s Film & Media Arts, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, 2007
    * Official Selection, Women Without Borders Film Festival, 2007
    * Official Selection, National Women Without Borders Film Festival, 2007


    Reviews

    "An interesting documentary on that time of the month, this is definitely recommended." - Video Librarian

    “Recommended for all libraries.” – Library Journal

    "Chesler offers a dialogue here that is relentlessly intelligent, ecumenical, and profoundly sensitive to the varying perspectives of women and girls who must ultimately make their own menstrual choices."- Stephanie May, Bust Magazine

    “A comprehensive view of the cultural and medical issues regarding menstruation and menstrual suppression. It is engaging, and, at times, shocking… This film is an excellent way to initiate conversations. It would be a valuable addition to a women’s health course or communications course in college or in nursing and medical schools… It could be an integral part of high school health classes… I think that college students would especially benefit from the knowledge and unusual mix of information provided in the film.” - Sex Roles: A Journal of Research

    “Period does an excellent job of presenting a spectrum of opinions and subjects to discuss the implications of menstrual suppression. Recommended.” – Educational Media Reviews Online


    Further Reading