Philadelphia filmmaker Barbara Attie has been producing and directing documentaries on women’s and social justice issues since 1990. In 2005, her collaborative work with Janet Goldwater was recognized when they were awarded the prestigious Pew Fellowship in the Arts.
One of Attie’s recent award-winning documentaries, made with Goldwater, is titled Rosita and captures the true story of a 9-year-old Nicaraguan girl who was raped and impregnated while her parents were working as coffee pickers in Costa Rica. Rosita has been screened at many film festivals – including the Human Rights Watch International Film Festivals in New York, London, and Buenos Aires – and has been broadcast in Europe, Asia, and Latin America on HBO/Cinemax.
Attie’s other documentaries include Maggie Growls (with Goldwater), a whimsical biography of Gray Panther founder Maggie Kuhn. This 2002 ITVS production was selected to be the premiere program on PBS’ nationally broadcast documentary series Independent Lens. Attie also produced and directed Daring to Resist: Three Women Face the Holocaust (with Martha Lubell), which aired on PBS. The Boston Globe called this portrait of teenage girls fighting Nazi genocide “one of the ten best television documentaries of 2000.”
Attie and Goldwater just completed What Harm Is It To Be A Woman?, a four-part series on the religious roots of violence against women produced for The Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Rights and Ethics. They are currently working on two new documentaries. Goundo’s Daughter is about the ancient tradition of female genital cutting and how it affects peoples’ lives. A Get for Cynthia follows one woman’s struggle for freedom, first for herself but in the end for others. What at first was a personal struggle for Cynthia Ohana to Leave an abusive marriage and obtain a religious divorce becomes a battle to pass legislation in Maryland that will prevent other Orthodox women from being similarly stuck.
Attie received an MFA from Temple in 1996. She is a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Media. She is currently Board Chair of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women and serves on the Board of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania.