"Quite simply, this is the best film on rape that I have ever seen."
Joan Zorza, Editor, Sexual Assault Report, Domestic Violence Report and Violence Against Women
Rape is...
a film about a human rights outrage that leaves millions
of women, children and men in a state of terror and pain

Eve Ensler

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Selected for the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and UCLA/Film Dept. series of "outstanding documentaries"

Winner of the 2003 PASS Award fom the National Council on Crime

Now available in Spanish!

We've created a resource site to connect you with links, research and other activists: www.rapeis.org

and a discussion guide: Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF

"Rape is…," a new half-hour documentary video, explores the meaning and consequences of rape. This documentary looks at rape from a global and historical perspective, but focuses mainly on the domestic cultural conditions that make this human rights violation the most underreported crime in America. Many types of sexual assault are not considered a serious crime by the legal system and our society refuses to see the true cost of this brutal denial of basic rights. "Rape is..." expands the narrow ways we think of sexual violence, and demonstrates that it is not a sporadic and rare occurrence, but a cultural and criminal outrage that affects millions of women, children and men all over the world.



 

Rich Ridlon
" Rape is…" includes the poetry and ideas of:
Salamishah Tillet , a rape survivor and co-producer of the multimedia performance piece on rape, "A Long Walk Home."
Eve Ensler, playwright, "The Vagina Monologues," rape survivor and activist who explores the ideas behind V-day stop rape actions.
Vednita Carter, the founder and director of Breaking Free, an organization that provides services to prostituted women. Her insights about the connections between prostitution and rape inform "Rape is…"

Kathy Girod

Diane Rosenfeld, a Fellow at Harvard Law School who teaches in the women's studies department at Harvard. She provides crucial ideas about the issue.
Rich Ridlon, whose uncle sexually abused him throughout his childhood. Rich has spent 8 years in various prisons and criminal institutions. His perspectives on the consequences of rape and his understanding of prison rape are critical to the understanding of rape.
Kathy Girod , a rape survivor, whose psychological and social insights make the consequences of rape starkly evident.

"Rape really is a way of killing a person, but then asking
them to get up afterwards. So it's a way of stealing one's spirit,
but you're supposed to somehow keep going."
-Salamishah Tillet

  "If a woman really has the right to say "No" then why do we
always wonder what she was wearing at the time of the attack?"
-Diane Rosenfeld

" I have not talked to one young girl who was not raped prior to being
sold or used in prostitution. They call it getting them ready."
-Vednita Carter
  

Few are likely to dispute that a sexual attack by a stranger is an act of rape, but what about the far more common acts of sexual violence committed by relatives, dates, "boyfriends", or "customers" of the increasingly lucrative sex trades? This documentary explores these complicated issues, but always focuses on the terrible price that survivors of these acts pay, not only in physical pain but in psychological damage caused by the loss of trust, the guilt and confusion, and the destruction of self esteem.

"Rape is.." is, in the tradition of the previous films of CDF, a challenging and often deeply troubling documentary. But it is unlikely to allow audiences to leave with the complacent and inhumane view that rape is simply a crime or that, as one misguided judge claimed about the eleven year old victim of an adult rapist, "It takes two to tango". "Rape is…" will anger some, upset many, and wake up everyone who views it to the reality of a world where sexual violence puts millions of women, children, and men in a state of terror and dread.


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