AWARD WINNING FILM FOR EXCELLENCE - WRPN Women's International Festival | OFFICIAL SELECTION - Doqumenta International Film Festival, Feministisk Festival, and more
Indigenous Midwives • Reproductive Health Care and Rights • Global and Sacred Birthing Traditions • Anthropological Storytelling • Indigenous Wisdom • Birth Wisdom and Practices
Date of Completion: 2022 | Run Time: 54 minutes | Language: English, Spanish, Thai & Greek with English subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director, Writer, Editor, Cinematographer & Executive Producer: Steph Smith | Associate Producers: Colette Delacroix, Geoff Marsh & Phil Smith
“Why are the benefits of traditional midwifery practices absent in most modern care options?”
GIVE LIGHT: STORIES FROM INDIGENOUS MIDWIVES brings the voices of Indigenous midwives to the maternity care dialogue. The film shares the benefits of traditional midwifery that are often left out of modern maternity care options.
GIVE LIGHT takes the viewer across the globe to reveal the role of the traditional midwife in her community. In interviews, nine (9) Indigenous Midwives from five continents discuss the benefits and challenges to their profession. In their native settings, these compelling women relate their life stories with confidence, humor, and a timely messages of their faith in the natural capabilities of the women that they serve.
These accounts are interwoven with expert testimony of medical anthropologist, historians, and conversations with modern day Midwives and Doula's. GIVE LIGHT compares and contrasts experiences of the birth by Indigenous Midwives with contemporary methods to explore the current rite of passage in childbirth in modernistic world. Is Midwifery and its tradition dying out due to persuasions of modern medical treatments or is Midwifery the hope of the future?
LSU School of Medicine | Pamela Wiseman, MD, LSU Associate Professor of Clinical Family Medicine
"The Give Light screening at LSU School of Medicine has brought the departments of Family Medicine and Nurse-Midwifery Program together to address issues on reproductive healthcare."
Dr. Rebecca Tuuri, Interim Associate Dean of the Honors College, Co-director, Center for the Study of the Gulf South, Associate Professor of History
"Give Light: Stories from Indigenous Midwives weaves together the history and experiences of past and present midwives from around the world. After viewing Give Light on the University of Southern Mississippi campus on November 2, 2023, our students gained a completely new perspective about the variety of ways that women give birth. Perhaps most importantly, they viewed how midwives globally empower women, both mothers and midwives, to trust in their own skills and expertise, both natural and learned, to bring life into the world. This was a powerful film that helped students see that our hyper-medicalized way of giving birth in the United States, which so often fails poor and minority women, is not the only or even the best way for mothers to give birth. This film also introduces new solutions to dealing with our current maternal and infant mortality crisis nationally and provides an excellent entre to a larger discussion about how to best help women, especially Black mothers in Mississippi, in the future."
Ayodele Foster-McCray, Anthropologist
“Give Light takes indigenous midwife epistemologies seriously as empirical Quo, and does so with beauty, levity, and humor. It is so educational for anyone with a stake in reproduction in the 21st century, which is to say, everyone.”
University of New Orleans | Tony Campbell, Assistant Professor
"The Give Light film is a true education Giving female students the information that conventional wisdom misses. Without it many are misinformed and scared of what can be a very sacred and natural process."
AWARDS
Award Winner for Excellence | WRPN Women's International Film Festival
FESTIVALS
DOQUMENTA International Documentary Film Festival
Feministisk Festival
Portland Film Festival
Cinema On The Bayou Film Festival