Credits:

Starring: Lil Kim, Mary J. Blige, Pam, Shaka Don, Russell Simmons, Champagne, Tupac Shakur, Mama Mayhem, Billy Flames
Director: Harry Davis
Producer: Cornelius Pitts & Percy Davis

STREET LIFE IS TOUGH, THESE WOMEN ARE TOUGHER...
Filmed over a 2 year period, GANGSTRESSES gets up close and personal with the hard core female hustler. They lie, cheat, steal, pack heat, sell dope and even their own bodies to finance a better tomorrow for their families. To achieve their goal they must navigate treacherous terrain and try to come out alive. More shocking than fiction.

GANGSTRESSES chronicles the voices of a world rarely seen or acknowledged. This is the story you only thought you knew!

Special cameo appearance by TUPAC SHAKUR!!!

"...sets out to explore the alternative realities that black women have been forced to create..." -- Vibe Magazine

"....an unflinching look at women on the edge." -- Interview Magazine

Interview magazine, Dimitri Erlich writes:

Harry Davis

"I didn't even know I was making a film," says Harry Davis of his new documentary, Gangstresses, a visceral, unflinching, and unsentimental look at women on the edge. The movie portrays rappers, female drug dealers, porn stars, and hustlers. What is striking about these women, who are black, is their relentless pursuit of money and the way they all equate happiness with economic empowerment at any cost. "These women can't go anywhere without encountering the immediate prospect of danger at all times," says Davis, who personally conducted all the interviews for the documentary.

Davis, who was raised in Detroit, attended Yale and became a nationally ranked runner before embarking on a career as a lawyer; he decided to get out of the legal profession after his defense of several radical political figures brought him into marked disfavor with the justice Department. He brought his eye for the disempowered to his documentary: "I saw these gangstresses out there hustling voluntarily, and it struck me that these women weren't hustling for survival; they were out there because they wanted something better in life and they felt that hustling was the only way they were gonna get it. I felt that was something new. The goals of these gangstresses are the same as those of middle class America."

In the end, the stoicism with which the women in Gangstresses adapt to the brutality in their lives is as heart-wrenching as the relentless trauma, domestic violence, and poverty that buffet the women. "Society still has to look at the fact that women have the role of mothers, and we have an interest in offering some protection to the people who are going to nurture the next generation. You're gonna see the effects of society's not protecting mothers first among marginalized women."