This film explores the metaphorical significance of the tampon: a phallic item inserted into the vagina that is introduced to pubescent women as sort of a rite-of-passage into taking control over their bodies. A film by Alexandra Neuman, “Tampon” presents strikingly simple drawings beautifully animated over a pink background and narrated by a woman computer voice with a wry sense of humor. At age 7, says the voice, she found her first tampon under her mom’s sink and opened the plastic wrapper, “what I found inside left me quietly stunned.” And thus begins her complicated relationship with “the bullet…both an invader and a pacifier”, and the endless battle she is subjected to in being a woman. By Alexandra Neuman.