Programmed using films from a six-week retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the following nine films illustrate some of the remarkable contributions women have made to film in the last quarter century. Although they didn’t plan it, Reel Women’s Dawn Cooper does admit that the festival breaks down into groupings in which “one night is more experimental, one more oriented toward documentary, and the other is more … Campion.” As in, Jane and Anna Campion, whose work comprises the Saturday afternoon screenings. In addition to the MoMA films, the festival will also give us a picture of what local female filmmakers are working on when four short films by the women of Cinemaker Co-Op are presented on Sunday. The following is a brief guide to the other films being shown. –S.H.
Your Name in Cellulite
D: Gail Noonan, 1995
(6 min., color, 35mm)
Hilarious and knowing, this animated short is a memorable spoof of the all-too-familiar attempts women make to shoehorn their bodies into an impossible mold. The MoMA folks thought highly enough of the short to use it to open their 1997 retrospective, and the Reel Women wisely follow suit. The filmmaker will be in attendance at the screening, as well as at Saturday’s panel.
24 Girls
D: Eva Ilona Brzeski, 1998
(29 min., color, 16mm)
Meditative piece about adolescence, that awkward bridge between a girls’ childhood and adulthood. While watching 24 girls audition for a role, the director reminisces about a childhood friend who died at a young age.
Black Kites
D: Jo Andres, 1996
(26 min., color, 35mm)
Andres’ stirring depiction of a woman struggling to survive during the siege of Sarajevo was based on journals by Bosnian visual artist Alma Hajric. Creating a bleak, surreal landscape dominated by memory and imagination, Andres projects images on a hand, a back, a body of rippling water. It’s a technique she has often used in her work as a performance artist in New York, where she lives with husband Steve Buscemi, who appears in the film. While Hajric’s journals offer a harrowing narrative, Andres creates images that sear the mind and linger in memory. The filmmaker will be in attendance at the screening, as well as at the Saturday panel.
Peel
D: Jane Campion
(9 min., color, 16mm)
The first film by The Piano’s Jane Campion is this oddity, illustrating the anger that seethes between three family members on an otherwise innocuous afternoon outing. Campion won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for the film.
Passionless Moments
D: Jane Campion
(13 min., B&W, 16mm)
Quirky and unsentimental, Campion spies on a series of odd encounters on one day.
A Girl’s Own Story
D: Jane Campion
(27 min., B&W, 16mm)
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A Girl’s Own Story |
From gushing over the Beatles, to flirtatious play with her girlfriend, to her first sexual experience, Campion traces one girl’s sexual development.
The Audition
D: Anna Campion, 1990
(24 min., color, 16mm)
A subdued piece of meta-filmmaking about the complicated nature of mother-daughter relationships. Campion documents a struggle between her sister (director Jane) and mother, an aging actress who has been asked to appear in Jane’s film adaptation of An Angel at My Table.
Two or Three Things but Nothing for Sure
D: Tina DiFeliciantonio and Jane C. Wagner, 1997
(12 min., color, 16mm)
Bastard Out of Carolina fans will relish this brief portrait of author Dorothy Allison, who reads excerpts from her acclaimed novel and discusses her triumph over a childhood of incest, her ferocious work in feminism, and her life as a lesbian and mother.
In My Father’s House
D: Fatima Jebli Ouazzani, 1997
(67 min., color, 35mm [w/subtitles])
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In My Father’s House |
Alternately moving and horrifying depiction of the Moroccan treatment of women. The director returns to her home after a decade of absence and, through a series of intriguing interviews with family members and other Moroccans, illustrates how the tradition supports, and yet ultimately undercuts, the beauty of the culture.
This article appears in September 3 • 1999.