Another

Gaze

01
A feminist film journal
Another Gaze 01, February 2018
founded by Daniella Shreir & Dorothy Allen-Pickard, 2016.

Editor – Daniella Shreir

Assistant editors – Heather Williams, Alex Hartley
Editorial assistant – Melissa Thorne
Sub-editor – Gabrielle Schwarz

Designer – Daniella Shreir

Staff writers – Hannah Paveck, Rebecca Liu

Video interviews – Dorothy Allen-Pickard, Daniella Shreir

Video assistants – Julia Brown, Steph Hartop, Chahine Fellahi
Translators – Hélène Voigt (French), Carolina Benalcázar (Spanish)
Intern – Laura Hancock

Special thanks: Sally Shreir

Thanks to the following, without whose advice and support Another Gaze would be
much less rich: Ed Siddons, Ruth Novaczek, Elisabeth Subrin, Karin Pozimski,
Sebastian Foot, Helen Young, Alex Mason, Jo Holmes, Bob Tivey, Jill Gillard,
Tamara Oppenheimer, Janet & Byron Turner, Jane Bruton, Riva Eskinazi, Sarah
Lee, Carmen Clemente, Sabine Stebler, Emma O’Kelly, Kirsty Stansfield, James
Forage, Madonna Benjamin, Patricia Gutierrez, Vivienne Shreir, Wendy Porter,
Aniela Shuckburgh, Harriet Wheeler, Tania Rosehill.

Another Gaze, London, info@anothergaze.com


SECTION ONE: FIRST LIGHT
p10 Where We Are Is Here: On Female Filmmakers – So Mayer
p14 Cinematic Riots: Feminism and Surrealism in Germaine Dulac’s ‘La Coquille et le
Clergyman’ – Chelsea Phillips-Carr
p18 Camp is a Utopian Vision: Alice Guy-Blaché’s ‘The Consequences of Feminism’ –
Noah Berlatsky
p22 Suddenly, a Woman Spectator: In Conversation With Laura Mulvey – Another Gaze
p29 Portrait of Denise de Casabianca
p30 “It is dangerous to step out of line, and lethal not to”: The Artistic Universe of Lis
Rhodes – Inga Fraser
p33 In Conversation with Lis Rhodes – Another Gaze
SECTION TWO: EARLY VIEWING
p36 ‘Regarding Susan Sontag’ and the Anxiety of Influence – Harriet Smith Hughes
p41 Queering the Absence: How I Made my Place in Other People’s Films – Eva Phillips
p45 Girl World: An Exercise in Cinematic Gaslighting – Maryam Kazeem
p50 Portrait of Rachel Lang
SECTION THREE: WOMEN LOOKING AT WOMEN
p52 Screening Female Desire: Bette Gordon’s ‘Variety’ 35 Years On – Rebecca Liu
p55 Bette Gordon on Bette Gordon’s ‘Variety’ & stills by Nan Goldin
p60 Filming too Close: Naomi Kawase and a Care-full Filmic Gesture – Sander Hölsgens
p64 Ordinary Devotion: The Seduction of Normalcy in Chantal Akerman’s ‘No Home
Movie’ – Alice Blackhurst
p70 Wandering across Frames: Moyra Davey and the Feminist Essay Film –
Hannah Paveck
p75 Portrait of Elisabeth Subrin
p76 Feminist Film Noir: Sally Potter’s ‘Thriller’ and the Undoing of La Bohème –
Liena Vayzman
p80 Expansive Territories: Remembering Kathleen Collins – Lucie Elliott
SECTION FOUR: SOUND AND VISIONS
p86 “My View Not Their View”: The Rewriting of Andrea Dunbar’s Story –
Anna Coatman
p92 Continual Discontent: The Cinema of Ousmane Sembène – David Lee-Astley
p97 Portrait of Dyana Gaye
p98 From Fantasy to Reality: How should we Screen Rape? – Imogen West-Knights
p104 Reconceiving Trans Womanhood and Sexual Pluralism in Rosa von Praunheim’s
‘Stadt der Verlorenen Seelen’ – Matthew Robinson
p108 Why ‘Lady Macbeth’ is the Intersectional Feminist Film You Didn’t Know You
Needed – Desirée de Jesus
p112 In Conversation With Alice Diop – Another Gaze
p116 A Woman’s Art: Sophie Maintigneux, Eric Rohmer and Female Friendship –
Fiona Handyside
p120 Intimate Contact: Images of Suffering in the Work of Carolee Schneemann –
Gabrielle Schwarz
p125 In Conversation with Carolee Schneemann – Another Gaze
p130 In Conversation with Mania Akbari – Another Gaze
SECTION FIVE: LOOKING AROUND
p142 Our Year in Review
p144 Sandrine Bonnaire’s ‘Marianne Faithfull: Fleur d’Âme’ – Alice Blackhurst
p148 Mia Hansen-Løve’s ‘Things to Come’ – Joanna Biggs
p151 Ildikó Enyedi’s ‘On Body and Soul’ – Hannah Paveck
p153 Sean Baker’s ‘The Florida Project’ – Rebecca Liu
p156 Agnès Varda’s ‘Faces, Places’ – Daniella Shreir
p158 Michel Hazanavicius’s ‘Redoubtable’ – Henry K. Miller
p160 Nele Wohlatz’s ‘The Future Perfect’ – Maya Caspari
p162 Jane Campion’s ‘Top of the Lake: China Girl’ – Lucy Scholes
p166 Jill Soloway’s ‘I Love Dick’ – Gabrielle Schwarz
p169 ‘Certain Women and Other Animals: A Kelly Reichardt Symposium at the British
Film Institute’ – Laura Staab
p172 Camille Henrot’s ‘Days are Dogs’ at the Palais de Tokyo – Hannah Paveck
Content note for mention or description of rape
or sexual assault
C O N T R I
So Mayer is the author of Political Animals:
The New Feminist Cinema, The Cinema of Sally
Potter: A Politics of Love, and most recently
From Rape to Resistance: Taking Back the Screen.
So works with queer feminist film curators
Club des Femmes and with Raising Films,
a campaign and community for parents and
carers in the film industry.
Chelsea Phillips-Carr is a writer from
Toronto, Canada. Her writing has appeared in
Cinemascope, Mubi’s Notebook, and Pop Matters
(among others), and she is an editor for Cléo.
Noah Berlatsky is the author of Wonder
Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/
Peter Comics from Rutgers University Press.
Inga Fraser is a curator and writer. She
is a PhD research student in Critical and
Historical Studies at Royal Academy of Arts
and Tate.
Harriet Smith Hughes works at a
startup where she writes the ‘voice’ of an AI.
Prior to the move into tech, she completed
an MPhil at Cambridge, where her research
concerned the political functions of the
contemporary essay in digital spaces. She
now spends her time reading things that are
not essays – though that definition proves a
problem.
Eva Phillips is teaching, writing,
needlessly complicating her thesis, and finding
synonyms for ‘grandiloquent’ in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.
B U T O R S
Maryam Kazeem is a writer and
multimedia artist based in Lagos. Her work
explores questions around memory and
writing the black female body.
Rebecca Liu is a freelance writer living in
London. She is an editor for Kings Review, and
one of Another Gaze’s staff writers.
Bette Gordon is an American filmmaker
and a professor at Columbia University School
of the Arts who has been making films since
the mid-1970s.
Sander Hölsgens is a filmmaker and
writer working on affect, the colour blue, and
dust.
Alice Blackhurst is a writer and
researcher based at King’s College, Cambridge.
Hannah Paveck is a PhD candidate in
Film Studies at King’s College London. Her
research explores the role of sound and listening
in contemporary art cinema. She is one of
Another Gaze’s staff writers.
Liena Vayzman has written for
publications including Art Quarterly and
Yale University, and the exhibition catalogue
Magic Mirror: Claude Cahun / Sarah Pucill
(London). Dr. Vayzman is Assistant Professor
of Fine Arts at LaGuardia Community
College, City University of New York
(CUNY).
Lucie Elliott is a writer based in London,
whose Master’s thesis focussed on ‘The New
Black Aesthetic’, including the filmic work of
Kathleen Collins.
Anna Coatman is a writer and editor
from Leeds, now based in London. Having
previously been Visual Culture Editor at
I.B.Tauris, she is now Deputy Editor at RA
Magazine, as well as Editorial Director at 3 of
Cups Press.
David Lee Astley works for an
environmental NGO in London. He
previously ran a film club and now occasionally
writes on art and politics.
Imogen West-Knights is a Stockholm-
based writer whose words have been included
in publications including The Economist,
Financial Times and the TLS. She is also a
programmer for the Stockholm Feminist Film
Festival.
Matthew Robinson is a London-based
journalist and MA graduate from King’s
College London in Film and Philosophy,
specialising in European queer cinema.
Desirée de Jesus is a video essayist,
Concordia University Public Scholar and Film
and Moving Image Studies PhD Candidate
researching representations of marginalized
girls in popular culture.
Fiona Handyside is a Senior Lecturer in
Film at the University of Exeter. She is author
of Cinema at the Shore: The Beach in French
Cinema (Peter Lang, 2014), editor of Eric
Rohmer: Interviews (University of Mississippi
Press, 2013), and co-editor with Kate Taylor-
Jones of International Cinema and the Girl:
Local Issues, Transnational Contexts (AIAA,
2015).
Gabrielle Schwarz curates and writes
about contemporary art. She is web editor of
Apollo magazine.
Joanna Biggs is a writer and editor at
the London Review of Books, where she has
reported on the student protest movement, the
recession in Middlesbrough, Legal Aid cuts,
censorship in China, and manufacturing.
Daniella Shreir is co-founder and editor
of Another Gaze. She works as a researcher
for various women filmmakers and is also a
photographer and graphic designer.
Henry K. Miller is a regular contributor
to Sight & Sound, and has written for
publications including Film Comment, Cinema
Scope and Framework.
Maya Caspari is a writer and PhD
researcher at the University of Leeds.
Lucy Scholes writes about films and
books for a variety of publications, including
BBC Culture, the TLS and Literary Hub.
She has contributed to Stanley Kubrick:
New Perspectives (Black Dog, 2015), and is a
commissioning editor at Bookanista.
Laura Staab is a PhD candidate at
King’s College London, researching forms
of the feminine in cinema and artist’s moving
image.
 At the Cannes Film Festival last year, new films by women directors were noticeably less well attended
than those by men; a male member of the press, who had long argued for the separation of the art from the
artist, was overheard commending a woman’s films, with the caveat “even though it’s by a young woman”;
Agnes Varda’s Faces Places (now an Academy Award nominee, while she herself was awarded an honorary
Oscar last year) was consigned to both a smaller category and a small screen; meanwhile, in the screen next
door, convicted pedocriminal, Roman Polanski, was cheered and celebrated. The world of film criticism is
still largely dominated by men: films by women, queer people and people of colour frequently fail to get
the attention they deserve and may struggle to find a distributor, and so never reach a wide audience. The
true starting point of a film’s life as a public entity is thereby denied them.
Another Gaze was founded early in 2016 in response to the difficulty in obtaining rigorous writing
– whether online or in print – about women and film: its sources being disparate, or access requiring
membership of an academic institution or the will and resources to get through a ‘paywall’. Of course, on
occasion, newspapers and magazines may have their attention captured by a topical issue and momentarily
turn the spotlight on some aspect of the way in which women are habitually portrayed in film, or the
hazards which beset those working in the industry. But Another Gaze is an attempt to make this subject
matter central and to provide a sustained and evolving forum for discussion.
There was no intention that this first issue should be constrained by a particular theme; nor was there
a specific call for submissions. Many pieces were received unsolicited from students, academics, journalists
and filmmakers: the majority of whom had been stimulated by the writing of other women on our website.
Nevertheless, certain strands and points of intersection – including the interdependence of the practical
SECTION ONE
and the theoretical – have emerged. The journal has become a dialogue: both with the content of the
website, and in itself.
Feminist criticism is not, and should not be considered elite or specialist; nor should it require the F I R S T
reader to have a university degree or be a self-proclaimed cinephile. Particularly since the advent of the L I G H T
internet, young women, queer people and people of colour, have had the opportunity to discover films
which reflect and affirm their lives and aspirations in a manner which is harder to find in the prescribed
male canon, and to create their own.
The journal has sometimes been fuelled by a combative energy, born of anger: at the terrible statistics
regarding women’s work and its recognition in the industry, and at the testimonies of the last two years.
But there are also more insidious biases to redress: the language often unconsciously used to describe film
in the feminine being one, and the double-bind of the private and personal being another. The narrative of
women’s films is too often dismissed as ‘thinly-veiled autobiography’ – as if true invention and creativity
were beyond us – but, as soon as a woman places herself in the orbit of the lens, it’s perceived, not as
a matter of style, but as the expression of an unshakeable narcissism. Both of these become evident
throughout the issue. None of the articles, though, makes anger their subject. Instead, the essays and
reviews aim to embrace all that films can be and to recognise that race, sexuality and class, being integral
to feminism, are equally pivotal to our understanding of film. We want to highlight the work of emerging
women filmmakers, and to encourage the (re)discovery of those who have been neglected, but also to
introduce new voices to participate in a more empathetic, non-binary discourse. This is not to suggest that
there is an inherently ‘female’ filmmaking practice or mode of criticism. Instead, through personal and
theoretical essays, fragments, reviews and interviews, we wish to promote and give space to other ways of
seeing.
– D.S.
 by
So When Sally Potter’s first feature film,
The Gold Diggers opened in London in
Mayer 1983, the British Film Institute invited
her to curate a season of films that had
influenced its conception. It included
silent Hollywood classics, such as D.W.
Griffith’s Way Down East (1920) and
Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925),
to which her black-and-white film pays
homage. Its star, Julie Christie, had also
featured in Doctor Zhivago (David Lean,
1965) and Darling (John Schlesinger,
1965), and there were spectacular female
star turns from European cinema in Queen
Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933),
Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955), Une
Femme est une Femme (Jean-Luc Godard,
WHERE WE ARE IS HERE: ON FEMALE FILMMAKERS
1961) and Persona (Ingmar Bergman,
1966), among others.
But the programme also announced
another lineage: avant-garde women’s
cinema, including a short by Joyce
Wieland; Germaine Dulac’s La Souriante
Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame
Beudet, 1923); Maya Deren’s dance film
Study in Choreography for the Camera
(1945) and Yvonne Rainer’s Lives of
Performers (1972). Dance, Girl, Dance
(1940), Dorothy Arzner’s best-known
film, demonstrated the fact that women
were active in the Hollywood big leagues
as well as at the cutting-edge margins.
Between her explosive debut Thriller
(1979) and shooting The Gold Diggers
(1983), Potter had toured with her first
film from the Edinburgh Film Festival
to college campuses across the United
States, becoming a part of a thrilling new
conversation: feminist film theory. Stoked
by Laura Mulvey’s call for a feminist
counter-cinema, in her 1975 essay ‘Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, artists
including Rainer – who, like Potter,
trained as a dancer and choreographer –
were realising the possibilities of ‘another
gaze’, and scholars had been rereading
cinema’s past to attend to filmmakers
such as Arzner, Deren and Dulac as
10
proto-feminist forebears.
Forty years on, women filmmakers are
still excluded from the discourse when
it comes to curating canons and tracing
influences. Kent Jones apparently couldn’t
think of a single female filmmaker
(and only one non-white filmmaker) to
interview about their relationship to the
Master for his cinephile documentary
Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015) – despite
Potter’s film Thriller being well-known
as a critique of Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock,
1960). And so female filmmakers have to
be rediscovered again and again. In Why
Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of
Feminist Theory (Duke University Press,
2011), Clare Hemmings invents a pair
of words that are useful for thinking Images:
about how this kind of film criticism Left, across page,
and canonisation works: hetero-citation Sally Potter in
her The Tango
and hom(m)o-citation. In other words, Lesson (1997).
Above, Julie
feminist theorists are always attributed Christie in The
influences from male theorists, and Gold Diggers
(1983). Courtesy
rarely from female theorists; while male of Adventure
theorists are attributed influences from Pictures.
other male theorists, and rarely from
female theorists. Hemmings gives the
example of Judith Butler, who is always
seen as being influenced by Michel
Foucault rather than Monique Wittig, or
Hannah Arendt.
The same practice operates in film
criticism, so that female filmmakers – as
and when their existence is acknowledged
– get written out of being influential,
 and are only admitted as A Woman Under the
Influence, to quote John Cassavetes. We need
to invest in what Lucy Bolton calls ‘feminist
geneaology’ in her book Film and Female
1 Lucy Bolton,
Film and Female Consciousness1, which connects women and their
Consciousness: work to each other, but might also admit that
Irigaray, Cinema
and Thinking female filmmakers could influence individual
Women. Palgrave male filmmakers – or even film culture more
Macmillan UK
(2011) broadly. Calling Agnès Varda the god/grand/
mother of the French New Wave is a good start
– but we need to follow feminist film critics such
as Ginette Vincendeau in her essay on La Pointe
Courte and consider exactly what aesthetic Varda
2. Ginette
Vincendeau, ‘La
invented and how her influence was transmitted.2
Pointe Courte: In 2009, I published a book about Potter,
How Agnès Varda
“Invented” the New where I talked about the films that influenced
Wave’, Criterion, her – not just those she programmed for the
January 2008,
(Online) BFI in 1983, but the myriad references that
surface in her intensely cinematic and cinephilic
work. I didn’t have the opportunity to reflect on
how Potter’s four decades of filmmaking have
influenced contemporary cinema. The Institute
of Contemporary Art recently curated ‘Onwards
3. Onwards and
Outwards’ was a and Outwards’,3 an extensive touring programme
unique programme
of films made by
of films by British female arthouse filmmakers,
British women which offered an opportunity to reflect on the
filmmakers over the
last 50 years. It ran extraordinary emergence of a generation that
from 1-10 September, includes Carol Morley, Clio Barnard, Andrea
2015.
Arnold, Joanna Hogg, and Xiaolu Guo, as well
as trans filmmaker Campbell X, and to consider
the influence of Beeban Kidron and Potter, who
began making features in the eighties.
In fact, the feminist genealogy extends even
further: the ICA screened Potter’s best-known
film, Orlando (1992), with Where I Am is Here
(1964): a short film by one of the best-kept secrets
in British film history, Margaret Tait. Tait began
making 16mm films in the fifties, having studied
at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in
Rome after she was demobbed from war service
in the medical corps. Returning to Edinburgh,
and then Orkney, she worked as a GP and made
exquisite film poems – and, in her seventies, a
feature. Blue Black Permanent (1992), which tells
the story of a feminist artistic genealogy within
one family, will hopefully be available as part of
12
a box set of her life’s work, some time in the next While their work is stylistically different,
year. But viewers at the ICA could contemplate there’s that sense of permission again. It’s
two films paired for their extraordinary sense curious that July makes her character Sophie,
of presence in place: a kind of wild, sensual in The Future (2011), a dancer-choreographer;
Britishness that can also be seen in Arnold’s films, Greta Gerwig’s titular character in Frances
particularly Wuthering Heights (2011). Orlando, Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012), which she
the restless traveller, always on the move, becomes co-wrote, is also a dancer-choreographer: a
a signature figure for many British women’s films, tribute to Potter and Rainer.
from Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002) to But The Tango Lesson also interweaves its
Xiaolu Guo’s She, a Chinese (2009). seemingly autobiographical narrative about
Orlando played a key role internationally a frustrated female filmmaker who learns to
in both Hollywood’s Year of the Woman and tango, while navigating the fraught waters of
what B. Ruby Rich identified as the New Queer studio pre-production, with highly-stylised
Cinema (or, her preferred term, ‘homo pomo’). glimpses of the feature film being pitched, a
Blanchett channelling classical Hollywood 4
Corinn
Instantly-identifiable stills of Tilda Swinton fashion germicide investigation called ‘Rage’ Columpar, “The
– a role she would go on to repeat in The Dancing Body:
graced the covers of feminist film studies by (and Potter did, indeed, later make a fashion
Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004) as well as Sally Potter
Maggie Humm, Annette Kuhn, and Patricia femicide investigation called Rage [2009], as Feminist
in Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015) – I think it’s Auteure” in
Mellencamp, as well as Rolling Stone. It was a just to make things more meta). Recent films Jacqueline
The Gold Diggers that has had the deepest
defining cultural moment – and a lasting one. such as Morley’s The Alcohol Years (2000) and Levitin, Judith
influence on film culture. Withdrawn from Plessis, and
It’s not hard to see a trace of Orlando’s play with Dreams of a Life (2011); Barnard’s The Arbor Valerie Raoul
circulation for thirty years, it has entered
British history and costume drama in Amma (2010); Gillian Wearing’s Self Made (2010) (eds), Women
film’s unconscious. Its spiral narrative Filmmakers:
“Female filmmakers have to be rediscovered again and again”
Asante’s Belle (2014), and to argue that Potter’s and Desperate Optimists’ Helen (2008) all Refocusing,
of dreams, backstage hijinks, and danced
success gave filmmakers permission to approach oscillate similarly, and with a comparable University
messages must be a critical source for of British
the past – and classic fiction – in a new, incisive high-wire style that brings together narrative Columbia
David Lynch’s imagery from Twin Peaks Press,
and intersectional manner. The closing scene’s fiction and avant-garde imagination. They
onwards. But its central, mixed-race lesbian Vancouver,
golden angel (sung by Jimmy Somerville) hovers make use of all kinds of performance strategies 2002, pp.
relationship remains singular, in British 108–116: 111.
over the end of Channel 4’s Civil War drama and remediations: mirror mazes that lead the
cinema, for decades: with Shamim Sarif’s
The Devil’s Whore (created by Martine Brant and viewer to reflect on identity, authorship, and Images:
films, Pratibha Parmar’s Nina’s Heavenly Above, Sally
Peter Flannery, 2008), which also has a cheeky the ownership of our stories. Potter as Sally
Delights (2006) and Campbell X’s Stud Life
visual quotation from the opening of The Piano While it was The Man Who Cried (2000) in The Tango
(2012), Potter’s pioneering work is showing Lesson (1997)
(Jane Campion, 1993). that first gave film viewers a luminous Cate Left, Colette
its true influence.
Cheeky quotations from Potter’s work relate Laffont and
Julie Christie
mostly to The Tango Lesson (1997), with versions in The Gold
of the film’s most dynamic and original dance Diggers (1983).
Courtesy of
scene – a pas de quatre through a long, empty Adventure
warehouse, shot in a single take – popping up in Pictures.
reality TV dance shows and ads. But, as Corinn
Columpar notes in her 2003 essay ‘The Dancing
Body: Sally Potter as Feminist Auteure’,4 Potter’s
stroke of genius in The Tango Lesson is to put
herself in the frame, playing the protagonist: a
filmmaker called Sally. It was something that
many male critics found distasteful, but obviously
struck a chord with filmmakers such as Miranda
July and Lena Dunham, who write, direct and
act in films that draw on their lived experience.
13
 by
Germaine Dulac’s La Coquille
Chelsea et le Clergyman (The Seashell and the
Clergyman) was arguably the first
Phillips- Surrealist film ever made. Admired
Carr today for its innovative camerawork
and engagement with gender politics,
it focuses on a priest who covets
another man’s wife. But it is the story
surrounding it, as much as its plot,
that allows the film to take its place
in the realm of the surreal. At its first
screening, in 1928, before an audience
of Surrealist artists and bohemians at
the legendary Studio des Ursulines,
Dulac’s film caused a literal riot.
GERMAINE DULAC’S ‘LA COQUILLE ET LE CLERGYMAN’
CINEMATIC RIOTS: FEMINISM AND SURREALISM IN
Accounts differ as to what happened.
According to some, violence broke out
when dramatist and essayist Antonin
Artaud, who wrote the film’s screenplay,
was ejected from the cinema for calling
Dulac a cow. In other tellings, it was
writer André Breton who shouted the
epithet. Some say that Artaud was
not even present, while still others
state that he and fellow surrealists had
come to the screening with the specific
purpose of attacking Dulac and her
film.1 Regardless, while the rest of the
films playing in the same programme
were warmly applauded, as soon as La
Coquille’s title card appeared on the
screen, a group in the audience began
hurling gendered insults at the film and
its director. Those defending the film
reacted aggressively, and chaos ensued.
No matter who was there or the
precise nature of what happened, the
film ignited a mass agitation that began
with insults against a lesbian director.
The film itself can be regarded as a
feminist work, and although it is unclear
how much of it was actually seen at the
screening, its own gender politics would
probably have been enough to incite a
male hysteria all by themselves.
La coquille stands in controversial
relation to gender. Though the film is
14
typical of Dulac’s style in many ways, a
major difference is that her other films
focus on women; here, it is the titular
clergyman, played by Alex Allin, who is
at the centre of the narrative. In contrast
to the dignified, long-suffering women
of Dulac’s other works, the clergyman
is an obsessive, unlikeable figure and
the easy target of mockery by the object
of his desire. To the role, which was
intended to be played by Artaud himself
and which he left due to a scheduling
conflict, Allin brings a meek physicality
totally at odds with Artaud’s handsome
and commanding presence. Artaud’s
clergyman might have been intense and
beautiful; Allin’s is the opposite.
The woman the clergyman obsesses
over, played by Génica Athanasiou,
is, as Sandy Flitterman-Lewis has
argued, less an object of than a “force of 1. Odette and
desire”.2 She resists consumption by the Alain Virmaux,
Les surréalistes et
spectator, and Allin’s clergyman is too le cinéma
weak to compete with her. Whenever (Paris: Seghers,
1976).
he attempts to capture her, the director
intervenes to save her from his touch: he
2. Sandy
grabs at her neck, and the neck becomes Flitterman-
a house; he puts her face into a bottle, Lewis, To Desire
Differently:
but, when the bottle breaks, we find his Feminism and
the French
face inside it. With a surrealist disdain
Cinema (Chicago:
for the normal bounds of filmed reality, University of
Illinois Press,
Dulac uses editing and superimposition 1990), p. 117.
to protect Athanasiou’s character.

Contrast the
depiction of Athanasiou’s
body with, for instance,
that of Simone Mareuil
in Salvador Dali and
Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien
Andalou (1929). When
Un Chien Andalou
premiered at the Studio
des Ursulines, less than a
year after La Coquille, it
was so well received that
its filmmakers – having
hoped to create chaos –
found the event boring.
Both films contain scenes that focus on the
eroticised bodies of their women characters,
but the execution of these scenes couldn’t
be more different. In La Coquille, when
Allin pulls Athanasiou’s top off to reveal her
breasts, they are almost immediately blurred,
then briefly revealed again, then covered with
superimposed seashells. Allin rips off the
seashells, but, rather than a continuous close-
up of Athanasiou’s body, we quickly cut to a
shot of Allin, holding the shells and glowering
in frustration. As the film goes on, all Allin’s
attempts – and so ours as well – to consume
the image of Athanasiou are frustrated.
3. Antonin Shots of her body or her face give us no time
Artaud, The
Theatre and its to appreciate her image before it becomes
Double, trans.
distorted or the camera cuts away from it.
by Mary Caroline
Richards (New
York: Grove Press,
Conversely, in Un Chien Andalou,
1958), p. 84. Mareuil’s character tries to escape a man who
4. Naomi is groping her. She pushes him off her body, but
Green, A‘ rtaud
and Film: A
he persists, and massages her breasts through
Reconsideration.’ her shirt, which then disappears, allowing us
Cinema Journal
23, no. 4 (1984), to gaze upon her. Her bared breasts then turn
p. 33.
into her naked buttocks: fondled and in full
5. Artaud, p. 89. view, we get to see her whole body, while her
attempts to break free are extended, resulting
in a complete, unadulterated look at her –
struggling and nude. Dulac does not allow
anyone to consume her protagonist’s body
in this way. Allin’s character never catches
her, and her image is so quickly obscured
that any visual pleasure he, and we, might
for the audience that is often complicit in the
problems it raises.
Though the film did not intentionally
make use of Artaud’s as yet unwritten theories,
it managed to have the effect that he would
later desire for his own theatrical projects. Its
The film’s own gender politics would probably have been enough to incite a male hysteria all by themselves.
cinematic techniques exhibit the shock and
violence that was part of an Artaudian cruel
aesthetic: a head may appear disembodied;
another might be split in half. They take the
spectator out of reality and coherence and
into something new. A fully visual, cinematic
experience – separate from reality or narrative
theatrics – La Coquille can be described as a
work of rhythm and line. Rhythm has been
identified as a major element of Dulac’s
receive is interrupted or denied. The alluring,
oeuvre. Naomi Greene writes: “For [Dulac],
unyielding figure of Athanasiou forces us
this cinematic ‘essence’ lay in the rhythm and
to question our ideas on how women can end to the subjugation of the theatre to the
play of images, in the patterns and shapes
function and be consumed within a patriarchal text, and to recover the notion of a kind of
created by objects, lights, shadows, movements.
society. Athanasiou’s character, a woman who unique language half-way between gesture and
Rhythm and mood had to prevail over explicit
thwarts the clergyman’s attempts to possess thought.”5 A new method of conveying meaning
psychologising and narrative.”4 If the film is
her, nevertheless stays with her husband, but visually, rather than purely narratively, is exactly
read as an experiment in rhythm, movement,
mocks – laughing, tongue stuck out – the what Dulac’s film spearheaded.
light, and technique, it could constitute part of
man who wants her so desperately: a defiant
the new language that Artaud desired for his It is impossible to know for sure what
rejection of Buñuel and Dalí’s all-consuming
theatre of cruelty: appealing not to narrative happened at the film’s screening. The surrealists
gaze.
but to the senses, and creating something new attending the screening could have all been
In a manifesto written just a few years later, and different from our regular life, a definite virulent misogynists eager to attack any woman;
Artaud argued that a ‘theatre of cruelty’ would departure from the world of language and they could have just been looking for an excuse
be able to rouse audiences to new realities, logic. In his manifesto, Artaud wrote: “Instead to cause a scene; or it could have been something
allowing them to experience fresh sensations of continuing to rely upon texts considered in between. Regardless, what remains is a film
and ideas: “It is certain that we need above all definitive and sacred, it is essential to put an which created a spark for violence and a starting
a theatre that wakes us up: nerves and heart.”3 point for real-life action, which
Through controversial subject matter and demonstrates the power of
shocking theatrical techniques, a ‘cruel’ work Dulac’s work, as a filmmaker
would be able to bring audiences to a new form and a woman, in disrupting
of consciousness, beyond staid conventional male viewing habits. Through an
thought. Despite Artaud’s rejection of La exploration of feminist themes,
Coquille – he said it departed too far from supported by experimental
his screenplay and was a creative betrayal – filmmaking techniques, Dulac
it is an exemplary ‘cruel’ work: it ‘woke up’ put the issue of gender at the
its audience to new realities, in this case forefront of her film: narratively,
the exploitation of women under masculine formally, and through her
heteropatriarchal desire, combined with own role as director. Her work
the power of a lesbian woman creator above demonstrated the potential of
that of the straight male. This is what made Artaud’s later theories on cruelty,
the film uncomfortable for its misogynistic in a manner tied intrinsically to
spectators; it makes the film uncomfortable the gender politics of her film.
17
 by
Camp is a utopian vision.
Noah This isn’t the usual understanding
of Camp, of course. Most popular
Belatsky discussions tend to define it as either
intentionally or unintentionally
ironic, mocking and distanced. “It
goes without saying that the camp
sensibility is disengaged, depoliticised
– or at least apolitical,” Susan Sontag
proclaimed in point two of her famous
58-point essay ‘Notes On “Camp”’
(1964). Camp, for Sontag, is a matter
of style: a “way of seeing the world as
an aesthetic phenomenon”. It is about
surface, not depth – about appreciating
the absurd, not trying to change it.
CAMP IS A UTOPIAN VISION: ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ’S
Alice Guy-Blaché’s six-minute silent
short ‘The Consequences of Feminism’
(‘Les Résultats du Féminisme’, 1906)
certainly appreciates the absurd.
But its stylistic extravagance is also
explicitly utopian – the film is a vision
of a future of gender reversal, in which
Camp is used to destabilise norms
and, thereby, justify revolution.
‘The Consequences of Feminism’
‘THE CONSEQUENCES OF FEMINISM’
imagines a future in which men and
women swap roles. Men are effeminate
and they primp and flounce. In one of
the first scenes, a haberdasher preens
in front of a mirror, applying make-up
before walking off: his head weaving
back and forth in an elaborate mincing
display of coquetry. Women, on the
other hand, are boisterous, masculine
and predatory. Our haberdasher, still
flouncing, is accosted by an imposing
woman with no good intentions, who
fondles him despite his protestations.
He is then rescued by a noblewoman
in white, who lets him take her arm as
she steers him to a park bench. There,
she forcefully kisses him, prompting
the other delicate men passing by to
flap and scurry off, scandalised.
It goes without saying that this
18
is parody – the film uses camp
exaggeration and flamboyance to
highlight and denaturalise gender
roles. When a man faints dead away
upon being kissed, it’s intended to
show the silliness and performative
nature of femininity. Similarly, to
watch women swaggering about the
screen, as if they own the space, is
to see the artificiality of masculinity.
Feminine roles are disconnected from
feminine bodies; masculine roles
from masculine bodies. Surfaces and
(supposed) essences don’t match and
the film encourages you to enjoy the
incongruity.
Sontag would see this pleasure as
apolitical: as an example of Camp’s
“love of the unnatural: of artifice 1. Susan Sontag,
and exaggeration”,1 which she reads Against Interpre-
tation and Other
as “something of a private code, a Essays. New York:
badge of identity.”2 But a message Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1966 p276.
of inclusion directed at marginalised
2. Ibid.
people is intrinsically political
and intrinsically utopian. ‘The
Consequences of Feminism’ presents
a future in which people with queer
gender expressions are suddenly
the norm. This film makes fun of
effeminate men and masculine women
– but it also imagines a world in which
they aren’t subject to discrimination
or marginalisation. If you take its
meaning at face value, it is a comedy
– a joke. But, if you read further, it
is saying that the consequences of
feminism, for some, can be hope. The
camp irony is that the film is sincere.
This sincerity includes an analysis
of the injustices of a woman’s world.
A man coming into a bar is ridiculed
and assaulted by the women patrons.
Another tries to get his wife to
come home and help care for their
child, but is summarily rejected –
the wife swaggers back to her table,

getting cheers and
congratulations from
the other women.
One husband, though,
incensed at his wife’s
neglect of him and
their child, throws
some liquid in her
face, blinding her.
He then leads the
men in a siege of the
women’s bar, ejecting
the oppressors. Their
victory is expressed
as they raise their
beer bottles in phallic triumph. The
same palimpsest of cynical distance and
starry-eyed idealism occurs at the film’s
conclusion. The men overthrow the
tyrannical women, restoring order and
normality. From this perspective, the
film is calling for an end to the evils of
feminism. But the men in the film are
occupying the place of women; they are
the ones who care for children, do sewing
and are the victims of systemic sexual
exploitation. If Guy-Blaché’s men should
rebel, then it follows that women in the
real world should do so too.
These meanings flicker back and forth as
the film runs – but so does a more obvious
reading. ‘The Consequences of Feminism’,
viewed literally, shows a rebellion of
effeminate men. The film is about a society
in which stereotypically feminine men are
oppressed and in which they band together
to resist oppression, while masculine
women rule the world. Metaphorically,
the film may be about about a battle of
the sexes between heterosexual men and
women. But, overtly, it is equally about
queer rule and queer revolution.
Both the film and its actors seem
animated by playing so extravagantly
“In this Camp utopia, every closet is opened”
doesn’t see Camp as political, in part, because perhaps, it’s the mocking recognition that some
she is reluctant to see it as being concerned people think the real world is one in which men
are manly and women are womanly – and that
specifically with homosexuality. “Camp taste is
no one outside that binary is watching. ‘The
much more than homosexual taste,”3 she insists.
Consequences of Feminism’ isn’t apolitical,
Gay folk, Sontag says, embrace Camp because
despite being camp, or off to the side of being
it is “a solvent of morality. It neutralises moral
camp. Its camp-ness resides, in Sedgwick’s sense
indignation, sponsors playfulness.”4 Camp’s
of marvellous recognition, in its politics: in a
essence is its artificiality. Queer people may revolutionary belief in a world that has space for
leverage that to undermine moral censure, but different people.
that’s merely a kind of accidental byproduct of Nor is Guy-Blaché alone in using Camp
Camp’s essential frivolity. to imagine utopia. Lee Gordon Demarbre’s
Other definitions of Camp, however, have seen Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001) is another
gay experience and gay rights as more central. example. In this independent, intentionally
Eve Sedgwick, for instance, defines it as art in clunky film, vampires are murdering lesbians
against type. In the scene where a male which there is a moment of recognition. Camp in Ottawa. So, naturally, Jesus Christ (Phil
fainting flower is fought over by two is art which prompts the viewer to ask: “What Caracas) comes to earth to beat up vampires
boisterous women, he is a bobbing font if the right audience for this were exactly me?”5 with his martial arts skills. He is improbably 3. Susan Son-
aided by Mexican wrestler El Santo. The plot tag, Against
of mannered finicking: head swaying, In other words, Camp draws its energy, not from Interpretation
umbrella rising and sinking, hat tilted frivolity or an emphasis on surfaces, but from is mostly incoherent – an excuse for silly jokes, and Other
Essays. New
rakishly as he bows one way and then the opening of the closet. Camp art is art that musical set pieces and ridiculous fight scenes. York: Farrar,
the other, using all his feminine wiles to says to gay people (first, though not exclusively): But all the superfluous goofiness bursts out of Straus &
Giroux, 1966
defuse the conflict. Meanwhile, the woman “This was made for you. You belong.”6 the wonderful and hopeful central question of p290-1.
The camp excess in Guy-Blaché’s film can the film: what if God actually cared about gay
apparently saving him from the other 4. Ibid.
people? What if Jesus Christ was out there
sticks out her chest and grimaces wildly, be read as the joy of possibility. When the 5. Eve
kicking ass for lesbians? The film’s low-fi hipster
her body rigid with indignation and barely haberdasher in the opening scene looks in Sedgwick,
gags – God speaking out of a cherry sundae, Epistemology
restrained belligerence. The three figures the mirror and primps enthusiastically, his of the Closet,
for example – aren’t part of a so-bad-it’s-good Berkeley, CA:
are in constant motion during the whole satisfaction with his image is also the viewer’s
aesthetic. Rather, they’re a indulgent celebration University of
scene: bodies shifting and hands gesturing, satisfaction. And the mockery in the film is California
of childish high spirits, because the world is Press, 2008,
as if this overflow of gender has energised not so much bitter critique as a doubly wry p.156.
unexpectedly right. And, at the same time, the
them and the screen. recognition that this is not the real world. Or,
emphasis on artificiality – like the Kung 6. Ibid.
The vision of revolution in the ‘The
Fu battles with deliberately unrealistic
Consequences of Feminism’ is ambiguous
choreography – serves as a deflationary
and ambivalent, but, contra Sontag, it
distancing.
is not apolitical. Instead, the surface
Part of the reason that Camp isn’t
frilliness is a kind of political content in
seen as political is that political art is
itself: a vision of a world in which what
supposed to be grim and bleak: Orwell
lies beneath the surface can be gloriously
and Atwood, not Woolf ’s Orlando.
released. In this camp utopia, every closet
Dystopias are political; utopias are,
is opened.
supposedly, frivolous. ‘The Consequences
Camp’s utopian and revolutionary of Feminism’, though, is a reminder that
content is dependent, then, on an visions of the future do not have to be
acknowledgment of Camp’s connection straight or dour. One lesson of Camp is
to, and expression of, gay identity. Sontag that joy is political, too.
21
 with
Laura Mulvey is best known for the
Another groundbreaking essay ‘Visual Pleasure and
Gaze Narrative Cinema’ (1973, published 1975)
in which she coined the term ‘male gaze’ and
tackled the asymmetry at the heart of cinema
– the centrality of the male viewer and his
pleasure. The ideas developed throughout her
long career as both film theorist and filmmaker
have cast a long shadow, continuing to influence
a host of other thinkers and makers, many of
whom appear in this journal. At present, she is
professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck,
University of London.
AG – Could you start by telling me a
little about what was latterly termed your
‘cinephile period’, before your involvement
in the theorising of and making of films?
LM – I was born in 1941 and lived in the
countryside for the whole of the war so I didn’t
see any films until I came back to London at
the age of six. Because of this, I remember
the first films I ever saw quite clearly. I think
the first was Nanook of the North [Robert J.
IN CONVERSATION WITH LAURA MULVEY
Flaherty, 1922], because my father was from
the far North of Canada and was interested in
Inuit culture. The other films that stand out
very vividly for me, from the early fifties, are
SUDDENLY, A WOMAN SPECTATOR:
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The
Red Shoes [1948] and Jean Renoir’s The River
[1951]. I sometimes think that it’s because
I didn’t see many films in my childhood
that these two films are indelibly marked on
my cinematic unconscious. My genuinely
cinephile days started when I left university
and started going to the cinema with a group of
friends, including Peter Wollen. These friends
were all influenced by the Cahiers du Cinéma,
so that marked a shift into an adoration of
Hollywood, and of those directors that the
Cahiers had sanctified as part of the ‘politique
des auteurs’. That took up a great deal of my
time in the sixties... Going to see films that
weren’t so current but hadn’t fallen out of
currency, and the National Film Theatre was
beginning to show retrospectives, and we were
going to Paris, the Cinémathèque and any of
22
the cinemas on the Left Bank, and building up
as much of a knowledge of Hollywood cinema
as we could.
AG – And what did you see this knowledge as
being for? Or was it just pleasure?
LM – Yes, pleasure. I think it was just pure
enjoyment of going to the cinema. I remember
reading the Cahiers during what’s now referred
to as ‘the yellow period’, but it was really
accumulating the films and absorbing the
culture, quite unreflectively, from my point of
view at least – just for pleasure.
AG – So when did this reflectiveness kick in?
Was it from watching more avant-garde cinema,
where the techniques were made deliberately more
visible?
LM – No, my shift in spectatorship came
very suddenly and specifically out of the
influence of the women’s movement, so that
I was suddenly watching films that I’d loved
and films that had moved me with different
eyes. Instead of being absorbed into the screen,
into the story, into the mise-en-scène, into the
cinema, I was irritated. And instead of being
a voyeuristic spectator, a male spectator as it
were, I suddenly became a woman spectator
who watched the film from a distance and
critically, rather than with those absorbed eyes.
AG – Do you find that [your partner at the
time] Peter Wollen felt the same? Or do you think it
was almost instinctive?
LM – That’s a good question. Peter had a
much more culturally complicated take on
cinema than I did, because he’d always taken a
modernist approach to art. During the sixties,
he was one of the first people to revive interest
in the Soviet avant-garde of the twenties. At the
same time, I think that your question about
the avant-garde is correct, because Hollywood
was beginning to fade away. It was no longer
the great cinema it had been in the past, and
times were changing. Peter became very caught
up with new avant-garde tendencies and was
becoming very influenced by Godard. Around
the late sixties, early seventies, when I
started being influenced by feminism,
whole new types of cinema were appearing
in London that hadn’t been seen before.
New Brazilian cinema, Godard, Straub-
Huillet, African cinema: much more
radical ways of approaching storytelling
but also ways of visualising ideas and
thinking cinematically.
AG – And how did you first encounter the
women’s movement?
LM –It was in 1970 in London, through
friends who’d been at the first ever meeting at Ruskin
College, Oxford in 1969. After this, new groups started
to form rapidly, and I was part of a group that has been
very much discussed and a certain amount written about,
called either the History Group or the Feminist Studies
Group. That was where, amongst a number of other
theoretical writers, we started to read Freud and that
had a very immediate influence. I mean, it was almost
as though Freud could offer a vocabulary and a way of
thinking about gender and sexuality that we had always
needed. Without necessarily agreeing with everything
he’d said, we could find ways of articulating the questions
and issues we were interested in.
AG – What was the group’s immediate reaction to the
suggestion of reading Freud? Excitement or suspicion?
LM – Certainly, to most of the group, it seemed like an
extremely exciting prospect and, of course, Juliet Mitchell
had just written her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism
[1974], so that was very much part of the influence and
the environment. I’m sure there would have been quite
a lot of critical reaction as well, but as more feminists
started writing about it, more of us became interested.
I think feminism would always have looked at Freud
from a critical perspective. But, just because we thought
that he was wrong about many things to do with women,
that didn’t mean that his concept of the unconscious and
formulation of the Oedipus complex couldn’t be very
politically relevant, interesting and immediate.
AG – So was it after reading Freud that you started to go
to the cinema, bringing your psychoanalytical thinking to your
viewing? Or was that catalysed by the women’s movement?
24
AG – Could you talk a little more about this phobia AG – How did the idea for Penthesilea come
of writing? about?
LM – I had a lack of self-confidence at LM – Well, I think, probably, the important
university, definitely. I sometimes felt that it was thing to emphasise at this point is that, when
because I couldn’t get any personal grasp on the we decided we would move into making films,
ideas that I was trying to deal with and that it we didn’t want to take a sudden leap away from
“My shift in spectatorship came very suddenly and specifically out of the influence of the women’s movement,
wasn’t really until I encountered feminism that I our preoccupation with the everyday and the
had my own sense of an angle, an axe to grind, as ideas that interested us and that we talked about.
so that I was suddenly watching films that I’d loved and films that had moved me with different eyes”
it were – something to say. And what made it even Rather, we wanted to use the film to deepen, widen
more liberating, perhaps, was that it wasn’t me; and explore those ideas and think about the way
it was collective. It came out of a kind of wave, in which they could possibly be transferred to the
LM – The two came very much together. So you a movement, an energy, that wasn’t necessarily screen. Nowadays, it’d be called an ‘essay film’, but
could say that by the time I wrote ‘Visual Pleasure and personal. So there wasn’t that sense of putting we thought of our films as theory films because
Narrative Cinema’, in 1975, Hollywood cinema was yourself on paper. It was more speaking about that was the kind of work we thought we were
very much the backdrop. But, at the same time, my own something much wider and more general than doing in writing, and it was a way of extending our
perspective had shifted enormously to take in feminism, you yourself. writing into a different medium. But, also, we were
psychoanalytic theory and, increasingly, avant-garde using what we thought of as a negative aesthetic,
aesthetics. As I said, the whole world was changing. AG – And then it was also in America that you return to zero, scorched earth: standing back
Hollywood was always extremely useful for two main had the idea of making your first film, Penthesilea. from so many of the conventions of cinema that
reasons. First, it was the cinema that I knew and loved so How did you start thinking about the physical act of underpin narrative convention, visual convention,
well. Second, it was extremely appropriate for this kind of making a film, rather than just being an observer, albeit point of view, and so on. Our strategy for this
analysis: it was as though Hollywood laid itself out like a critical one? was to avoid editing. We were shooting with
a beautiful backdrop and almost invited psychoanalytic LM – A lot of it was to do with chance, as the continuous, elongated shots using a whole reel of
and feminist critical analysis. The voyeurism; the place of department that Peter was working in was a film film as a unit. The ideas came very directly out of
the male star protagonist in fighting off the object of the production department, as well as a film theory questions posed by feminist psychoanalytic theory,
gaze and creating the energy of the story; the woman as department. Peter said to his boss that he’d like influenced, implicitly, by Luce Irigaray and Julia
spectacle – it was somehow all there in the way that, in to teach a course on the avant-garde and his boss Kristeva: their various challenges to the Freudian
other cinemas, it wasn’t. was very shocked, because their collective love of and Lacanian concept of the Oedipus Complex
cinema was really based around Hollywood. So, and where the mother stood in it. So, in many
AG – And how did your writing of ‘Visual Pleasure and one day, his boss said to him, “Well, if you and ways, we were using Greek mythology as a way
Narrative Cinema’ come about? Laura are so interested in the avant-garde these of reflecting on the place of the mother as outside
LM – At that point, Peter and I were living in the days, why don’t you make a film?” And that’s how the Lacanian Symbolic. So, I think language, and
United States with our son, Chad. Peter had got his it all started. women’s relationship to language, was probably
first university job at Northwestern, so I wasn’t doing the central idea running through the film,
anything very much and I didn’t find writing easy. I’d and we were using the Amazons as a kind
written an essay criticising the British pop artist Allen of iconic image, to work it through and to
Jones, which had come out in Spare Rib, and Peter had throw all kind of bits of culture together at
been invited to give a talk by the French Department the same time.
at the University of Wisconsin, and, because they were
embarrassed not to ask me, despite the fact I had no AG – Your second film, Riddles of the
academic standing whatsoever, they said, “Laura, would Sphinx, got funding from the BFI. Do you
you like to give a paper of some kind?” So that was the remember whether they were at all resistant to
first draft, the first few paragraphs, but that started it off funding such an experimental film?
and I think it’s the only time, or one of the few times, I’ve LM – Yes, I heard from a friend who
written something truly spontaneously. was on the financing board that it had

been a big struggle, but, at that time, by 1975, there really
wasn’t an independent film movement in this country
and so there was all this momentum building up in the
arts in general: journals, writing, film festivals, seasons at
the film theatre, symposia, discussions... So, although it
was difficult to get Riddles through the board, there was a
much greater openness and much greater possibilities for
funding this kind of film than there’d ever been before.
AG – In the first part of Riddles, you appear and give
a little history lesson, as it were, about the sphinx. Can you
explain how the transparency of the ‘author’ was important to
your filmmaking project?
LM – Peter had done it in a previous film. He’d given
quite a long and elaborate lecture: much more elaborate
than the one I give in Riddles. It was part of our aesthetic
strategy of hybridity that a director should appear and
speak directly to the camera. It was part of how we took
the film out of its own moment of time and into the world
of direct address. I’m sure I was quite reluctant, but there
was no choice: it was my turn and it was part of the way
we made films. They did have some difficulty filming me
because I had a tendency to get the giggles or forget my
words.
AG – Could you tell me about the 360-degree camera pan
that runs through Riddles? I’m wondering if it was inspired
by Chantal Akerman’s La Chambre (1972): I know you
programmed some of her films at the Women’s Film Festival in
Edinburgh, the year it came out.
LM – Well, yes, La Chambre had been made before
Riddles, and there’d been an international season of
avant-garde films at the National Film Theatre that was
programmed by Simon Field and David Curtis, which had
shown lots of amazing films. For me and Peter, it was the
first time we’d seen films by Chantal Akerman, and also
Yvonne Rainer and Joyce Wieland. There was suddenly
a sense that women were making a notable contribution
to new avant-garde aesthetics and always with a way of
approaching filmic language that couldn’t necessarily
have been made by anyone but a woman. The 360-degree
pans weren’t influenced by anyone in particular, but by
our old love of complicated camera movements. There
were only a few 360-degree pans in the history of cinema
and we were very aware of this. But, also, the 360-degree
pans were very useful because the circular camera
26
“At the time, we felt very strongly that Hollywood was finished. If you’d asked me... in 1972, I would have said that Hollywood would
on Frida Kahlo and Tina
movement finished itself and excluded any questions of
Modotti. How did this project
editing. Later, we thought of its elegant resonance with
come about?
continue to make films, but that it would no longer have the power – either cinematic or industrial – that it had possessed before.”
an idea of femininity theorised by Hélène Cixous and
LM – Perhaps in the first
Luce Irigaray: the circular, the cyclical, claustrophobia,
instance because we were
domestic space; comfort, something womb-like... I think,
interested in discovering an
at first, we were thinking more cinematically, and then
avant-garde of the twenties
the cultural resonances struck us.
that was very different to
the Soviet one. Frida Kahlo
AG – The constant 360-degree pan doesn’t allow for a
and Tina Modotti [1984]
fixed gaze. Would it be too simplistic a reading to draw a line
was almost a record of the
between this and your declamation of a fixed male gaze in
argument of the exhibition
‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, and to say that your
of the two artists that we’d
writing had, maybe even without you realising, informed your
put on at the Whitechapel
filmmaking?
Gallery. The idea was to
LM – I think definitely there was that sense of resisting
amplify the work of two women artists who were But, you know, artists drop out of sight and we
a grounded gaze: an identifiable point of view. That was
very different: one a painter, one a photographer, weren’t the only people interested in her at the
something we were deeply committed to, both for avant-
with very different attitudes to Modernism, but time. It was a moment for revival of interest in
garde and for feminist strategy.
who had both been working in Mexico at around the Mexican renaissance and, as they say, it was
the same time, with similar influences and ‘in the air’.
AG – And because your and Peter’s filmmaking had
political positions. We made the film, I think,
successfully translated your theoretical writings, did you ever
to try and grasp the idea of what our curating AG – Your and Peter’s filmmaking collaboration
think that a counter-cinema would take over from Hollywood
strategies were. The problem with the film, to my came to an end in ’84. Looking back, do you think
in the future, or were you still aware that the latter would
mind – and, actually, I think Peter thought this it was a cultural and political moment that had
dominate?
as much as I did – was that we didn’t get the allowed production and that had come to an end?
LM – At the time, we felt very strongly that Hollywood
voiceover right. The film was made by the Arts LM – The movement that we’d belonged to,
was finished. If you’d asked me at the time of the women’s
Council as part of its educational strand and we that had really flourished in the late seventies,
film event at Edinburgh in 1972, I would have said that
felt very strongly that the film could’ve stood by to a certain extent had broken up and there
Hollywood would continue to make films, but that it
itself with a much more dispersed, broken-up wasn’t quite such an environment for it. We
would no longer have the power – either cinematic or
soundtrack, in a more experimental world, but if were almost overwhelmed by the fact that, within
industrial – that it had possessed before.
it was going to go out as an educational object it such a short period of time, the political and
needed a voiceover and I don’t think we broke it cultural atmosphere had transformed into one
AG – And what did you select for the Women’s Film Event
down enough – it’s just too flat. It doesn’t have of disorientation. Retrospectively, I could say
in Edinburgh?
enough fracturing, it’s not sufficiently hybrid. that it was a kind of despair, but that would have
LM – We wanted the programme to capture something
The problem was, maybe, that it was very much been thought of as a bit reactionary at the time.
of what we would have called the subversive tendencies
based on the essays that he and I had written for But, for me and Peter, there was no longer this
of a woman’s cinema, so, for instance, Vera Chytilová’s
the catalogue and so it suffered from the fact that, sense of a utopian vision: the sense that this was
Daisies was the kind of film we would have valued a
if you’ve written something on a topic, it’s very a cinema that was going to change the world and
lot; Nelly Kaplan’s La Fiancée du Pirate; Maya Deren’s
difficult not to recycle it. But, if I’m to be honest, that we could change one’s way of seeing through
work. One of the great successes of the event was finding
I would also acknowledge the fact that that the medium of film.
Dorothy Arzner’s Dance, Girl, Dance: discovering there
exhibition was one of the most influential things
had been one woman working in Hollywood and finding
that Peter and I did, because it put Frida Kahlo AG – In retrospect, do you think your filmic
a film with such subversive energy.
back on the map. In the twenties and thirties, she collaboration was balanced? How did you ensure
had been very well known, but mostly as Diego this?
AG – Your concern with bringing together women artists
Rivera’s wife, whereas now, of course, she puts LM – Yes, it was very equal and that came out
from different backgrounds and finding similarities, rather
him in the shade in terms of celebrity culture. of an enormous amount of discussion, reading,
than differences, is also apparent in your and Peter’s film
27
research, and reworking. I was looking through our
old notebooks recently and you can see the ideas were
worked through over and over again: both intellectually
and cinematically. But there were also divisions of
labour, in that Peter was much more of a writer than I
was – an essayist, poet, journalist. When I saw our films
again at our retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery
last year, I was so struck by the importance of Peter’s
writing and what an important part of the films it was.
When we went on to make The Bad Sister [1983] for
Channel 4, there was a much bigger budget and it was
a more conventional narrative. It was much harder for
us to work together because, before, we’d always had
such a clearly worked out strategy, that – this sounds a
little pretentious, I know – it was like what Hitchcock
said: “Why should I look through the camera only to
tell my cameraman he’s lying to me?” You know, we
knew what we wanted when we started the film and the
film was planned to such an extent that there wasn’t a
lot of discussion about editing. But, with The Bad Sister,
it was different and that’s when we felt as though the
collaboration was no longer going to work. This was, in
part, due to the new world of video and experimental
music video and a new non-celluloid world that was
growing up in the early eighties, and the main source of
financing was now Channel 4.
AG – Do you feel as though the position of the spectator
has changed since you started making films?
LM – Yes, in the old avant-garde days, we would
have felt that it was the responsibility of the director
both to engage the spectator’s interest and to find a
way of making the spectator active. I think that we
would have felt that the onus was on the aesthetic
experimental strategy of the film to create a certain
kind of spectatorship. But now that people watch films
in so many different ways, I feel as though it’s turned
upside down and, now, the onus is on the spectator
to be an active spectator and to engage imaginatively
and poetically with any kind of film. For example, I
found that, during the nineties, I was going back to
my favourite old Hollywood films and looking at them
again, but in a very different kind of way.
AG – And 2015 was the 40th anniversary of ‘Visual
28
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Do you find yourself
engaging with it differently?
Yes, I really had to come to terms with it again a
couple of years ago, and I found that I was more
interested in it as a polemical essay or, as my friend [the
academic] Mandy Merck called it, a manifesto, rather
than the actual accuracy, or lack of accuracy, of what it
says. And, like manifestos or polemics, it’s very much
a one- or two-idea piece and that, I think, is its power.
I see now that I managed to come up with some good
turns of phrase that caught the public imagination, that
have been re-quoted and recycled in all kinds of ways.
I also feel that the Hitchcock side of it has become
overemphasised and the Sternberg side of it – which is
a bit more complicated and less easy to generalise – has
got a bit lost. I’m thinking of going back to that and
expanding upon the fetishisitic, rather than voyeuristic,
side. But then, at the same time, I think that the essay
was influential for me when I was thinking about the
ideas that ended up in [my 2006 publication] Death
24x a Second: that interest in stillness and the idea that
the pensive spectator is, to some extent, grounded in the
voyeuristic spectator of ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema’. And also the idea that the spectacle of the
female protagonist on display actually stops and holds
the film, and that the voyeuristic gaze is a gaze at
stillness rather than at movement, so, even if there’s a
dance or a song, it’s actually a moment of suspension
in the normal narrative chain and flow of an action
film. So, although when I was writing about the pensive
spectator, its ideological implication was very different,
at the same time I think that question of the male gaze
– the voyeuristic gaze and how the cinematic gaze can
actually be transformed and rethought – has some kind
of connection. In terms of the essay, I was working very
much within the confines offered by the Hollywood
films. In the years since, I’ve thought of questions
of race and the invisibility of African American
performers and talent in Hollywood and how it was
really an apartheid cinema.
AG – And, finally, what advice would you give to your Portrait of Denise de Casabianca (b. 1931, France),
young self if you could now? an early woman editor of films including Paris
LM – Think small. Think in terms of the everyday, Belongs to Us (Paris nous appartient, Jacques
and move out from there. Rivette, 1961); The Mother and the Whore (La
Maman et la putain, Jean Eustache, 1973)
 by
Inga ‘Dresden Dynamo’ (1972) is a five-
minute film made on 16mm, without
Fraser the use of a camera. Artist and filmmaker
Lis Rhodes applied letraset and letratone
(ready-made rub-down patterns or shapes
in ink) patterns onto clear film, which
was then were put through a film printer
in different combinations, after which
colour was added through filters. The
dissonant reverberating soundtrack
results from the overlap of the patterns
onto the part of the film strip reserved for
audio. Yet, the graphic exuberance of this
“IT IS DANGEROUS TO STEP OUT OF LINE, AND LETHAL
work – her very first – belies the heart
of her life-long project as a filmmaker:
that is, the disassembly of material and
NOT TO”: THE ARTISTIC UNIVERSE OF LIS RHODES
political narratives in order to better
understand their assumptions, omissions
and constructions. Throughout her
work, Rhodes explores the complex
systems through which individual
and collective behaviours come to be
articulated – often, this exploration is
challenging.
Rhodes attended the North East
London Polytechnic and the Royal
College of Art, where she studied film
and television. Through 1973 to 1976,
Rhodes made a series of expanded
cinema works. One of these, ‘Light
Music’ (1975), foregrounds and extends
the function of the cinematic apparatus,
consisting of two projections that face
each other on opposite screens in a hazy
room. Rhodes uses this arrangement to
encourage the viewer to move around,
intercept the beams of light and switch
perspectives within the space. The film
itself is formed of drawings of black and
white lines printed onto the film strip,
which again provide both audio and
visual effects. In ‘Light Music’, Rhodes
underlines the multiple ways in which
film is a constructed form: on the strip,
in its projection, and in the way viewers
interact with it as it is played.
These investigations of material
30
structures developed into something
more overtly political when the use of
language became a feature of Rhodes’s
work. ‘Light Reading’ (1976) combines
views of cut up negative and positive film
prints, still, then animated, or sometimes
layered or collaged. The camera zooms in
and out of the image, revealing the cutting Across page,
portrait of
desk and the hands of the editor. Words Lis Rhodes
are spoken by a woman’s voice (Rhodes’s) by Daniella
and first encourage, but then confound, Shreir
any emerging narrative development. Above, ‘Light
‘Light Reading’ uses repetition and Music’ at the
fragmentation to dismantle both audio Tate
and visual progression, and through this
scrutinises the articulation of gender in
film form – “Her self, circling in on
herself [...] could she change her mind,
be mindless?”1 Rhodes’s visual and
1. Excerpt
linguistic poetic dexterity is expressed
from narration
in her experimental film practice, but in Lis
also asks complex questions about class, Rhodes’s
‘Light Reading ’
gender, nationality. Fellow filmmaker
(16mm, 20min-
Peter Gidal was later to describe Light utes, 1978)
Reading as, “the possibility of a new
direction in film”.2 2. Peter Gidal,
In 1978, Rhodes was invited onto the Materialist
committee organising the 1979 ‘Film as Film (London:
Routledge,
Film’ exhibition at the Hayward Gallery 1989) p. 75.
in London. When she expressed her
dissatisfaction with the lack of women
on the committee, Annabel Nicolson
was also admitted. Nevertheless,
because of the lack of work by women
in the exhibition (all of which was to
be subsumed under the narrative arc of
 the development of formalist film) could easily be misused in another context.”8 This is 1975 at the Serpentine Gallery. I completed the two-
they decided to withdraw completely, a prescient point for today, and one that evokes the screen film version of it the following year, and this
instead presenting a statement called duality of Rhodes’s work as a filmmaker: the desire was much more of a performance in the first couple
‘Women and the Formal Film’. It was to tell accompanied by the fear that from this process of showings because I didn’t have synchronised
Right, ‘Light jointly authored by Rhodes, Nicolson, an untruth may result. Consequently, Rhodes’s work projectors – I had to walk from one to the other, up
Reading ’ (1976) Felicity Sparrow, Jane Clarke, Jeanette ‘tells’ but does so in a way that calls attention to the and down between the audience, almost like I was
Iljon, Mary Pat Leece, Pat Murphy visual, linguistic and material markers through which conducting. I had to keep some sort of control over
3. ‘Women and
the Formal and Susan Stein, as a reaction to any story is told. Writing in criticism of any history the projectors, slowing them down and speeding
Film’ Film as their experience in being part of the that purports to be less complicated, she summarises them up, so the whole thing was rather inaccurate but
Film: Formal exhibition: in her characteristically incisive prose: interesting – because it was never the same. Another
Experiments
in Film 1910- thing about ‘Light Music’ is that the audiences make
1975 (London: It was impossible to allow the Arts It is as though a line could be drawn between past and it their own by interacting with the projections, and
Hayward
Council to present our work as if there present and pieces of a person’s life and work pegged on it; they react very differently. Sometimes the audience
Gallery, 1979)
p.118 had been no struggle, as if it had been nurtured in view, but simply suggesting that seeing ‘difference’ no exceptions, no change – theory looks nice–the similarity is very alive and they intervene very strongly, and
the spirit of public patronage […] In general, we object is more important than accepting ‘sameness’; of item to item reassuring–shirt to shirt–shoulder to at other times not so much – for example, in Tokyo,
4. Lis Rhodes, realising our own histories and understanding their
‘Whose
to the idea of a closed art exhibition which presents its shoulder–an inflexible chain, each part in place. The everyone just sat down between the two screens.
History?’ subject anonymously, defining its truth in Letraset and many, possibly divergent, forms.”6 This analysis pattern is defined. Cut the line and chronology falls in a ‘Light Music’ is open; it plays with the format of
Film as four-foot display panels, denying the space within it to reverberates through both the works produced at the crumpled heap. I prefer a crumpled heap, history at my cinema.
Film: Formal
answer back, to add or disagree […] Specifically: we time and her later career, in which she consistently feet, not stretched out above my head.9
Experiments
in Film 1910- object to being invited, presumably on the strength of our privileges the multiple over the singular. Rhodes was AG – It’s interesting to see unpredictability used
1975 (London: skills and past work, to participate in the organisation a founding member of Circles, a film distribution as an element of the film itself, especially regarding the
Hayward
Gallery, 1979) and definition of an exhibition, yet not being left free to network dedicated to work produced by women. incorporation of the audience. Would you say that this is
p.119 characterise our own contributions. We object to the subtle Circles distributed the films of Germain Dulac and AG – What marked you entry into filmmaking? something very important to your work?
insinuations of intellectual wooliness [sic] and inefficiency, Alice Guy-Blaché alongside contemporary work. LR – I used to paint, but always felt that it was LR – I think that this interest came from some

IN CONVERSATION WITH LIS RHODES

5. Ibid.
as if our perspectives were tolerated rather than considered
6. Ibid. p.120 seriously.3
7. ‘Film and
Video: Circles’, This defiant refusal was followed by Rhodes’s
Off Our Backs, ‘Whose History?’ essay, in which she considered the
June 1987, Vol.
problems that led to this decision, noting that “[h]
17, No. 6, p.22
istory is not an isolated academic concern but the
8. Ibid. p23 determining factor in making ‘sense’ –’nonsense’ –
of now. Yesterday defines today, today tomorrow.”4
9. Film as
Film: Formal The consideration of other narratives is a necessary
Experiments means of testing the relevance and authority of that
in Film 1910-
which is dominant: “[h]ow do women need to look
1975 (London:
Hayward at the work they do, the lives they lead? Can we
Gallery, 1979) be satisfied with token representation, a reference
p.118-129
here and there in support of a theory of film history,
which is not our own?”5
Rhodes equates the perspective of the ‘Film as
Film’ exhibition as privileging similarity, positioning
anything other as ‘minority’. Countering that
approach, she argues, “[i]t is neither a question
of defining a feminine mode of filmmaking, nor
of persuading any woman to a feminist point of
They also held screenings with the filmmakers
present, with intention of encouraging women to
“make and show work on their own terms”.7 In 1987,
Rhodes was interviewed along with Jeanette Iljon in
the zine, Off Our Backs, and cites the incident with
the Hayward Gallery exhibition as a direct causal
factor in the establishment of the Circles network,
alongside the fact that many women found their
work screened or categorised in contexts that they
found alienating.
In this interview Rhodes also discusses the
practical barriers that then stood between women
and filmmaking, identifying access to technical
equipment and education, institutional bias, and even
subconscious self-censorship as major elements. In
relation to the documentary genre she describes the
difficulty inherent to narrative: “…once something
is represented it’s fixed.” So that a woman might
be very willing, at some point, to be identified as
speaking about her experiences, while she might not
at another point wish to be identified – particularly
the world being how it is – and that representation
very strange to paint things as silent, so in a way
it was sound that drew me toward film. One of
my early films was ‘Dresden Dynamo’ and what I
was interested in was the artifice – that is, usually
in a film the soundtrack is quite separate from the
image, and can be quite manipulative, sometimes
truthful, sometimes vastly inaccurate. I thought it
would be interesting to do something where the two
are interlinked, so, in a sense, it’s the film I’ve made
that is the most like a documentary, because what you
see is what you hear and what you hear is what you
see. There was another aspect to ‘Dresden Dynamo’
which really leads into ‘Light Music’, and that
was the question of women in composition – there
seemed to be such a severe lack of women composers.
So it seemed like a moment when one should start
doing something about it.
AG – Can you talk me through the process behind
‘Light Music’?
LR – Oddly enough, the very first screening of
‘Light Music’ was on video, and this happened in
of the work I’d been doing with Ian Kerr. We did a
lot of sound performances where we made the film
over a duration of time at the ICA. In the main
gallery we had 100-foot loops of film, one clear, and
one black, and during the performance we took the
surface of the black leader and darkened the clear
leader with china broth so that the performance
started in silence nearly and got noisier and noisier.
It was supposed to go silent again, but, of course, it
didn’t really quite do that – we knew it wouldn’t
because it was an impossible thing to do, but it made
for a very interesting performance. We also had a
xerox machine in the gallery, so every now and again
we would stop and run the film through the xerox
machine in order to have still images in various
phases of development. We pinned these around the
gallery so that we could show the notation developing
and dissolving away.
AG – Would you say you’ve been influenced more by
the written or the visual text?
LR – Writing was much more of an important
influence to me than films themselves. In ‘Light
Reading’, for instance, I was influenced by Gertrude Stein.
I was extremely interested in her analysis of grammar –
how grammar is constructed and how it changes meaning.
I found her writing extremely helpful in releasing me
from certain patterns and formations in working with
sound. She wrote a book called How to Write (1931),
which is more about the actual undoing of writing, how to
work in a completely different way, and I found that this
certainly helped with ‘Light Reading’ because the film was
very preoccupied by these things. I wanted to explore the
relationship between actual language and sound, take letters
and other things into the soundtrack. I printed letters from
typewriter tape – because the typewriter actually perforates
the tape – onto the film’s surface and across the soundtrack.
This didn’t really work out but it was the beginning of
‘Light Reading’, which was less of a literal transposition
and more of a mixture of things.

AG – Could you ever imagine finding your voice in more

conventional forms?
LR – No. But if that makes it sound as though I work SECTION TWO
in isolation, that is absolutely untrue. Working in more
conventional forms requires a very different involvement. ‘Dresden
Dynamo’ (1972)
E A R L Y
Certainly, Guy-Blaché found it very difficult – she was
pushed out of filmmaking when the budgets increased, and
V I E W I N G
was very conscious of this fact. My feeling is that its not
what I’m interested in, a narrow, competitive, capitalist
field. I’d much rather hear from more women doing
different things, from all over the world, rather than the
few making very expensive films. The larger the budget, the
greater the risk of repeating what has already been said, just
in a slightly different way.

AG – What pressures do you think that women face in

filmmaking today?
LR – I suspect that the obstacles to women in
distribution are great. I think there are several ways of
looking at this: obviously quite a lot of it is to do with the
economy. Only a few artists make money and I think if
one did a statistical analysis one would find that women
fare very badly in this system. But now more women are
working, certainly in academia. When I started teaching
at the Slade in 1979 I would go to what was known as
the Senior Common Room, and there would only ever
be around five or six women having coffee among 50-
or 60-odd men. So there was a terribly small number of
women working in academia, and that has changed.
Furthermore, at the time I was teaching practically no
women were being taught – in texts or films – so there
were dire problems there. I worked at Compendium, the
book shop, and I found that extremely useful because the
writing was much more diverse: I worked in a women’s
section in the mid-seventies, and there was much more
representation in literature, at least.
I think that work can happen anywhere. But now, the
economic situation is especially difficult for women. Eighty
percent of cuts fall on women, and as the economy becomes
more and more inequitable it becomes harder and harder
to work. My fear is that the increasing debt is almost a
deliberate certain things are not allowed to be said anymore.
I’m not too sure that the phrase ‘great work’ interests me
very much; I’m much more interested in ‘work’.

REGARDING SUSAN SONTAG AND
THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE
by Harriet Smith Hughes
36
I
The documentary opens on Susan Sontag, profile to camera, the black of a television studio beyond. “I love being
alive. I wake up every morning very grateful that I’m alive.” The angle changes and Sontag’s face, lined, past middle
age, fills the screen. “It’s more than enjoyment. I’m very happy to be alive.”Regarding Susan Sontag, written and
produced by Bay Area filmmaker Nancy Kates, traces the biography of the novelist, essayist, theorist, intellectual
celebrity. It makes full use of the mass of interviews Sontag gave in her lifetime, as well as bookshelf-backdrop sit-
downs with friends and other figures in her life. The interviews are interset with sequences of photographs – family
photos, magazine shoots and, in the discussion of her famous essay ‘Notes on “Camp”’ (1964), a joyous run of
iconic camp reel and imagery. Weaving the pictures together are recurring graphics: words on a page disperse,
before recomposing themselves into the silhouette of Sontag’s face; children’s alphabet building blocks appear in
shadow. Sontag’s portrait lies distorted behind a rusting mirror. All of this is very self-conscious. It has to be: it is
the biographical narrative, composed of images and imaged words, of one of the most famous women ever to write
about the constructions of art.
A woman who, the documentary suggests, fretted at the seam of art and reality. A woman who “loved being alive”
so much that her life is felt to have strained beyond order, beyond the sequencing of photographs. Susan Sontag’s
love of life is “more than enjoyment”, and it can be a terrifying thing to behold.
In its self-consciousness, Kates’s documentary prompts us to examine the fictionality of film. It is constructed
in such a way that it asks us to look for the seam between Sontag’s life and the artifice of the image. The reams
of pictures employed in the film are Sontag’s images, however much she professed to be “an eternal photographic
virgin”. She insisted that being photographed she felt “transfixed, trapped”; but in practice she was skilful, in
control both in front of and behind the camera. Sontag, the photographed subject, was and is preeminent in the
discourse by which her images are interpreted. The film repeatedly calls attention to the hand Sontag had in her
own construction, and the effect is to destabilise our judgment of the filmic interpretation. It is a structuring and a
reading of Sontag’s life, but it is born of Sontag’s writing and composed of images and ways of seeing in which we
feel she is, in some complex way, agent. Fran Lebowitz, one of the best interviewees in the film, laughs at the fact
that Sontag is repeatedly referred to as “one of the most photographed women of her generation”: “as if this were
some accident, like an earthquake”. Sontag was the foremost popular writer on the power of the image. She knew
what she was doing.
The question is the extent to which Sontag’s complex agency – in images, in writing – can be manipulated, so that
her role in her own construction might seem to sanction or corroborate the narrative of the documentary.
The film lays out its stall in the first two minutes, displaying all the manoeuvrings of biographical art. “I began
writing when I was six, or seven, or eight”, an older Sontag recalls. “It was like enlisting in an army of saints… I felt
that I was, well, taking part in a noble activity.” Sontag’s vision of the writer is established as a drive since childhood.
It sweeps us through the ensuing decades. “When I turned 40 I was in China, when I turned 50 I was in France,
when I turned 60 I was in Sarajevo and the bombs were falling”: we are carried with that childhood impetus through
landmarks in history, in culture, at which Sontag was present.
Next Sontag’s face in interview and portraits appears in rapid succession, ageing each time: the beautiful young
woman with the abundant black bob becomes the lauded, stern-eyed Sontag of the later years. She appears at 70,
after two bouts of cancer, and tells the interviewer: “I feel fine. I feel as if a lot of things are still ahead.” We know
she is about to die, this woman who loved life so much. Her statement has hubris – it is granted force and meaning
– because her life has been given unnatural rapidity by the opening of the documentary.
The film is, to an extent, simply realising the exaggerated momentum of Sontag’s life. She did a lot, very fast.
Born in New York in 1933, Sontag survived three bouts of cancer to reach the age of 71. She was the child of Polish
37
and Lithuanian Jews. After her father died, she moved around a lot with her mother – and, as her sister Judith,
a breakaway star of the film, remarks, with “a lot of uncles…who weren’t our uncles” – until Mildred Rosenblatt
settled down with ‘Mr Sontag’, and Sue got her famous name. The film sweeps through images of the phrase ‘Sue
Sontag’, typed beneath inches and inches of columns. She is remembered as having succinctly summarised Kant’s
line of argument in The Critique of Pure Reason, aged 15. By 16, she is at the University of California, Berkeley.
She transfers to Chicago, and meets the lecturer Philip Rieff: “a thin, heavy-thighed balding man, who talked and
talked – snobbishly, bookishly, and called me ‘sweet’. After a few days, I married him.” By 17 she has a child. By
21, she is at home in gay scenes from San Francisco to Paris. She has discovered women: “I know the truth now. I
know how good and right it is to love. I have in some part been given permission to live. Everything begins from
now. I am reborn.” At 21 she is living in Paris with her lover, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling – another absolute star
of the film, a raucous presence – and they are partying with Ginsberg. She will have more lovers, lots of lovers, and
write lots of books, and make New Wave films – she will be asked to make films! The opportunities placed in her
lap! – and documentaries as well. She will be invited to Vietnam by the Vietnamese government during the war. She
will be asked to Sarajevo, where she will stage a performance of ‘Waiting for Godot’. She will live through cancer,
twice, and tell an interviewer that there is still a lot left for her to do. It will be very hard for her to die. Her friends
will not believe it possible.
The condensation of a lifetime into a film’s opening minutes is a common manipulation of biographical
documentary, but here the whole thing has been pointedly rooted in Sontag’s obsessive “love of life”. The idea
unspools as the film goes on: Sontag’s ranging biography is threaded with her thinking on the duty and import of
the writer. The writer is someone “passionate about everything”. Writers are “guardians of language”, and have a
“vocational connection with the life of truth”. The effect is that Sontag’s personal drive is bound up with her vision
of the writer. Obsessive vitality segues into vocational duty. (Interestingly the film neglects to mention Sontag’s use
of amphetamines to boost productivity.) Together, these provide a sort of structuring force; the basis and the impetus
of the film’s narrative. In this way, Sontag is made complicit in the vision of the film: her personal drive is set up as
the means by which the film progresses. The effect is that Sontag’s life feels indistinguishable from artistic narrative.
It is in one way augmented by art: images and writing give shape to a life lived so fully. At the same time, images
are delimiting: Sontag’s “love of life” may be the force carrying us through a narrative, but the phrase also suggests
a woman who oversteps the bounds of an ordered succession of images. We are faced not with the simple fiction of
a film constructing a life, but with a life that seems in its original to be so photographed and written that it is built
at the edge of reality and fiction.
II
The muddiness of Sontag’s life’s fictions poses a problem for the anxious young among us, wondering at Sontag’s
ability to achieve intellectually, and to experience so many other spheres of life at the same time – an aspiration that
is often offered young readers, young feminists, in spaces such as film and journalism. Sontag’s overwhelming “love
of life” is a problem in a world with a shortage of intellectual feminist role models. It is a problem when the few
role models we are offered are obsessive, and we can’t tell the fictions of a life lived to the full from the realities of
doing the work, sometimes boring, sometimes hard, sometimes messy. Kates’s film is compelling in its ability to raise
questions about the boundaries between the reality and fiction of a life such as Sontag’s; about the boundary between
the deceptive image, and what constitutes a life that is never lived far from the camera’s gaze.
What makes Sontag’s success, her recognition and achievement, both uncomfortable and awesome for the
viewer is that the film threads the star-studded through with the prosaic. She is distanced from us in her climb “to
Olympus”, as Terry Castle wryly puts it – but not quite enough. Take for instance her ‘List of Rules and Duties for
38
being 24’, quoted in the film. Sontag’s squat handwriting loops across the screen. 1. Have better posture. 2. Write mother
three times a week. 3. Eat less. 4. Write two hours a day, minimally. 5. Teach David to read. Her youth is expressed in
aspirational list-writing, prioritising the worldly concerns of a woman in her mid-twenties. Sontag is always visceral,
always interested in the human and bodily – but “Eat less”, placed at number three, seems to capture the tension
between the bodily mundane of daily thought, and the body of Sontag’s intellectual legacy. Then there’s the climax.
Sontag will write for at least two hours a day – and while looking after a baby.
It is as though Sontag writes this list conscious of an audience who will marvel half a century down the line at
her abilities in youth, at her capacity to juggle domesticity and production. The list is crafted. It is knowledgeable
of itself. She seems to know to build from “better posture” toward intellectual and emotional labour, simultaneously
weighting the latter and rendering them quotidian. Again and again Sontag’s sense of style – in writing, in images
– makes one feels as though the film’s own ordering narrative derives somehow from Sontag herself. Can the order
of a list made at age 24 predestine the shape of a film 60 years later? Can that consciousness of form shape a life?
Just as unsettling is the section of the film in which the adult Susan – “the most intelligent woman in America”,
as one newscaster puts it – recalls herself as a child in the new house with the new ‘Mr Sontag’. She is lying reading
on the carpet, and he tells her, “Sue, if you read so much you’ll never get married.” She thinks this is preposterous.
“It never occurred to me that I would want to marry someone who didn’t like someone who read a lot of books.”
The moment roots Sontag’s lifetime of success in the circumstances and aspirations of her upbringing, in a child’s
intellectual curiosity, and in the bones and blood of the biographical subject. What it hides, and the reason it might
make one uneasy, is the practical matter of such achievement. Sontag read a lot of books. Not only that, but her
feminism and independence, expressed at such a young age and in direct contradiction with her closest authority
figures, are founded in that she read a lot of books. The big questions – of female agency, of self-assurance – are
boiled down to something basic, and awful in its basicness: the day-in and day-out responsibility of picking up books
and reading them and finishing them, and wanting to do it, not making yourself do it. As the fundamental basis of
everything that you are and aspire to be. Art hides this labour. Art makes it into a proclivity that amounts to destiny.
Sontag is shown to overflow the bounds of life, to struggle against the restrictions on her time. Lovers, a child,
wide reading, film-watching, nights of drinking, nights of dancing: all things that interfere with writing and creation,
and all things that are at the same time life itself. The documentary vision means that Sontag is instead seen to
overflow images and art. The way in which images entrap life and create false structure acts as a proxy for the way
that the actual creation of words, pictures and intellectual thought can clash against other priorities in life; can
interfere with other kinds of experience.
Sontag was very conscious of the tension, writing about it often in her diaries. Diary form, in Sontag’s hands,
bridges the gap between rapacious intellectual work and the personal, private and ordinary. The film quotes often
from the diaries: “Do I resent not being a genius? Would I be willing to pay the price for that? I think the price is
solitude.” Sontag chooses instead to love, massively and continually. But that love is so much of what we remember
of Sontag, and such a part of her particular genius. What we see in the documentary is Sontag’s vivaciousness
struggling against the bounds of the filmic image. What we feel is her obsessive life-hunger, born at the seam of
working and living.
III
A large portion of the audience for a film like Regarding Susan Sontag will be young and intellectually curious
feminists. Women, femmes, queer people, non-binary and trans folk: the reading, writing, feminist dispossessed. I
suspect that I am not alone among such a viewership in feeling that it is hard to look at the life of Susan Sontag and
not feel rather anxious. She raises anxieties about the duty of productivity, which is somehow tied to what it means
to be feminist. It seems an easily dismissed connection, stated like that. But a form of feminism seems to be born
out of the theorist’s childhood experiences – her rejection of her mother’s new husband. It is born out in her daily
thought and daily reading; it is in the spirit with which she wakes to the world each morning, by which “love of life”
becomes an assertion that one can do anything one chooses, experience everything that there is.
Sometimes feminism is taken as a category that women like Sontag are said to resist. That idea appears repeatedly
in depictions and discussions of her life and work, a reaction to her life-hunger and intellectual curiosity. Feminism
is a label easily manipulated so that it is implied to limit the legacy of a great female thinker whose influence extends
far beyond the feminist movement of her time. Kates’s film is far too knowledgeable of its subject to make such a
reductive point, but Regarding Susan Sontag raises the risks and possible restrictions of pigeon-holing its subject as
‘just’ a feminist.
Sontag accepts the badge, if with a degree of hedging. Those around her, meanwhile, relate the term with disquiet.
Her lover Eva Kollisch, interviewed as an older woman, has the bomb-drop statement on the subject: “I don’t think
feminism gave Susan anything. Susan had already taken out the licence to be a great woman before there was any
talk of feminism. In fact I think feminism must have curtailed her sphere of activity because suddenly she had to
identify with all these women; all these dopey women!”
Kollisch is joking, a little, and the film goes on to let her complicate her claim. She and Sontag were both
academics and single mothers. Notably, Kollisch is the interviewee who renders most plainly the tensions between
life, work, and art as rather prosaic; tensions that can seem so grand when couched in Sontag’s language of the
‘duties’ of the writer. “We tried to have a life where we could do our mothering and pursue our work,” says Kollisch,
“and have a little extra time for fun, walking around the Village. Talking. Making love.” Both women are doing the
quotidian work of feminism, of female agency. They are trying to live as they choose.
But again, Sontag escapes this moment in which we can finally understand her life as time segmented into
activities. Kollisch goes on to explain that Sontag came to her to relax, to kick off her shoes and raid the refrigerator,
but she had, of course, “another life among very famous people”. The photos of Sontag return, replacing Kollisch’s
sad, amused and aged face. Sontag in black and white, young, stern and beautiful for a press photograph. Sontag
laughing with Günter Grass. Sontag and William S. Burroughs, both in oversized hats. What felt like a glimpse
of Sontag’s life as a manageable reality is now made to seem just another facet of the biographical fiction. It is as if,
alongside all her fame and success, she was also able to be that woman who does the job of living. It is yet another
life she managed to have. And that life, the ordered mode of working and mothering and talking and loving, feels
somehow like yet another representation in art.
Kollisch’s remarks on Sontag’s feminism are particularly uncomfortable for those who would admire, emulate,
or worry over her legacy. Wouldn’t we all love to resist categories? Or rather, wouldn’t it be nice if categories like
‘feminist’ were known to be as encompassing and complex as the potential they can offer? That, rather than a
category, the term were understood as a means by which people (all people) complicate the rigid patterns of the lives
laid out for them?
When you label something, so the thinking goes, its possibilities shrink. But for many young people, hungering
for intellectual growth beyond the possibilities of male writers, there is a period in which we find feminism. Around
then, maybe, we find Sontag, or someone similar; a thinker who has inevitably lived and worked beyond the bounds HOW I MADE MY PLACE IN
OTHER PEOPLE’S FILMS
of ordinary human life and production, beyond the limits of a working day. And at that point, the question of what
is possible becomes rather fraught. The documentary makes plain that, in regarding Sontag’s legacy, we feel that the
duty of work segues into modes of living, and modes of living segue into obsession, and suddenly the duty of work
and one’s potential are all about personality – and personality is destiny. From a child lying on the floor laughing
by Eva Phillips
at male authority, Sontag was always going to be Sontag. And all of this is couched in layer upon layer of fiction,
images and text. And where does that leave us?

40
 I have been an ardent lover of film for longer than I can recall. Barely older than a toddler, I would sit nestled
between my parents, enraptured and utterly mystified by The Lion King (Rob Minkoff, Roger Allers, 1994) one
week; the next, I would be so spellbound by John Wayne’s bravado as a rogue riverboat captain in Blood Alley
(William A. Wellman, 1955) that I would demand my mother help me construct a faux riverboat in our TV
room so I could be the Duke in all his nautical-rescue glory. As an obnoxiously precocious child, my unbound
eagerness for fantastical things often placed me in a sort of delicate, awkward space. My feelings were hard to
contain; my outrageous imagination was tricky to translate; my relations with girls and boys in prescribed social
environments felt uncomfortable and distinctly forced. It was film that provided respite, a discursive realm
all of my own. Films provided a world in which it was completely reasonable for me to conjure up scripts and
metadramas, to make my toys act out key moments from the Russian revolution. Of course, at this nascent
stage in my film fanaticism, I couldn’t grasp the nuances of mise-en-scène. But films and my fecund imagination
provided discursive building blocks that allowed me to start constructing a burgeoning selfhood.
Logically, then, it was to cinema I turned when my fantastically awkward adolescent ‘blossoming’ became
entwined with overpowering feelings of otherness. These were more than inklings, they were sensations – at once
electrifying and devastatingly stomach-churning. The realisation of being queer, of beginning to understand that
my desires did not always match up to the heteronormative game plan that had been trenchantly laid out for me
(and also realising that, on some occasions, they did, and that these different desires may exist simultaneously,
and having my manic, pubescent brain totally obliterated by that notion) was the source of outrageous anxiety.
It was also euphoric, though, and these conflicting sensations seemed only translatable in the elocution of film.
Queer cinema glistened with the promise of discovery, of finding some sort of network, community or
commiseration – and yet, what I unearthed was as dismaying as it was intriguing. As my parents sat downstairs
watching M*A*S*H* reruns, I would furtively dart upstairs to watch The Truth About Jane (Lee Rose, 2000) on
the Lifetime Channel, and despite my tingles of fascination and hope at every glimmer of queer coupling on
screen, I was left unsatisfied. Each filmic excursion was riddled with tropes; I was thrust into a world of quasi-
representation where everything was a technicolour, pseudo-erogenous blur.
Every five minutes some nameless band fronted by the harmonic spirit-daughter of Mazzy Starr or Sarah
McLachlan would appear crooning in metaphors about celestial bodies as some woman ruefully pondered her
sexual existence. There seemed to be scarcely any room in mainstream media for portrayals of queer women
whose happiness and fulfilment did not come at the expense of a preexisting heterosexual bond. I will certainly
never stop praising the particular virtues of Gia (Michael Cristofer, 1998), Better Than Chocolate (Anne Wheeler,
1999), and the monumentally campy But I’m a Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit, 1999), but while films like these were
developmentally significant, they failed to capture some semblance of mirrored selfhood, of relatability that I so
craved, and of which I had such a desperate paucity in my ‘real world’.
Perhaps my dissatisfaction galvanised my transition into a crucial phase: what I now designate as my ‘queering
the absence’ epoch. Perhaps it was because my overactive childhood imagination felt stultified by these drab
queer films, or because they often exuded a sense of definable otherness that I assumed my family and friends
would literally be able to smell on me. Whatever the cause, I found myself drawn to films in which I could safely
entrench a sort of queerness. I recall, at the age of 13, compulsively watching the film Nell (1994) on a botched
family vacation. Then, in one of the more important moments of the narrative, being overpowered by two
realisations: first, that I was ferociously smitten with Natasha Richardson – which would explain why The Parent
Trap (Nancy Meyers, 1998) had been such a strange family viewing experience for me years prior. Secondly, that
I could use any film that struck or impacted me as a safe place – just as film had been a haven for my childhood
eccentricities, cinema could now benefit me in a new, more developmentally advanced way. I could suture my
own queerness into films and narratives in a way that suited my identity.
After much consternation over the queer-centric cinema I had encountered, this new approach seemed
42
rejuvenating, and far more true to the inventive spirit of my childhood self. And, at a time when what I felt
most was anxiety or confusion, watching films in this way provided a space where I was directly in control of
the narrative, I was in control of my emotions within the context of that narrative, and I did not have to cower
at the prospect of being outed or confronted. What was most intriguing was that the films I sought were hardly
dazzling examples of innovative or avant-garde cinema – neither Raymond Bellour nor Teresa de Lauretis
would scramble to write provocative treatises on these films. In fact, I actively sought films with ludicrous plots,
palpably saturated with pop culture. I found such solace and imaginative potential in them because of their
unconventional cinematic standards. Perhaps, in the true Sontagian spirit of Camp, I was the most reassured
and able to freely embellish my queer fictions in films that were steeped in the outlandish.
Like so many meaningful comings of age in a woman’s life, mine started with a Vin Diesel movie. The spring
after the summer of Nell, with all the tumults of eighth grade coming to a head, I rented a copy of the original
The Fast and the Furious (2000) and watched it roughly three to eight times a week for months (I regarded the
Blockbuster return date as a more of a suggestion). The film provided the perfect escape: with female friends I
could share adoration of Paul Walker; to male friends I further consecrated myself as the relatable chick who
dug fast cars and flamboyantly masculine fight scenes; and for myself I allowed a queer subplot, in which Jordana
Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez were making silent advances on each other. It was the ideal model for my
queer sexuality, in that it was both a subterfuge and an exploration vessel.
In keeping with the theme of films unfairly labeled ‘dude-centric’, I then diverted my filmic fixation to
another Michelle Rodriguez movie: Resident Evil (Paul W. S. Anderson, 2003). If ever Bette Davis had been an
irreverent, ballsy and vaguely queer sex symbol to a generation before me, Milla Jovovich was my Bette Davis,
as she and the subtly ferocious and ferociously queer Rodriguez brutalised the undead in the bowels of the
Umbrella Corporation. Jovovich emerged as this sort of husky-voiced messiah – enigmatic and savage – of my
sexual awakening. And so I scoured her filmography, an activity which led to the watching of a lot of guff. But it
was guff I was willing to endure. She was quirky, brash, larger than life, a fierce character in stories that provided
my imagination with ample material.
Jovovich sparked a trend that would continue as both my understanding of my sexuality and love of cinema
matured. Particular actresses, more than individual films, became the focal points of both my cinematic pursuits
and my queer desires and imaginations. It was something other than voyeurism or naive infatuation – it was a
yearning coupled with intrigue and a genuine wish to cultivate appreciation for films regardless of their critical
reception. This appreciation was inextricably bound to a fondness, unexplainable attraction and connection to
certain actresses. Entranced by Rachel Weisz, Winona Ryder and Nicole Kidman, I saw even their categorically
clunky films more times than would be deemed reasonable. Through this dedicated fandom, I grew to understand
and appreciate the variations of cinematic aesthetics, the nuances of style, what made a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ film
and, more interestingly, what qualities could be salvaged in the ‘bad’ ones. And as my critical eye and palette
developed, my comprehension and acceptance of my own sexuality became less dependent on queering the
absence and more on articulating my desires in the real world.
Most crucially, this period of actress-loves with its stabilising sense of self created a silent language in which
I could communicate with my mother, to whom I felt simultaneously closest and most afraid to divulge my
queerness. When we watched films together, there was an unuttered truce – which remains uttered to this day –
in which we could forge some understanding about my sexuality that otherwise would have been unachievable.
My mother and I could laugh and fondly repeat favourite lines, actions in which the things about myself I felt
I could not say were safely and acknowledged and accepted in our mutual love of the films. She understood, and
I felt joyously safe, in endlessly and ritualistically watching Rachel Weisz as Evelyn in The Mummy (Stephen
Sommers, 1999), idolising her adorably intrepid perfection.
Peculiarly, or maybe appropriately, my return to what I had once deemed the gallows of queer cinema came
43
after watching Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966). Haunted by the paralysing wonder of the performances and
the subliminally palpable connection between Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, I decided that I wanted some
sort of migration back to the definitively queer. I wanted to use my understanding of cinematic theory and style
to untangle the films I once rebuked. I started with But I’m a Cheerleader, writing fastidiously about Camp, about
the crucial process of identity-forging in the eccentricities of certain films. I became devoted to resuscitating the
queer canon I had once scorned. And then, as I matured in my sexuality and self-assuredness as well as in my
writing and cinematic sensibilities, something quite terrific happened to mainstream cinema.
Queer cinema, which was still the subjugated child in the wider family of film, was allowed to evolve and
become a gorgeous (if flawed) creature. Exquisitely relentless pictures like Stranger Inside (Cheryl Dunye, 2001)
and Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011) could coexist with the aching and disquietingly choreographed Kiss Me (Alexandra-
Therese Keining, 2011) and the poignantly hilarious Appropriate Behavior (Desiree Akhavan, 2014) – stylistically GIRL WORLD
and thematically, queer cinema began to stretch its limbs and clamber towards some sort of meaningful presence. An exercise in cinematic gaslighting
Queer films became consecrated not just as entities unto themselves, but as generically significant events – a
piece like Peter Strickland’s sublimely surreal Dukes of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, 2014) is a testament to the by Maryam Kazeem
evolution of queer cinema as a notable force within a much broader landscape of filmmaking. And even though
the issue of escaping cis-white monopolisation in filmic representation prevails, diversity in queer cinema has
taken tremendous strides. Moreover, Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015) happened, which is a really, really big deal.
All this is not to say that I have abnegated my tendency to ‘queer the absence’. That tendency is an inextricable
part of my love of cinema, and my articulation and understanding of myself. It has allowed me to be a rabid
fan of The Walking Dead (because Carol, Michonne and Andrea have been some of the best subversively queer
characters in recent memory) and it has allowed me to keep that feeling of connection to my mother and
my friends in a way that’s fundamental to who I am. Furthermore, I have continued to revisit vexing films
like Loving Annabelle (Katherine Brooks, 2006) and Imagine Me & You (Ol Parker, 2005) with a nostalgic
appreciation for their value, buried as it might be beneath the more flummoxing tropes.
In a recent class I attended on transnational feminisms, a discussion of queer theory led to the question of why
it was necessary even to have a queer theory separate from feminist theory. Aside from issues of poststructuralism
and identity politics, culture’s need for queer theory is utterly like my need to queer the absence, to find a place
for myself in other people’s narratives. It is a distinct elocution, a realm in which the self can flourish both
separate from and as part of a world of imposed structures and limitations.

44 30
 I As the film opens, Cady walks up the steps of North Shore High and says, “Goodbye Africa and hello
high school.” High school is then enveloped in Girl World, Tina Fey’s metonym for the typical teenage girl’s
It is a farce that the first two young African girls I watch on a big screen are Eliza Thornberry of The Wild
perception of the world both within and around her. Girl World has its own set of laws: there is the infamous
Thornberrys (1998–2004) and Cady Heron in Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004) – two white girls with freckles
pink-wearing Wednesday and an allowance for ponytails only once a week. But during her time as a junior in a
and curly red hair.
II suburban middle-class high school, Africa does come back to Cady. Africa is a fond memory of simpler times,
and another world that Cady can fabricate for her fellow classmates and use to manipulate them when it suits.
When I am ten years old, I become fascinated with The Wild Thornberrys, a Nickelodeon cartoon about
When Cady decides to take down Regina George, Queen Bee of ‘The Plastics’, by tricking her into gaining
two sisters that at times seems to mirror my own reality, and subsequently draws me in. The show follows the
weight, she suggests Swedish Kälteen Bars that her “mom gives to the kids in Africa to help them lose weight”.
extended family of six – Nigel, a British aristocrat-turned-wildlife-documentarian; his wife Marianne, a director;
But when she’s with her friends Janice and Ian devising the plan, the Kälteen Bars are revealed to be what “mom
their two daughters Eliza and Debbie; a feral boy Donnie whom they meet along their journey; and a talking
gives to the kids in Africa to help them gain weight”, which she knows because apparently “everyone in Africa
chimpanzee called Darwin, Eliza’s best friend. Eliza takes me, sat on the space between the Persian rug and the
understands Swedish.”
marble floor in the living room of my parents’ New Jersey home, to Africa. While it is not my first visit, the
Tina Fey states that the inspiration for Mean Girls was Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes (2002),
Africa I have seen is hardly as vast as Eliza’s. She swings over rivers and runs from lions, while I walk from the
a book that explores the difficulties teen girls and their parents face during the dreaded high school years. In
car and up polished cement stairs to Grandma’s house, and play with Aisha, my sister, on the balcony lodged
capturing the essence of teenage spirit, Fey says, “I had talked to Rosalind Wiseman and she said ‘you should go
two stories high.
hang out at the mall fountain. It’s like animals at the watering hole.’” At the film dénouement of the film when
For me, and most people who have ever bothered to look closely at a map, ‘Africa’ does not mean much. The
the junior girls are literally fighting in the halls surrounded by photocopied pages of the infamous ‘burn book’
‘Africa’ I know at this time is particularly contained – Nigeria, Lagos, grandmother’s house, mosquitoes, tough-
(a book containing all the gossip they’ve said about each other over the years), the lines between Girl World
to-chew sugarcane stalks that scar my young gums, sweet and salty popcorn shared with my sister, and dead heat.
and Africa are blurred for Cady. The girls are violent and possessed, just like animals at a watering hole. And
Once I am back in the United States, my sister stays behind in Nigeria to attend boarding school. As the
Fey finds this to be an excellent metaphor for high school: girls gone wild, consumed by popularity. But as a
school year begins for me in New Jersey, I decide to make some sort of change to match my new independence. I
15-year-old watching Mean Girls for the first time, I do not recognise the Africa full of roaming wild animals,
resolve to update my hairdo and wear my hair out, free of extensions, in a half plait and press that frames my face
or Girl World.
and hangs just at the middle of my neck instead of my usual – micro-braids with synthetic hair extensions. In
Cady’s problems are fairly simple. She is new, wants to fit in, make friends and perhaps date a cute boy, if
the hallways on the first day of school when I say ‘hello’ to Andy, my neighbour with golden curly hair, I cower
possible. Luckily her freckles, winning smile, and reddish strawberry blonde hair allow for a somewhat straight
a bit when it seems that she barely recognises me. She shares later that day when we’re sweaty and out of breath
path to the fulfilment of these desires, even if she does experience difficult times.
from playing foursquare during recess that she “likes me better with braids”.
In Queen Bees and Wannabes, Wiseman describes how teenage girls make sense of the world around them: she
In my previous years at school I felt much the same as my mostly white classmates, but in 1998 it is different.
asks two Indian girls to draw a map of their cafeteria (which later becomes the inspiration for the map Cady’s
Perhaps it is the Amalia series of these California Diaries books I have started reading – that first book catches
friend Janice draws for her in the film) and records her surprise at both how specific and problematic the map
my eye one Friday evening at the bookstore, and has Amalia on a cover that is a tormented blue I feel in my
is. The girls note down things like the difference between cool Asians and nerd Asians and Wiseman tells us,
bones but have never known how to speak. The blue stands out on the shelf, as do I in our yearly class photo,
“I flinched when I saw their artwork. Their worlds are harsh judgmental places – but they’re typical of what
taken in the gymnasium at the front of the school.
many girls tell me their school experience is like.” But Wiseman still fails to capture the fragmentation of
But I do not feel inclined to shy away from being different. I’m curious to know if people can still see me when
certain identities within high school in America – what does it mean to be not simply cool but a cool Asian, where
they look at me. Those Saturday mornings when I lie in front of the TV, without my sister, I watch Eliza on an
whiteness is unnamed and the norm?
African adventure. Even though I am in New Jersey surrounded by large colonial homes and white picket fences,
The first time I watch Mean Girls I think it insightful that the film is able to observe that there may be
I too feel like a girl swinging on ropes in a home that seems like more of a jungle to me than my grandmother’s
‘unfriendly black hotties’ as well as ‘Asian nerds’, even if those black hotties and Asian nerds only have four
house in Lagos.
minutes of screen time. Perhaps unknowingly, Fey illuminates the approaching end of the multicultural spirit

III of the nineties. You know that scene in Clueless (1995) where the popular Black, Asian and white students sit
together before class, and the rich Iranians are right next to them on the grass? Yes, it is Cher’s world – but
During an interview with Tonisha Johnson, Tina Fey, writer of high-school cult classic Mean Girls, explains
Dionne is at least a part of it. She rides to school with Cher and they sit at the same lunch table with Amber
why the film’s main character Cady (played by Lindsay Lohan) hails from Africa: “I have never been to Africa.
and Murray, her boyfriend and fellow black hottie. Fast forward to 2004 and the multicultural high is starting
Originally Cady was an American home-schooled girl. And the studio was like, it’s too weird.” To fix Cady’s
to wear off – we can still see race, but it seems everyone has their own corner, and I feel it too.
‘weirdness’ and emphasise the nuttiness of American high school, the studio and Tina Fey decide that it will be
In 2004, I am a sophomore in a private New Jersey high school with white, Black and Asian friends in
easier if she comes from somewhere completely foreign. It’s not hard to see the humour they hope to elicit by
distinct cliques that seem to mix but never quite do. Mean Girls is often lauded for how much it ‘gets’ high
having a white African girl as the lead (in reality she’s American, and has spent ten years with her parents, who
school, and how through this it gets a changing America too. And yet it portrays this America through an
are zoologists, on the continent). Throughout the film, the audience experiences Cady’s time in Africa and her
experience that is limited even when it believes it is inclusive – that is, through a grown-up Eliza Thornberry’s
perception of it through a stereotypical American lens – as a nameless country, with wild animals and starving
white girl experience. We see others – the Black girl from “Detroit and not Africa” and the Asian girls who
kids rather than a diverse continent with 54 countries and over 3,000 ethnic groups.
have been preyed on by their 40-year-old health teacher – but ultimately everything is about Cady. We are

46 47
immersed in her worldview, where the issue is not about being visible, nor about being sexually harassed by the
faculty, but getting the cute guy to ask her out. Rather than unpacking stereotypes, Mean Girls doubles down on
them, hypersexualising sixteen-year-old Asian girls, and then suggesting that these Girl World experiences are
comparable, these problems equivalent.
After Cady is ostracised when people accuse her of pushing Regina George in front of a bus, she seeks
forgiveness, taking the ultimate step towards being in Girl World,rather than just of it. When she is crowned
Spring Fling Queen she makes a grand offering: the prized plastic crown. “Why is everybody stressing over this
thing? I mean it’s just plastic. Really we could just share it,” she says from her stage, while snapping the crown
into pieces, sacrificing her title. In this moment Cady makes a vow to solidarity, promising a just and equal Girl
World.
During Cady’s speech, she compliments two of the girls close to the stage –Emma, overweight and Jessica in a
wheelchair. Jessica “looks amazing” and Emma’s hairdo, “which must have taken hour to do” also “look[s] really
beautiful”. And she means it, believing that she has made some sort of sacrifice, which gives her the ability to
finally see the others, still unaware of the privilege she carries by standing on a stage, in everyone’s sight, speaking
to and for all the girls that surround her. Here, Cady (along with the film) forfeits any hope of self-awareness.
How can self-discovery be achieved without the understanding that she is privileged enough to make the sacrifice?
At the beginning of the film, the junior girls share what they’ve heard about Regina George. The only Black
girl in the montage says, “I heard she met John Stamos on a plane, and he told her she was pretty”. In Janice’s
map, this girl is an unfriendly Black hottie, yet when Regina tells her that her plaid skirt is really cute one day
in the hallway, she thanks the Queen Bee with an elevated bounce in her step and a boastful smile. She has been
seen.
IV
A few months after seeing Mean Girls for the first time I am at the centre of a discussion (a rare event) in the
hallway after a debate in our history class. A Pakistani student says that arguing against me in class debates (the
topic of the day is segregation) is hard because I am Black. When I hear about this later, I am angry and tell
this student that the history we’re arguing about doesn’t have anything to do with me because I’m African. I
know as my tongue clicks at the back of my throat that is the one of the worst lies I will ever tell a white person,
but I don’t want to carry Black history or Africa on my shoulders today. Unlike Cady, I do not bring Africa up
at every opportunity, even though that is all it seems anyone sees when looking at me. My English teacher is
amused that I, daughter of Nigerian immigrants, loved reading Thousand Cranes by Japanese novelist Yasunari
Kawabata. “It’s just so fascinating,” he says finding it difficult to comprehend that Black people can be interested
in Japanese literature.
In our real-life cafeteria, it seem that we (the four Black girls in our year) are more of a thing to our classmates
than people: we are a cause for debate, affirmative action, college admissions – they discuss how one boy, who is
Black, took someone else’s spot at Harvard. “How could he have gotten in?” they mutter in the corridor once
early decisions are announced. But, as one supporter replies, these things are a necessary evil: she can make a
sacrifice for diversity. After all, it is her offering, her sacrifice to make. For me, Africa is somewhat of a memory
these years – I have not been in seven years and no matter how many times my friends and I recite all the best
quotes from Mean Girls before we go to college, the only one we never seem to joke about is how many times
Cady and her classmates say ‘Africa’.
V two different-coloured eyes. Later, D and I will joke that “Brutus is just as cute as Caesar!”, recalling the plight
The ten-year anniversary of Mean Girls comes with much celebration. There are many articles citing the best
ten or fifty lines from the film, and it is okay that there are so many articles because there are actually so many
damn quotations to go around. There is even an article by Chris Wilson in Time, which tries to convince us
48
that even though “the notion of the African continent as a place of magic is a dated, rather offensive trope, the
film firmly establishes this impression among the students at North Shore High School. To them, Africa is a
monolithic place about which they know almost nothing.” And Wilson says this is ultimately okay because of
the film’s supposed thematic connection to Bantu folklore. But this is hardly convincing.
bell hooks says this thing about Black women and cinema that is both unsettling and enlightening:
“Conventional representations of black women have done violence to the image. Responding to this assault
many black women spectators shut out the image, looked the other way, accorded cinema no importance in
their lives. Then there were those spectators whose gaze was that of desire of complicity. Assuming a posture
of subordination, they submitted to cinema’s capacity to seduce and betray.” She defines this as ‘cinematic
gaslighting’.
How to explain the farce of the farce that I, Nigerian-American Black girl, happened to identify with Eliza
and Lindsay, unable to disentangle myself from any of it?
Tina Fey creates an edifice of Girl World in Mean Girls that is hard to ignore – it lends itself to comparison
with the material dilemma facing mainstream feminism since time immemorial. Since Black women’s rights
activist Sojourner Truth asked “Ain’t I a woman?” in 1851 and the world responded “not quite”, we are still
looking for solidarity, on our screens and in our politics. Tina Fey seeks to provide this when Cady breaks and
shares the crown, as this past year Adele broke her Grammy in half after winning Best Album of the Year, an
award for which many presumed Beyoncé was a shoo-in. But how can a film empower all women without seeing
all women? And how can a film even claim to be feminist while portraying flat stereotypes of other races, and
promoting a single narrative of Africa?
Hollywood has always been incapable of capturing African and Black female subjectivities. In today’s cinematic
Girl World, the peace we supposedly arrive at the end of Mean Girls appears to be wedged into a table tagged
‘separate but equal’.” In Girls, Lena Dunham can’t write in Black women as friends she clearly does not have
(although, as evident from the series finale, she can write in a brown baby) and Issa Rae of Insecure refuses to
split screen time with a white girl best friend who might make the show easier to sell to white audiences. Dionne’s
ghost haunts as a reminder of a time when the optimism of multiculturalism tasted sweet on the popcorn
kernel-covered tongue of the only eight-year-old Black girl at a Clueless-themed birthday sleepover. It seems the
optimism that we felt in the nineties and then perhaps again in the late noughties, has come to pass as we find
ourselves in the post-post-race age. Yes, we can see race, but we’re tired of having to talk about it.6.A movie is
never just a movie. We sit on the floor of A’s movie theatre in her mansion of a house with its own lake (or was
it D’s house just 20 minutes away?), and watch Tina Fey’s teenage feminist manifesto of the new millennium – a
ritual of our friendship. “Four for you Glen Coco. You go Glen Coco!”: this quip from the film we will recite
as a salute in the hallways till the end of our time in high school. We are a diverse bunch, made up of different
religions, ethnicities and races and, according to Tina Fey, Girl World, like feminism, holds us all together.
But we are not all ‘girls’.
One Sunday morning in 2005, I am in bed and D, fellow brown girlfriend, sends me a text message. “Just tell
me that I’m beautiful, I need to hear it,” she pleads. I read it with confusion and even repeat the words that have
appeared on my Motorola Razr flip-phone aloud.
Now it occurs to me that as exquisite as her thick long black hair, light hazel brown eyes with flecks of sea
green, and warm golden skin with caramel undertones might be, no boy in our class has yet to tell D that she is
just that: beautiful. The other brown boy in our year is fascinated with A, our mutual friend, a pale brunette with
of Gretchen Weiners’s resentment of her status as Regina George’s right-hand woman.
I think I am sitting on the sidelines, but then and there I forget I am still swinging over rivers in the jungle
and Girl World almost swallows me whole.
49
 SECTION THREE

WOMEN LOOKING
AT WOMEN

Rachel Lang is a Belgian filmmaker whose trio of

films, Baden Baden (2016) White Turnips Make It
Hard to Sleep (2011) For You I Will Fight (2010)
investigate the coming of age of the same woman,
Ana, played by Salomé Richard.

35
 by
Rebecca
Liu SCREENING FEMALE
DESIRE: BETTE
GORDON’S ‘VARIETY’
35 YEARS ON
Object permanence – that is, the ability
to understand that objects continue to live in the world, even if
they exist outside of one’s frame of vision – is said to develop

‘Once in a fiction workshop my professor critiqued a scene because “women wouldn’t ask about a hookup’s performance in bed” and a girl
in infants as young as five months. And yet, for many men in
the world, this formative developmental process seems to have

replied “that’s literally the first thing you talk about” and the way he said “oh” will stay with me til I die’– @girlinabasement
stopped short of realising that women, too, experience rich and
complicated inner lives. Bette Gordon’s Variety (1983), a neo-
Hitchcockian thriller about a young woman’s sexual awakening,
takes aim at this distinctly masculine conceit. Stare long enough
into an abyss, gentlemen, and the abyss will stare back.
Young, fashionable and strikingly beautiful, Variety’s Christine (Sandy McLeod) could be an archetypal
‘Hitchcock blonde’. A young twenty-something in eighties New York, Christine lives alone and is struggling to
find a job. Her outspoken friend Nan (played by photographer Nan Goldin) has heard about an opportunity, but
hesitates: “I don’t think you would want it. I really don’t think you’re the type”. Christine nevertheless persists.
The film cuts to Christine in the ticket booth for pornographic theatre Variety in New York’s Times Square,
wearing a brown blazer and a pearl necklace, selling two-dollar tickets to predominantly male cinemagoers.
Placed in a street-level ticket booth outside the theatre, Christine becomes the de facto gatekeeper to the pleasures
exhorted by Variety’s exterior. “The most tempting, delicious, luscious, most favourable young women you ever
wanted to meet are out here on the big screen,” shouts Christine’s coworker Jose (Luis Guzmán) to curious
passers-by. Men come and go out of Variety, some less confidently than others. Christine negotiates some
breaks with Jose, which she uses to sneak into screenings, thus sparking her growing curiosity with erotica and
eventually, a particular fascination with one of Variety’s wealthy patrons.
*
Bette Gordon co-wrote the script to Variety alongside late novelist Kathy Acker, now a widely celebrated icon
of countercultural punk feminism. It is unsurprising, then, that the product of their collaboration explores
in deft and occasionally jarring detail the abysses of female sexual desire, which are often ignored for their
unpalatability to the male gaze. Indeed, Christine’s burgeoning sexuality does not delight her boyfriend, the
fantastically bland Mark (Will Patton), but rather confuses and alienates him. In a scene that will speak to
many a viewer, Christine narrates an erotic story while a stony-faced Mark ignores her, focusing his attention
instead on playing his pinball game.
This is the strange and impossible double bind faced by women in an era that is both hypersexualised and
driven by a neo-Victorian moralising impulse. The surfeit of female sex objects in Variety – Pussycat playmates!
flashes a neon sign outside Variety; Live on Stage XXX! asserts another – is juxtaposed against a social landscape
that offers little room for understanding women as agential sexual subjects. It is Sigmund Freud’s Madonna-
Whore complex come to life: a schematic of the two archetypes through which female sexuality is commonly
understood – a woman is either the pristine and clean ‘Madonna’ to whom sex happens; or the kinky, debased
‘whore’ who has sex. Though the archetypes may be on opposite sides of the sexual divide, what they both share

52 53
 is the ability to neuter female sexuality by keeping it within the confines of masculine power.
Against the backdrop of #metoo, Variety offers a sage and prescient commentary on the stunted
psychosexual landscape of heteronormative masculinity. The men who frequent Variety, Christine
observes, are often “lonely, down-and-out types; some business guys who can’t get it up anymore”.
Seeing Christine at the ticket booth may entice some men, she speculates, to come, “because they
think I’m some sort of attraction, but mostly I think they’re just sort of embarrassed that I’m there”.
The presence of a woman guarding the gates to a space that touts itself as being replete with ‘beautiful,
luscious ladies’ is seen, ironically, as a disturbance. The latter women are hidden behind a cinematic
screen: they will neither taunt you for ‘not getting it up’, nor cast aspersions on your sexual capabilities
(or lack thereof ), and when you look at them, they will not look back. These women, in their versions
behind the screen, neutralised and imprisoned, exist expressly for the pleasure of others.
This is the necessary result of centuries of gendered conditioning. Men are taught to equate vulnerability
with weakness, compassion with perversity, and sexual desire with sexual dominance. Sex becomes,
in this self-abnegating emotional landscape, a narcissistic quest for mastery rather than a relational
act of mutual love. The darker, understated dimensions of intimacy and attraction are diluted and
denied, replaced by unimaginatively homogeneous visual signifiers, à la Hugh Hefner’s prototypical
array of model-thin, twenty-something blondes. In this configuration, any women who incites feelings
1. Dayna
of vulnerability – any women who refuses to adhere to a tidy and neat script – is a threat to male
Tortorici,
‘Reckoning dignity and dominance. In Variety, at Variety, Christine’s presence at the ticket booth becomes an
with a uncomfortable and embarrassing challenge to its male patrons; she is an inconvenient disruption in
culture
of male
the otherwise idyllic space of masculine sexual freedom promised within.
resentment’, *
December Writing in the Guardian about #metoo and the recent revelations of widespread sexual harassment,
2017, The
Guardian Dayna Tortorici considers the issue predominantly through the lens of masculinity, ego, and anxiety:
(Online). “The way they had learned to live in the world – to write novels, to make art, to teach, to argue about
ideas, to conduct themselves in sexual and romantic relationships – no longer fit the time in which they
2. Ibid.
were living.”1 Anticipating criticisms that she focused too much of her critique on men, Tortorici notes:
“If my approach was too much about men, my defence is that the situation was about men from the
beginning.”2 Speaking about men is different from giving them power: in fact, it is only through the
former that the latter can be challenged. In Variety, Christine’s power is mediated through her explicit
examination of predominantly male spaces. She tails a Variety patron to an all-male sex store, then an
all-male fishmonger’s market, and various all-male business gatherings. It is her vision that becomes
the unassailable, omniscient frame of reference. Men and their goings-on become the relativised ‘other’,
their existence and narratives contingent on her continued attention.
It is said that the grip of ideology starts to falter at the moment in which its masters feel compelled
to defend their dominance. For the knotty question of masculinity, there may yet be some time to go.
At this year’s Golden Globes, where attendees wore black in solidarity with the Time’s Up movement
against sexual violence, it was the women who spoke out against harassment – because they had
to; nobody else would do it for them – while the men skirted past in their standard black tuxedos,
continuing to field questions only on their careers, aspirations, and hopes for the future. An ironic and
somewhat disappointing twist: the subjugated should not be obliged to rectify the mistakes of their
oppressors. The last scene of Variety is deliberately ambiguous: the camera lingers on a street corner
just before a highly anticipated and fateful meeting. The future of gender relations, too, rests on this ON ‘VARIETY’
indeterminate horizon of possibility.
by Bette Gordon
54
 Exploring New York City’s underground in the early
eighties, late at night, I came upon the Variety theatre.
Its neon marquee looked like something from the past,
and I couldn’t stop looking. I wanted to investigate
the theatre. It had once been a vaudeville theatre,
and before that, a stable for the Stuyvesant family. At
that time, it was a porn theatre. I like to watch. I have
always been fascinated by the cinema and the secretive,
voyeuristic pleasure I get from looking at people on
the screen. Since the basic condition of cinema is an
exchange between seeing and being seen – voyeurism
and its flip side, exhibitionism – I wanted to make a
film that explored these issues. In Variety, Christine
(Sandy McLeod) works in a porn theatre as a ticket-
seller. The film is set in the world of the voyeur. But. in
this case, the traditional male role is reversed: Christine
becomes obsessed with watching and following a male
client. Her obsession is, in a sense, pornographic.
Hitchcock had used the cool blonde female, always as
the object of the male gaze, the enigma – but Christine
usurps this position. She is the sleuth in a thriller whose
terrain is the language of desire.
As a visual artist and filmmaker who moved from
Boston to New York City in the eighties, I was attracted
to places like this: the underside of the city I’d seen in
movies like Sam Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953)
and Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948). I made the
city into a character with its own personality, glimpsed
through the garish night-time quality of Times Square;
the hyperreal overlit look of the Fulton Fish Market; or
the Yankee Stadium, which loomed like a backdrop in
a Hitchcock movie. Film noir was an appealing genre
for me, not only for its half-lit dark streets but also for
the female characters who possessed a dangerous and
intriguing sexuality – an unrestrained sense of female
sexuality. Hitchcock films including Vertigo (1958),
Rear Window (1954), and Psycho (1960) attracted me
because they possessed an obsessional quality – and
when it came to making my film, I decided to turn
the genre of the noir thriller on its head, presenting a
woman as the investigator and a man as the enigmatic
figure.
Variety is a film about looking. I used frames within
frames, windows, doorways and reflections in order to
visually capture the idea of looking and being looked at.
Influenced by Laura Mulvey’s essay, ‘Visual Pleasure
and Narrative Cinema’, I was drawn to the idea that a
56
cinema-based pleasure in looking is connected with the wanted to challenge the notion of sexuality
centrality of the image of the ‘female’. Men look and as a fixed identity and, in addressing my own
women are looked at. The film uses pornography as a sexuality with a voice other than censorship, to
backdrop to explore the themes of voyeurism, obsession use fantasy to investigate desire.
and desire through a noir-like story about a woman CNB – So in Variety, we see a woman’s look at
who dares look back. The subject of the film is desire the way the cinema looks at her?
(not pornography) and the heroine, Christine, acts out BG – Yes, I think that’s really crucial
the fears and fantasies of an entire generation of women and central. My film takes the leap of
coming to terms with their own sexual aggression and equating traditional mainstream cinema with
behaviour. Below is an interview I gave to Christine pornography. Both employ the voyeuristic mode
Noll Brinckmann, published in Frauen und Film, to exploit women as object of male fantasy and
Spring, 1984. I reviewed my answers, edited and added desire. It has to do with the pleasure of looking,
detail for Another Gaze. Brinckmann is a professor, which is central to all cinema. Being looked at
theorist and filmmaker living in Germany. and looking are two opposite ways in which the
cinema posits the representation of the female
image. To paraphrase Laura Mulvey’s essay:
CNB – How did pornography come to be a subject for women in cinema are to be looked at; they are
your first feature film? objects of the male look. In the classic narrative
a car and is accidentally killed. Men are not used to being the object of the look”
BG – In some ways, sexuality was the subject and thriller genre, the woman is pursued by a man
“In a blind attempt to escape her look, he runs outside, but he steps in front of
that was what led to pornography. A great deal of and is seen as spectacle, as a way to facilitate the
my work before Variety was concerned with sexuality man’s (usually a male detective) exploration of
and the representation of images of women. The idea woman as obstacle. In Vertigo, Jimmy Steward
of ‘looking’ was also crucial to my early short films, tries to make over Kim Novak into the image
but the emphasis was on the look of the viewer at the of the woman Kim Novak was playing – the
image. In Empty Suitcases (1981) the hypnotic gaze of wife. He re-makes her hair, her clothes, her
the viewer is deconstructed through the prefacing of makeup. Variety plays with reversing this
each shot with black. My work in pornography comes systematic situation. My character is not being
from my interest in cinema as a kind of object that made over by a man: she remakes herself. I
requires the viewer to take pleasure in looking at it, also set up situations where the vulnerability
rather than from the social interaction of women in this of the woman is established and intrusion and
culture who have talked about pornography as either victimisation is expected. Instead, the character
for or against it. I think the subject of pornography and crosses the limits of the situation, surveying the
sexuality in culture is more interesting than whether or man, reversing the norms of the genre. And yet
not it should be censored. I was not interested in the it’s more complicated than that because there’s
arguments against pornography that simply reduced a different relationship set up between the
sexism to sex, and used explicit sex to demonstrate woman and the man in my film. She’s curious,
explicit sexism. Pornography is not a monolithic she investigates, she finds out intimate details,
construction, and instead consists of a variety of and yet, for me, it is more about a quest for her
practices operating across various institutions, places own sexual identity than it is a quest for power.
and times, and is therefore open to intervention. I remember a Hollywood thriller where this
The codes and conventions can be interrupted; the dynamic of looking is part of the story. The
prevailing representations are not givens or natural woman in Phantom Lady (Robert Siodmak,
phenomena. For me, then, pornography was a means 1944) breaks a taboo by following a man into
of exploring desire and representation. I wanted to a club. She stares at him for such a long time
explore the gap between my sexual fantasy and my that he is totally unnerved by her look and
sexual identity, and in that gap there are a number proceeds to drop a bottle, and when she follows
of issues at the intersection of feminism and film. I him into the night, he is even more nervous.
57
In a blind attempt to escape her look, he runs
outside, but he steps in front of a car and is
accidentally killed. Men are not used to being
the object of the look.  

CNB – There is considerable restraint in
Variety to actually show the pornography that
figures so importantly in the plot. Other films that
tackle the subject – most notably and deplorably
Not A Love Story (Bonnie Sherr Klein, 1981)
– never seem to be able to get enough and they gloat
over their hardcore examples as if they were jewels.
Can you comment on your decision to show so little?
BG – When I first began to develop the
ideas for the film, I was attracted to having the
pornography spoken rather than see. On one
level, I thought that the audience would be
forced to imagine their own images rather than
simply watching already constructed images of
sexuality. Freud and Lacan stressed the relation
between language and sexual fantasy. Desire
is based on language in psychoanalytic
explanations of child development. I thought
that if the viewer had to imagine their own
images based on what was heard, they would
then be implicated more in developing their
own fantasies. I’ve always hoped to create a
more active spectator in my work, a spectator
who would have to participate in the film
process. Another principle at work for me (as
described in an article by Paul Willemen
in Screen)1 was that pornographic cinema
substitutes the look for the touch. Pornography Paul
offers representations that are incapable of Willeman,
‘Letter to
actually fulfilling the fantasies that they John’, in
generate within the viewer. While purporting The Sexual
to offer fantasy, it instead sustains desire for an Subject:
A Screen
ever-promised by never found gratification. I
Reader in
wanted to develop a story that would function Sexuality,
in the same way, creating that desire but not ed. by
satisfying it. So there are some brief moments Screen
Editorial
where we see what is on the screen in the Collective
cinema where Christine works, but these are (London:
clearly not reconstructed by me. I was trying Routledge,
1992),
to problematise those images within the pp.171-83
context of my story, always calling attention
to ‘watching’ and ‘looking’. Additionally, these
moments are dislocated from their original context and
are intentionally abstract. We see a shot of a gloved
hand on a part of the body, but are unable to determine
which part of the body. We see several shots of women’s
faces, that express pleasure and are involved in sex, but
we don’t see what is going on, just the face isolated
from the rest of the body. Initially, I intended to show
much more graphic and hardcore material, but the
more I looked at those images the less they intrigued
me. I ended up being attracted to the most ambiguous
shots from porn movies. Perhaps my own sexual desire
is aroused more by what I don’t see, what I imagine
than by what is too present, too visible.
CNB – Does Variety differentiate between male and
female sexual fantasy?
BG – Christine describes the porn movies she sees
to her boyfriend. The longer she works at the theatre,
the less her descriptions are about the movies and
more about her own imagination and fantasies – not
based on what she sees, but on what she wants to see.
Describing sexual fantasies is taboo in our culture, even
to those close to you. So I was also attracted to the
idea of Christine articulating her fantasies in public
to her boyfriend. It makes her boyfriend Mark feel
uncomfortable when she speaks this language of sex
and later he becomes anxious and leaves their lunch. In
scenes with Christine and Mark, he usually speaks first
and talks about his work, as a reporter and journalist.
When she speaks, it is almost like two monologues:
they don’t really speak to each other or communicate.
He is quiet, uncomfortable and often looks around to
see if anyone else can hear them. When presented with
her fantasies, he doesn’t understand, and asks: “Why
are you telling me this? Are you OK?” Christine
replies: “I’m telling you about my life.” On the third
encounter, he plays pinball and she speaks. He no
longer even tries to speak. He is silent. Her language
has taken over his. Similarly, in the first scene in the
porn store, when Christine enters an overwhelmingly
male terrain, all the men near her move away. Other
men are complicit, but a woman is not – she is supposed
to be the object of their look, or of their speech or jokes.
She is not supposed to be someone who looks in the
way they do. I don’t know if the film posits a difference
between male and female sexual fantasy. I don’t think
so. I think that the language of desire is male (and,
as we know, language is a patriarchal construction)
but that Christine’s articulation of sexual fantasy
represents a new and radical activity. The film suggests
that women, even in patriarchal culture, are active
agents who can interpret and utilise cultural symbols;
they are not just passive objects of those symbols. I am
interested in pornography as a site on which to explore
its lessons about desire and the kind of fantasies it
mobilises. Christine works on her own problems and
relationships by investigating her sexuality, her desire.
She takes pleasure in following, in looking. In fact, it
is precisely the gap between (my) sexual fantasy and
(my) sexual identity that interests me in this film. I
am absolutely not interested in creating a separate
or alternative feminist erotica, because this would
suggest a marginality – the “other place” outside of the
culture to which women have already been assigned. I
don’t want to maintain that outside-ness: I prefer to
challenge the existing culture from within. Christine’s
act of speaking out her sexuality challenges the role she
would have been assigned in representation, she would
be ‘spoken’, not speaking. The responses of audience
members to those sections of the film where Christine
speaks her sexual fantasies have been interesting. Some
men express discomfort while some women identify
strongly with Christine at these moments. I believe that
this discomfort is the result of a successful subversion
of the power structure.
CNB – The ending of Variety seems to be intentionally
ambiguous. What are the reasons for this?
BG – This ambiguity is essential to me because I
wanted to set up a narrative structure that would both
parallel and point to the structure of pornography, with
its offer of fantasy and denial of gratification. And,
more importantly, I wanted the viewer to continue the
investigation set up in the film, to provoke them into a
state of analysis and self-analysis. Actually, at the time
of the first screenings of Variety, the most controversial
aspect was not the inclusion of porn or the fact that the
filmmaker was embracing porn as a kind of expression.
More disturbing to people was the ending, which didn’t
provide an absolute conclusion. The dark empty street
at the end says that between desire and gratification
lies an empty space – but that this space is full of
possibilities.
From Bette Gordon’s ‘Variety’. Still by Nan Goldin
58

– We both like the same things. We’re parent and child. Are you
filming again? Give it a rest! Stop shooting me all the time!
– Why?
– Good memories, I suppose. I won’t die easily. I’ll live until 100.
I want to see your kids, see them at sports festivals. There’s no
limit to my wanting. I’ll inherit the years of my brothers who
died young. You are too close. Stop her, will you? Stop filming
me all the time.
“You are too close.” Home movies are often personal and always intimate, and
Katatsumori (1994), like filmmaker Naomi Kawase herself, presses close to her great-
aunt. What this film has at its disposal, above all else, it seems, is Naomi and her
aunt’s words of kindness – their affection for one another. And, if you listen less
carefully, you might (mis)hear, “you, too, are close.” Like her aunt’s brothers who died
young. Like cinema.
Naomi considers her aunt to be her mother, her guardian, and she, in turn, knows
that this is how it is: “We both like the same things. We’re parent and child.” Tightly
framed, Katatsumori seems to be drawn to cheeks, the curves that the fingers and eyes
caress. The film gauges the limits of intimacy, exposing where motherhood ends and
childhood begins. Or, rather, exposing what lies in-between, by positioning itself in
the middle of things (of bodies, subjectivities, affects).
To become unseen by a mother, writes Carol Mavor, is to descend into the
untranslatable.1
1. Carol Mavor, Black and Blue: The Bruising Passion of Camera Lucida, La Jetée,
Sans Soleil, and Hiroshima mon Amour, 2012, Duke University Press.
60
Filming too Close: Naomi Kawase
and a Care-full Filmic Gesture
by Sander Hölsgens
2
Naomi Kawase (b. 1969, Nara, Japan) studied at the Osaka School of Photography
and co-founded the Nara International Film Festival in 2010. Her more recent work
– including The Mourning Forest (Mogari no mori, 2007), Still the Water (Futatsume
no mado, 2014), and Radiance (Hikari, 2017) – has flourished at Cannes, while
her autobiographical home movies from the mid-nineties and early noughties have
found a modest audience online. They are now part of an ever-expanding archive of
independent films on YouTube.
Katatsumori (1994), See Heaven (Ten, mitake, 1995) and Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth
(Kya ka ra ba a, 2001) are tucked away in between vlogs and live streams, as though
they, too, cannot bear the weight of the projection screen. What these home movies
have in common, it seems, is a limitless yet inconclusive interest in memory, including
its capacity to preserve and forget both childhood and the ageing body.
Naomi Kawase and her great-aunt exist in the palm of my hand – her home movies
require time and space, but my phone is too precise and mathematical for their
indefinite cadence and unfixed tonality. (Their tenderness seems to be as expansive
as Youtube’s video archive). Maybe the projection screen and my phone are not
opposites, to paraphrase Carol Mavor, but rather each other’s lining – both incapable
of housing the fine texture of home movies.
61

3 hand is neither grasped nor clenched; her fingers the gentlest limit-points of her body.
– I never knew what it was like to live with the man who was my
father. In that case, where is my family? So I thought.
– Naomi, I don’t know how to ask you this… do you love me? Do
you still love me as much as I love you? You never say so, but…
Does Naomi get too close, touching her aunt’s ageing cheeks with both the tip of her
fingers and the optical lens of her 8mm video camera? (Or do home movies always
brush the margins of a tender-hearted form of being-too-close-with-others?)
Throughout her work, Naomi speaks to her aunt-mother with softness, as though
scared that she, too, will disappear – like the man she calls her father. She hasn’t
forgotten her father and finds his address and phone number via the Japanese family
register while filming for Sky, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth. When she calls him he asks:
“Where do you live now?”, “How did you find me?”, “How did you get my number?”,
“How old are you?”
64
4
There is no limit to her aunt’s desire to be close to her, and yet Naomi is too close.
The result of this proximity is disastrous for neither Naomi nor her aunt, for, here,
“you are too close” oscillates with “you are not close enough”. Both are close, seeing
and seen, and yet maintain the between of parent and child, the inevitable distance
between bodies, between hand and cheek
Perhaps the gesture of Naomi’s left hand tells her aunt what she cannot utter. Her
(Touch, here, punctuates the maternal, and echoes a sequence from No Home Movie
[2015], during which Chantal Akerman seems to brush her film camera against the
screen of her laptop – pressing close to the pixelated image of her mother. She, too, is
both too close and not close enough.)
The home movie is an exploration of distance. Jean-Luc Nancy writes in his Corpus:
“Two bodies can’t occupy the same place simultaneously. Therefore you and I are not
simultaneously in the place where I write, where you read, where I speak, where you
listen. No contact without displacement.”2
Eighteen minutes into Katatsumori, Naomi lets go of her camera, if only to be filmed
herself. Her aunt comes closer and closer to her, mimicking how Naomi has framed
and reframed her aunt throughout the home movie. Now, Naomi swaps places with
her aunt – as a video-body – while the latter moves and films her, perhaps too closely.
Naomi and her aunt both film and let themselves be filmed (caressed, and caressing)
– from a thin yet palpable distance.
2. Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus, 2008, New York: Fordham University Press
63
 by
Alice
Blackhurst Ordinary Devotion:
The Seduction of
Normalcy in Chantal
Akerman’s ‘No
Home Movie’

“There is poignancy in the islands of feeling that swell underneath the surface of the everyday”
Chantal Akerman’s final film, No Home Movie, opens with an image of a tree in the Israeli
1. For a seminal
account of Akerman’s desert, being buffeted by strong winds. The sequence – bracing, austere – is sustained for
‘hyperrealist’,
quotidian aesthetics, several minutes. It functions as a knowing epigram, deliberately isolating the viewer, warning
see Ivone Margulies,
Nothing Happens: them not to come too close. This is no home movie. The starkness of the opening sequence,
Chantal Akerman’s
Hyperrealist
together with the title, voices a concern with questions of displacement and exile, adding layers
Everyday (Durham, of disquiet to a film largely composed of personal footage and shot mainly in the confines of
NC: Duke University
Press, 1996). a relative’s apartment – in this case, that of Akerman’s mother, Natalia ‘Nelly’ Akerman, in
For an account central Brussels.
of Akerman’s
interweaving of the An alluring fascination with the everyday1 and an eagerness to document the ordinary
everyday through
questions of exile habits which inflect daily life: these have always infused Akerman’s film work, braided through
and displacement,
see Jonathan
her features like recurring laments. In No Home Movie these everyday realities are subtended
Rosenbaum, ‘Chantal by the shadow of the Holocaust, at which the opening sequence in Israel hints. Akerman’s
Akerman, The
Integrity of Exile mother Natalia, also known as Nelly, was an Auschwitz survivor. She was in her eighties
and the Everyday,’
LOLA Journal, Issue when No Home Movie was filmed, her health slowly deteriorating from a long, terminal illness.
2: Devils
Her fragile appearance testifies to the last throes of a life subjected to corrosive trauma, and
2. Akerman famously
makes reference to the film shows the banal routines and tasks involved in end-of-life care. Echoing techniques
her childhood status
as “un enfant avec
developed in Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), the
une histoire pleine de camera maintains a respectful distance from its maternal subject. Akerman never probes into
trous” (“a child with
a story that’s full of the specific diagnosis of Natalia’s illness, nor does she push for some kind of final revelation
holes”) in her 2004
hybrid photo-textual about her experience in Auschwitz. In an interview on the occasion of the film’s release,
autobiography,
Chantal Akerman: Akerman suggested that some of her early films – Jeanne Dielman included – arose as direct
Autoportrait en
Cinéaste (Paris: responses to her mother’s reticence to speak, and as attempts to compensate for a childhood
Editions Cahiers du
cinéma, 2004), p. 30.
“full of holes”.2 No Home Movie, she continued, was conceived as an experiment in paying
tribute to such gaps, and simply witnessing the rituals that prevent ordinary life from coming
3. See ‘Chantal
Akerman Discusses apart at the seams.3 In the same exchange, Akerman recounted how, during a film festival in
No Home Movie’,
Mubi Notebook, 17 Mexico to promote La folie Almayer (2011), she realised abruptly that “I could not speak on
August 2015 (Online)
[my mother’s] behalf, she was the only one who could speak, and if she didn’t want to speak,
4. Ibid, emphasis
original. that should be it.”4
5. On the ‘rigidity’
In No Home Movie, Akerman is unwilling to ventriloquise Nelly. Instead, she plays the role of
of such frameworks quiet observer, making space around her mother’s life, patiently recording its habitual patterns
within Akerman’s
filmography, see and silences. The rigorous formalism of her other films here gives way to a certain looseness of
Steven Jacobs,
‘Semiotics of the sequencing and softening of camera perspectives.5 There are shots taken on BlackBerry phones
Living Room:
Domestic Interiors in and hand-held cameras, often zooming in close, which modify the formal severity of Akerman’s
Chantal Akerman’s
Cinema,’ in Chantal signature frontal views. In her reading of No Home Movie, Ivone Margulies has seen Akerman’s
Akerman: Too Far,
Too Close (New York:
embrace of “the directness of the home movie form” as a template for understanding and
Ludion, 2012), p. 82.

64
 “In place of strict absolutes, ‘No Home Movie’ builds an imperfect monument to the ordinary”
introduction of actor Delphine Seyrig in Jeanne Dielman, this shot, unlike in that prior feature,
is not purposeful or choreographed. In its restrictedness and contingency, it grazes only the
surface of Natalia’s condition and its exterior symptoms, showing her in pain nursing her right
shoulder, and mumbling to no one in particular about it “getting dislocated”.
Though dislocation – signalled by the wind-ravaged tree and the capsized chair – characterises
No Home Movie’s narrative and aesthetic throughout its 115-minute running time, a sense of
12. In ‘The Close-Up:
fracture and the unexpected twisting of a life’s course is counterbalanced by a closeness between Scale and Detail
in the Cinema’,
mother and daughter of a degree unseen in the rest of Akerman’s oeuvre. In an article exploring Differences: A
Journal of Feminist
autobiographical innovations in Akerman’s work since 2011, Marion Schmid ventures that, Cultural Studies 14.3
(2003), pp. 89–111,
together with the photoessay Ma mère rit, the film constitutes the most defiant closing of the gap Doane writes of her

6. See Ivone
between lived experience and representation in her oeuvre.11 In one scene, Chantal and Nelly desire, for example,
to ‘treat the close-up
Margulies, take time and care to encourage each other to eat heartily at the kitchen table. In this dynamic synchronically rather
‘Elemental Akerman: than diachronically,
Inside and Outside of mutual mothering, there is an earthy focus on orality and the vernacular as they swap family as stasis, as
No Home Movie,’ resistance to
Film Quarterly, Vol. mapping anew “the intricate relationship of symbiosis and distance”6 between daughters stories and Yiddish proverbs. While some of the exchanges on first hearing come across as narrative linearity.’
70 No. 1, Fall 2016,
p. 63.
and their mothers. In this way, No Home Movie’s aesthetic of gauzy imperfection also platitudes (“Meat contains protein and builds muscle”; “You need to eat more than a banana!”) 13. See ‘Chantal
makes steps towards overcoming what Jacqueline Rose has termed the “deadly template” there is poignancy in the islands of feeling that swell underneath the surface of the everyday. Akerman on Jeanne
7. Jacqueline Rose, Dielman,’ Camera
‘Mothers,’ London of the mother’s “absolute devotion”, or the cultural expectation that mothers dedicate Chantal cannot always be in Brussels to attend to her mother; numerous Skype calls serve Obscura No. 2 (Fall
Review of Books, 1977), 118-121, 119,
Vol. 36 No. 12, 19 themselves to their children without reserve.7 In place of strict absolutes, No Home Movie as supplements to their face-to-face encounters. In the first of these, Nelly’s face, tender and where the aim is
June 2014, pp. stated ‘to avoid
17–22. Rose’s writing builds an imperfect monument to the ordinary, to what Akerman elsewhere has called inquisitive, is the first to appear on a glowing laptop screen before Chantal’s image, flanked by cutting the woman in
builds on Melanie a hundred pieces… to
Klein and Eve the “images between the images”: the everyday events which take place in kitchens or in the apparatus of her camera equipment, materialises in a second chat window. “She’s filming look carefully and be
Sedgwick’s theories of
maternity.
bathrooms, not usually subject to a camera’s view.8 The impulse to capture these images you!” an unidentified voice observes, in the background, to which Nelly chuckles and responds respectful.’

permeates both the intimate display of Nelly’s daily comings and goings and also several affectionately, still smiling through the webcam lens: “Always the camera”. Chantal justifies 14. See Griselda
8. In Ivone Pollock, ‘Mother
Margulies, disruptive sequences of abrasive desert landscapes, in Israel, which yank the spectator recording the encounter by saying that “I want to show that there is no more distance in the Trouble: The
Nothing Happens: Maternal-Feminine
Chantal Akerman’s out of over-proximate complicity with the film’s events. No Home Movie always denies world.’ Still, despite her intention, barriers emerge.. Nelly acknowledges that being recorded in Phallic and
Hyperrealist Feminist Theory
Aesthetics of the iconicity – after all, the Jewish faith, which Akerman frequently invokes in relation to her adds to her self-consciousness. “You have always these ideas, don’t you, sweetheart,” she says, in Relation to
Everyday, p.4. Bracha Ettinger’s
work, warns against such idolatrous traps.9 showing how she will always regard Chantal primarily as her daughter, independent of her status Elaboration of
9. See Chantal
Akerman, ‘Interview
Akerman’s mother’s life has appeared in a host of different ways in her films – as as a worldly auteur. Matrixial Ethics/
Aesthetics,’ Studies in
with Jean-Luc intensely choreographed, Ibsenian melodrama in her most famous work, Jeanne Dielman, In 2003, the film critic Mary Ann Doane described the close-up in film history not,- as it the Maternal, Vol. 1
Godard;’ “Jews have No. 1, 2009
a big problem with or as a distilled, epistolary presence in 1977’s portrait of urban asymmetry, News from is often thought of - as a fetishising construct but as a mode of distortion or defamiliarisation.
the image: you do 15. See Bracha L.
not have the right to Home. In I Don’t Belong Anywhere, a documentary made in 2015 by Marianne Lambert Indeed, it is striking that, as Nelly leans in closer to the camera and her features blur into pixels, Ettinger, Matrix-
make images, you Borderlines (Oxford:
are transgressing tracking Akerman’s self-imposed exile in New York, Paris and Israel following her she becomes less recognisable, less legible as an elderly woman or as a face, perceptible only as Museum of Modern
when you do, because Art, 1993), p. 12.
images are linked to mother’s death in April of the previous year, the filmmaker openly questions whether her a voice emanating from a screen.12 When she says to Chantal (who is trying to show off the
idolatry,” in Identity
and Memory: The
recursive and obsessive cinematic practice can be said to ‘be about’ any subject other than hat she has recently acquired) “I see only your hair”, technology becomes a sphere of intimate
Films of Chantal her mother. Echoing this pattern, and extending a career-long desire to draw lines around fallibility. The clunky procedure of the calls, and their awkward manipulations of bodies and
Akerman, Gwendolyn
Audrey Foster a life balanced on the fragile firmaments of silence, in the promotional materials to No spaces, remind us that the nearness enabled by new media is still error-prone, flawed. The
ed., trans. Janet
Bergstrom (London, Home Movie Akerman explicitly foregrounds that the film: reluctance of both Chantal and Nelly to end the call has parallels with Akerman’s preference,
SUI Press, 2001),
p. 94. “is above all about my mother, my mother who is no longer with us. About this woman who arrived across her oeuvre, for long takes and her avoidance of jump cuts, out of ‘respect,’ she has said,
10. Chantal in Belgium in 1938, fleeing Poland, the pogroms and the violence. This woman who is only ever for the women being filmed on the other side of her camera’s lens.13
Akerman, on the
occasion of No
seen inside her apartment […] A film about a world in motion that my mother does not see.”10 In her analysis of Bracha Ettinger’s work on the ‘maternal experience’ not as an essential or
Home Movie’s world After the lacerating wind of the opening sequence, the film’s view changes to a sunny natural category, but as a shifting space of human subjectivity and meaning, Griselda Pollock
premiere, Locarno
Film Festival, 2015. park in an unspecified location. The camera frames an elderly man sitting on a park argues that the mother-daughter relationship might be thought of as a series of:
11. See Marion bench with his shirt off, taking in the sun. This image, attending to a simple, sensuous transsubjective instances encountering each other across a shared matrixial borderspace. Forget
Schmid, ‘Self-
Portrait as Visual pleasure, is followed by a shot of Nelly’s back garden, seen from the vantage point of one wombs, insides and organs. Think instead of traces, vibrations and resonances, registered sonic
Artist: Chantal
Akerman’s Ma mère of the apartment’s windows. A blue lounge chair has been upturned on the grass. When and tactile intimations of othernesses, sharing space but never fusing, encountering but never
rit’, MLN, Vol. 131
No. 4, September
we finally encounter Nelly, she is with her back to a camera that has been installed in dissolving their boundaries, jointly eventing without ever knowing fully the other’s event.14
2016, pp. 1130–1147. the corner of a corridor, set up to record continuously. Although echoing the backwards Explaining this use of the term “matrix”, Ettinger herself clarifies how:
 I took the intrauterine meeting as a model for human situations and processes in which non-I
16. Susan Fraiman,
for example, is not an intruder, but a partner in difference. The Matrix reflects multiple and/or partial
has noted “the
tired binary that joint strata of subjectivity whose elements recognize each other without knowing each other.15
places femininity,
reproduction, and
No Home Movie affords filmic space to this unknowingness. It recognises that a life
normativity on one takes place on the fragile border between sickness and health, home and elsewhere, and
side and masculinity,
sexuality, and refuses to probe these lines. Rather than attempt to compress, quicken, or create tension
queer resistance on
the other” (cited in in its narrative with the tight cuts seen in popular cinema, No Home Movie accommodates
Maggie Nelson, The
Argonauts (New these ambiguities in screening both memorable and mundane encounters between Chantal
York: Graywolf
Press, 2015), p.30). and her mother. While the space they give each other is not always happily afforded, nor
17. See Mateus
evacuated of the occasional thrashings of the ego – Chantal frequently cuts short their
Araujo, trans. Mark Skype calls, telling her mother that she must work and can’t talk for long, and Nelly, in
Cohen, ‘Chantal
Akerman, between one telling conversation with a carer, expresses concerns that she “needs to leave [Chantal]
the mother and
the world,’ Film alone” – the tenderness that results from this imperfect relationship infuses each encounter.
Quarterly, Vol. 70
No. 1, Fall 2016 When Chantal is in Brussels, the meandering tours through the apartment she takes with
(pp.32-28).
her camera contrast visually with the mechanically steadfast gaze of the perma-installed to witnessing Nelly’s last months against the backdrop of which a kinetic and conflicted outside
18. Kathleen
Stewart, Ordinary
camera in the corner. In these tours we get a sense of Akerman’s unreserved affection for world sometimes ‘pops up’, through which Chantal and Nelly call into question fixed ideas of
Affects (Duke, Duke her mother, but also of a claustrophobic boredom that comes across in the occasionally what a mother-daughter dynamic has to look like.
University Press,
2007), p. 95. asymmetrical nature of their dialogues – “It was so nice to have you here.” “I haven’t No Home Movie furthers a politicised aesthetic fostered by Jeanne Dielman. It aims to bring the
19. Marion Schmid, left yet” – and the sometimes keen attention turned towards the lines of windows, doors, ignored arenas of women’s experience and the domestic into an unprecedented cinematic spotlight.
‘Self-Portrait as
Visual Artist: and corridors, bespeaking a desire for escape. Chantal’s delayed responses to her mother’s Within Akerman’s career-long effort to prove ordinary lives worthy of commemoration, it
Chantal Akerman’s
Ma mère rit,’ p. 1139. calls for attention from the lounge chair to which she is frequently confined find uncanny breaks new ground. Adamantly framing the banal gestures of washing, eating, taking medication
20. In her tribute
parallels in a sequence from Akerman’s Toute une nuit (1982), where a woman, played by a and attending medical appointments, it encompasses, as Schmid writes, “the viscous matter”
to Akerman, ‘Elle younger Nelly Akerman herself, stands outside the patio doors of a house, abandons herself of declining health without infringing on the dignity of its subject, Natalia Akerman.19 The
faisait confiance
en la vie’, in a to smoking a cigarette with pleasure, and ignores for a moment the whinges for attention of film’s pointillist, non-linear progression tapers in its closing moments towards what feels like a
special edition of
Cahiers du cinéma, a child. Melanie Klein coined the notion of a ‘good enough’ mother. But No Home Movie, unambiguous endpoint: Nelly’s apartment grows quietly emptier, and the final moments of her
Atherton recounts
how “Nothing was in its frank depiction of the pressures of care-taking and the need to delegate end-of-life suffering are protectively shielded from our view.
conceptualized, all
was there, one needed management to professional outsiders (two of Nelly’s carers making important appearances A week before the film’s premiere in London, Chantal Akerman took her own life in Paris. In
only to be attentive.”
(Claire Atherton,
within the film) introduces the spectre of the ‘good enough’ daughter. her poignant account of editing No Home Movie with Akerman, Claire Atherton – Akerman’s
‘Elle faisait In a conversation filmed with one of Nelly’s carers, a Mexican woman named Clara, longtime editor – said that this most personal of films entailed hours of simply “being with”
confiance en la vie,’
Cahiers du cinéma, near the end of No Home Movie, Chantal Akerman is asked: “And you never married? And the footage before any clear idea emerged of what to do with it.20 This approach, of being with
No. 716, November
2015, p. 91.) you don’t have children? Not at all?” These questions – seeking to determine the specific the image, with the world and with the mother, and of watching something flower into being
shape of Chantal’s difference, or the reasoning behind her choices in life– re-inscribe the without forcing or explicitly directing its path, is central to No Home Movie’s importance. It is
typical oppositions staged between queer artistic practice and family devotion. But this is as much a seduction into life and creativity as it is a sober reckoning with death. Before ending
a false antithesis that No Home Movie’s portrait of a frequently remote, yet still intimately on the final image of the vacant corridor where we first saw Nelly tending her painful shoulder,
functional, mother-daughter dialectic refuses.16 While stable ideas of home are frustrated by the film frames a shot of Chantal sitting on a single bed in the apartment’s guest room, hunched
the film’s frequent desert interludes, these interruptions always subside with a return to the over her feet, doing up her shoelaces. Previously cluttered with her things (cigarette lighters,
matrix of the Brussels apartment, in a movement of ongoing oscillation which positions the endless sheets of paper, a laptop), the room is explicit in its emptiness. This penultimate, almost
film, in Mateus Araujo’s formulation, as a pivot “between the mother and the world”.17 A child-like image suggests that, at root, No Home Movie is a film that questions whether cinema
push-pull dynamic – a hesitation between the desire to attend to one’s mother and the desire can function as a holding space for the ‘ordinary affects’ which accrue from the fraught feelings
to confront the abrasions of ongoing world events – does not allow voyeurism and disturbs generated in and by the home. In giving us a moment before we must painfully confront the
any fantasy of immersion. Lasting typically for five or six minutes, the desert sequences give evacuated corridor, it makes a final gesture towards nurturing both Akerman and us: making us
permission to the audience to let the film drift in and out of their attention, to carve some ready for the transition, bracing us for the step into the unknown.
space away from its otherwise taut, unsparing gaze. In her monograph Ordinary Affects,
Kathleen Stewart defines the ordinary as a “drifting immersion that watches and waits for
something to pop up”.18 In No Home Movie, it is this state, a patient and steadfast devotion

68 69
 by
Hannah
Paveck
Wandering across Frames:
Wandering
Moyra Davey and the
across Frames:
Feminist
Moyra Essay Film
Davey
and the
Feminist
Essay Film
In “Walking with Nandita,” an essay for documenta 14 composed of photographs and fragments of text, Ca-
nadian artist Moyra Davey traces the wandering trajectory of her thought as she travels from New York City
to Kolkata. Commissioned on the theme of “language or hunger,” Davey’s essay begins with writers and their
appetites – Virginia Woolf’s distaste for soup In ‘Walking
in “A Room of with Nandita’,
One’s Own”; Chantal Akerman an essay devouring fora bag

we choose to read or watch always re-orients us, leading us to new lines of connection or digression”
documenta
full of sugar as she writes14 composed
a letter in Je Tu of photographs
Il Elle (1975). As Davey recalls andthefragments of text,
letters of 19th-century British

“Davey’s mode of wandering lays bare the relational condition of her process of thinking: what
photographer Julia
Canadian MargaretMoyra
artist Cameron, Daveythe essay divertstraces to an earlier
the scene:
wandering a visit to thetrajectory
South Park Street
Cemetery
of her thought as she travels from New York City to Nandita”
in Kolkata, and the thread of connection that led Davey to Cameron. “Walking with Kolkata. follows
this thread – moving between Davey’s account of her travels in India alongside artist Nandita Raman, and her
Commissioned on the theme of “language or hunger”, Davey’s
reflections on Cameron’s colonial life and photographic practice. While travelling, Davey’s fleeting desires to
essay begins with writers and their appetites – Virginia Woolf’s
film are interrupted; “but I keep on walking,” she writes. For Davey, filming these images feels not only intrusive,
distaste
but mnemonically forineffectual:
soup a in way A RoomInstead,
of forgetting. of One’s Own
she takes digital (1929);
photographs Chantal
of empty spaces and
Akerman
inanimate objects, devouring
bodies capturedof at aadistance.
bag full Yet, theofformsugar of the as
essaysheregisterswrites her lover
these moments of poten-
a letter in Je Tu Il Elle (1975).
tial detour and diversion, recording the peripatetic movement of her thinking. The final fragment, ‘New York’,
looks back at this essayistic wandering, noting its diversion from the opening: the appetites of Virginia Woolf
As Davey recalls the letters of 19th-century British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, the
and Chantal Akerman. By way of explanation, Davey concludes, “but appetites get displaced. In my desire for
essay diverts to an earlier scene: a visit to the South Park Street Cemetery in Kolkata, and the thread
a narrative I followed a thread that began in the Kolkata cemetery, I came upon an archive, and cupidity drove
1. Moyra of connection that led Davey to Cameron. ‘Walking with Nandita’ follows this thread – moving
me to access its contents so that I could make images, take away something, fuel a story.” Four images follow,
Davey, between Davey’s account of her travels in India alongside artist Nandita Raman, and her reflections
“Walking with visualizing
on Cameron’s Davey’s trajectory:
colonial life anda sunrise on the practice.
photographic riverbanks of Varanasi;
While twoDavey’s
travelling, of Nandita Raman’s
fleeting photographs
desires to film
Nandita,” of the Kolkata cemetery; a women’s bathroom in The New York Public Library. In À la Francesca Woodman
South as a are interrupted; “but I keep on walking”, she writes. For Davey, filming these images feels not only
state of mind
(Nandita
intrusive,Raman, 2016), we seeineffectual:
but mnemonically the titular Nandita
a way ofinforgetting.
front of the cemetery’s
Instead, sepulchral
she takes digitalmonuments,
photographs running
of
8:3, 2017, as if to exit
empty theand
spaces frame. Her blurred
inanimate movement
objects, bodies evades
captured theatfixity of her own
a distance. Yet,photographic
the form of gaze, pointing
the essay beyond
registers
(Online) the
theselimits of the of
moments frame. “Walking
potential detour with
and Nandita”
diversion,endsrecording
not with the a conclusion,
peripateticbut with a movement
movement outward: a
of her thinking.
visual expansion of Davey’s essayistic wandering.
The final fragment, ‘New York’, looks back at this essayistic wandering, noting its diversion from
theThis mode ofthe
opening: wandering
appetitescuts across Moyra
of Virginia Woolf Davey’s
and work
Chantal in photography,
Akerman. By film,
way andofwriting. Born inDavey
explanation, Toronto
in 1958, and based in New York City, Davey has increasingly turned to the moving
concludes, “but appetites get displaced. In my desire for a narrative I followed a thread that began in the image, beginning with Fifty
Minutes cemetery,
Kolkata (2006). Shot overupon
I came threean years, and spanning
archive, and cupidityfiftydrove
minutesme(the standard
to access length ofsoa that
its contents psychoanalytic
I could
session),
make the film
images, takeunravels as a series of
away something, fuelvignettes
a story.”set
1 within the domestic interiors of the artist’s apartment.
Four images follow, visualising Davey’s trajectory: a
On-camera
sunrise or through
on the riverbanks voice-over, Daveytwo
of Varanasi; reflects upon the
of Nandita practicephotographs
Raman’s of reading, her of experience
the Kolkatawith psychoa-
cemetery;
nalysis, and the anxiety of a well-stocked fridge. A self-professed work
a women’s bathroom in The New York Public Library. In À la Francesca Woodman (Nandita Raman, of ‘autofiction’ (a form of fictionalized
autobiography),
2016), we see theFifty Minutes
titular Nanditaintroduces
in frontmanyof theofcemetery’s
the features that havemonuments,
sepulchral come to define Davey’s
running asapproach
if to exit to
filmmaking:
the frame. Her the blurred
self-reflexive voice-over;
movement evades thethe
fervent
fixitypractice
of her own of literary and filmic
photographic citation;
gaze, pointingthe attunement
beyond the to
the domestic
limits everyday;
of the frame. the mise-en-scène
‘Walking with Nandita’ of her
endsNewnot York
with apartment.
a conclusion, These features,
but with recurrentoutward:
a movement and re-im-
aagined
visualacross
expansion of Davey’s
her moving imageessayistic
works (six wandering.
to date), forge a connection with a distinctive mode of filmmaking
This mode
labelled of wandering
‘the essay film’. cuts across Moyra Davey’s work in photography, film, and writing. Born
in Often
Toronto in 1958, and based
defined with reference to inChris
New Marker’s
York City, Davey
Sans Soleilhas increasingly
(1983), the essayturned
film liestosomewhere
the movinginimage,between
beginning with Fifty Minutes (2006). Shot over three years, and spanning 50 minutes (the standard
length of a psychoanalytic session), the film unravels as a series of vignettes set within the domestic

71
 interiors of the artist’s apartment. On-camera or through voice-over, Davey reflects upon the practice the teenage Davey sisters are intercut with shots that linger on the spaces of the apartment, or the
of reading, her experience with psychoanalysis, and the anxiety of a well-stocked fridge. A self-professed view from its windows.

“The indirect and incidental become grounds for orientation: for both Davey and her spectator, it is the thread we follow”
work of ‘autofiction’ (a form of fictionalised autobiography), Fifty Minutes introduces many of the Les Goddesses largely avoids frontal, symmetrical composition; instead, we see the interior of the
features that have come to define Davey’s approach to filmmaking: the self-reflexive voice-over; the apartment from oblique angles, the contours of the space exposed: doors, corridors, sharp corners.
fervent practice of literary and filmic citation; the attunement to the domestic everyday; the mise-en- We try to orient ourselves within Davey’s apartment: the bedroom here, the living room there.
scène of her New York apartment. These features, recurrent and re-imagined across her moving image Yet, the movement of the camera, the fragmentary editing, and the shifts from close-up to partial
works (six to date), forge a connection with a distinctive mode of filmmaking labelled ‘the essay film’. views destabilise our sense of the space. Throughout the film, we glimpse the artist passing through
Often defined by reference to Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983), the essay film lies somewhere in different rooms, a peripatetic wandering across frames. Headphones in, tape recorder in hand,
between documentary, experimental cinema, and fiction. Characterised by a reflexive negotiation Davey paces as she repeats the recorded voice-over in flat intonation. When the ambient sound
of the relationship between the self and the world, the personal and the public, the essay film gives fades to a murmur, we hear the slight temporal lag between Davey’s original recorded voice, and its
visual form to a process of thinking typically reserved for the verbal register. By combining word, embodied repetition. Like her constant movement in space, the temporal layering of Davey’s voice-
image, and sound, the essay film creates new forms of expression. In The Essay Film: From Montaigne, over evades fixity and exposure. This evasion is brought into sharp relief by the film’s juxtaposition
After Marker, Timothy Corrigan situates the distinctiveness of this mode of filmmaking within its of the artist’s wandering, and the still photographs of the young Davey sisters. With matching white
literary heritage. In the essayistic, Corrigan argues, we find the, “figure of the self or subjectivity T-shirts and androgynous haircuts, they look directly at the spectator; I am moved by the force of
thinking in and through a public domain in all its historical, social, and cultural particulars. Essayistic their collective stare.
expression (as writing, as film, or as any other representational mode) thus demands both loss of In contrast, the artist positions herself incidentally within the frame: her gaze directed elsewhere,
self and the rethinking and remaking of the self.”2 With voice-overs that move in and out of first- her back towards the camera, her face fragmented or obscured in its distance from the lens. She
person narration, reflecting aloud on the construction and performance of the film’s (fictionalised) stumbles over her words. In Les Goddesses, Davey’s mode of wandering seems to be a strategy of
2. Timothy ‘I’, Davey’s essay films explicitly stage their relation to this literary tradition. One of her most navigation: between this act of self-exposure, and what she calls in the film, her “biographical
Corrigan,
The Essay
recent films, Notes on Blue (2015), takes Derek Jarman’s essay film Blue (1993) as its starting point, reticence”.
Film: From interweaving her own experience of partial blindness with passages from Jorge Luis Borges, Julia
Montaigne, Kristeva, and Sylvia Plath. While situating Davey within the tradition of the essay film, however, I “the shimmering, flickering grain of blue”
After Marker
want to take my own diversion in order to ask: what form does her thinking take? How does Davey’s Maggie Nelson’s Bluets (2009), Eugenie Brinkema’s article on Blue Is The Warmest Colour, Sander
(New York:
Oxford mode of wandering in her films – as thought and as activity – articulate a feminine aesthetic? How Hölsgens’s Blue Bluer (2017): the colour blue seems to invite a fragmentary form. Though less a
University can we consider Notes on Blue, Les Goddesses (2011) and Hemlock Forest (2016) in relation to what we phenomenology of colour, Davey’s Notes on Blue is no exception. Commissioned by the Walker Art
Press: 2011), might call ‘the feminist essay film’? Center, Minneapolis, and emerging out of Davey’s research within the archives of Derek Jarman,
p17.
Notes on Blue begins with the artist standing at the kitchen counter. We watch as she silently slips
3. Jessica a flâneuse of the interior off her black lace bra through the arm of her T-shirt, and walks off-frame. Her footsteps resonate
Weisberg, What I refer to as Davey’s mode of wandering recalls the ambulatory drift of Baudelairian flânerie, through the space. Cut to a lingering close-up at the boundaries of an entryway, the side of the
‘Can Self-
Exposure Be through the attention that it pays to the everyday. Attuned to detail and contingency, we follow doorframe bifurcating the view of the adjoined rooms. The grain of the earlier scene is now replaced
Private?’ The our curiosity through the city – the slow rhythm of walking punctuated by stops and starts; turns, by the clarity of high-definition. A pool of light collects in a yellowed gauze curtain. She wanders
New Yorker, detours, and diversions. Davey’s essay films transfer these patterns and rhythms of flânerie to the across the frame, out-of-focus; the proximity of the camera allows only a glimpse of her side profile.
May 2012,
(Online).
interior: the space of thought and the space of the home. In an interview with The New Yorker, Davey The sound of breathing intermingles with the indiscernible whisper of Davey’s recorded voice. “I
describes herself as a “flâneuse who never leaves her apartment”.3 The (im)possibility of the flâneuse began with a first note to myself. I made a list, but I’ll start in the middle,” she begins. Cut to a close-
4. Lauren in the city – whether her amplified visibility allows this mode of wandering – is contested terrain, up of her notebook: the camera adjusts to focus on a hand-written list of references and citations,
Elkin,
Flâneuse:
most recently reignited by Lauren Elkin in Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, from Bluets to Sylvia Plath. As she paces in and out of the frame, she speaks about Blue Ruin, a work
Women Walk Venice and London. Elkin argues that we cannot simply reduce the flâneuse to its masculine concept she abandoned the year before she went blind in one eye. We hear the faint sound of her recorded
the City in (a ‘female flâneur’); instead, we must think the concept anew from the basis of women’s experiences voice. Emanating from her headphones, it creates an echoic effect – a doubled voice. The film cuts
Paris, New
in and of the city. While a flânerie of the interior diverges in important ways from the flâneuse of back to the kitchen. We watch as Davey takes a blue bottle of gin from the fridge, and pours a glass.
York, Tokyo,
Venice and the city, Elkin’s description of Agnès Varda’s ‘cinematic flânerie’ resonates with Davey’s approach: Notes on Blue is oriented around Jarman – “the shimmering, flickering grain of blue” that
London. “her curiosity guides her; she follows whatever clues are laid down in front of her, so that her films, connects his film to Davey’s own diminished visual perception. The film pivots on this question of
(London: especially the documentaries, are often collections of observations and serendipitous encounters.”4 orientation, or in Davey’s terms “the disorientation of sightlessness”. Here, the shifting movement
Chatto and
Windus, The coincidental resemblances between philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughters, nicknamed of light and shadow amplifies the disorienting effect of the camera’s oblique angles, its focus on the
2016), p228. ‘the goddesses’, and Davey’s own sisters form the backdrop of her 2011 film, Les Goddesses. Composed apartment’s edges and contours. Walking through streams of light and pools of shadow, Davey’s
as a series of chapters, each circling around a different yet interconnected idea, the film follows the wandering moves between visibility and partial obscurity, exposure and evasion. Yet, in watching
layered, interruptive trajectories of her thinking – from Wollstonecraft to her photographic practice, and re-watching the film, I am struck most by the way the film draws attention to the ways in
Goethe’s Italian diaries to her diagnosis with MS. Black-and-white photographs from the eighties of which we orient ourselves: not simply towards the film, but towards others, spaces, texts and images.

72 73
 Davey’s mode of wandering lays bare the relational condition of her process of thinking: what we
choose to read or watch always re-orients us, leading us to new lines of connection or digression. Her
peripatetic movement throughout the apartment traces these lines bodily. Notes on Blue is far from
a tightly-woven argumentative essay. As I watch the film, the movement and openness of Davey’s
essayistic form begins to prompt my own wandering. The recurrent shot from Davey’s apartment
window – a Blueskin tarp covering the building next door – immediately recalls an image from
Bluets that I hadn’t realised I still remembered.
18. A warm afternoon in early spring, New York City. We went to the Chelsea Hotel to fuck. Afterward,
from the window of our room, I watched a blue tarp on a roof across the way flap in the wind.5

“derailed by Chantal Akerman”

Hemlock Forest begins and circles around a specific image: the subway scene in Chantal Akerman’s
News from Home (1977). Her voice layered over the ambient drone of the train, Davey describes the
5. Maggie
Nelson, Bluets anxiety she feels in her desire to recreate the scene. Later in the film, in repeated intervals, Davey’s
(Seattle: Wave own footage along ‘line 1’ punctuates her flânerie of the interior. Hemlock Forest revisits and reflects
Books, 2009). on Les Goddesses, turning toward the Davey sisters now through the prism of motherhood and loss.
6. Anne Having watched the two films back-to-back over two days in April, I begin Hemlock Forest with a
Eakin Moss, sense of the familiar. I recognise the lamp in the corner, the curtain in the living room window. The
“A Woman black-and-white photographs of the teenage Davey sisters, once filling the frame in Les Goddesses,
With A Movie
Camera:
are now filmed as material objects: pasted on the wall, or flicked through in close-up. The self-
Chantal reflexivity of Hemlock Forest extends across the film, interrogating its own construction to a greater
Akerman’s degree than her previous work. In one scene, we see Davey sprawled on her bed with her laptop and
Essay Films,”
recording equipment (now an iPhone). She begins to recite into the mic, reading from the screen.
in The
Essay Film: She stumbles on the words – and stops. The words repeat, this time as voice-over, now dislocated
Dialogue, from the image. Cut to an image of Akerman in Je Tu Il Elle (1975): horizontal on a mattress,
Politics,
hand-written pages lining the surrounding floor.
Utopia, ed.
Elizabeth ”I am now officially derailed by Chantal Akerman,” Davey announces, responding to news of
Papazian Akerman’s death. She shifts to direct address, speaking of/to Akerman with rising intensity: “I
and Caroline spend hours watching you online”; “I could listen to you forever.” Davey’s use of the “you” addresses
Eades (New
York and us dialogically, yet indirectly. Like in Les Goddesses and Notes on Blue, the indirect and incidental
Chichester: become grounds for orientation: for both Davey and her spectator, it is the thread we follow.
Columbia With its tendency towards self-reflexive questioning and dialogic relation with the spectator, the
University
Press, 2016), essay film is perhaps “the most feminist of filmmaking modes”6, Anne Eakin Moss polemically
p.167 proposes. The recent screening of Babette Mangolte’s The Camera: Je (1977) at the 2017 Essay
Film Festival in London, introduced by Laura Mulvey, points to the productive crossovers, yet
slipperiness of definition between feminist filmmaking and the essay film. While Akerman’s News
from Home and La Chambre (1972), as well as Varda’s The Gleaners and I (2000), are important
reference-points in contemporary essay filmmaking, we can also situate them within a different
lineage: the ‘feminist essay film’. Davey’s recurrent engagement with Akerman’s work explicitly
calls attention to this lineage. By expressing a mode of wandering, a flânerie through thought and
interior space, Moyra Davey’s essay films enable a way of thinking about the aesthetic possibilities
of this mode of filmmaking. Les Goddesses, Notes on Blue, and Hemlock Forest expose how we orient
ourselves around and towards others, spaces, texts, and images, articulating a feminist ethics of
‘being-with’ that leaves space for our own trajectory. To paraphrase Davey, we are always, “Walking Portrait of Elisabeth Subrin (b. 1965, USA),
with –.” a New York-based writer, director and video artist,
whose first narrative feature A Woman, A Part
focused on the emotional and physical exhaustion of an
actress. Subrin is the creator of the feminist film blog,
74 75 ‘Who Cares About Actresses’, and is currently
working on a film about Maria Schneider
 by
he cannot bear to see
Liena her terminally ill and
Vayzman is too poor to help her.
The lovers reunite and
then break up again.
By Act Four, Mimi
is alone again, dying
Feminist of consumption. And,
Film Noir: although her friends
try to help her, she
Sally Potter’s wastes away on her

Thriller and deathbed, singing of

her love for Rodolfo.
the Undoing Like other operatic

of La Bohème heroines, Mimi succumbs to a tragic end. Her dramatic death, one of the most famous scenes in opera,
marks the anguished finale of the La Bohème’s musical and narrative trajectory.
In Opera, or the Undoing of Women (1979), philoso- Marshalling the conventions of Hollywood film noir – dramatic lighting, black-and-white
cinematography, mystery – Potter analyses and deconstructs La Bohème, and by extension, critiques
pher Catherine Clément argues that “on the opera stage,
representations of women as victims in both opera and cinema. Thriller is structured as a murder
women perpetually sing their eternal undoing.”1 Floria mystery, but with Mimi investigating her own fate. At the opening of the film, a musical overture melds
Tosca in Verdi’s Tosca; Cio-Cio San in Puccini’s Madame audio of the La Scala recording of La Bohème’s deathbed crescendo from 1938 with the unnerving
Butterfly; Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor; Carmen; Isol- screeching sounds of the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), the film noir thriller par excellence.
de; Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello; Violetta in La Traviata Through this, Potter draws a clear parallel between Hollywood film noir and opera: both depend on the
– all perish or are otherwise ‘undone’ before the curtain victimisation of their female characters. The protagonist of the modern murder mystery in Thriller is
falls, dying, murdered, or driven to suicide or madness. Potter’s updated Mimi (Colette Laffont, who would later appear in Potter’s The Gold Diggers [1983]),
a woman of colour who speaks English with a heavy French accent, something that hints to several
1. Catherine In the conventions of European opera, a woman’s demise is culturally constructed as a predestined things. On the most obvious level, this is a reference to the opera’s French roots and Parisian setting
Clement, resolution of the opera’s narrative arc, in a “great masculine scheme… thought up to adore, and also (although the libretto is in Italian), but, going further, Potter’s casting also functions as a strategy of
Opera, or
the Undoing to kill, the feminine character”. As Clément demonstrates in her detailed plot analyses of operatic distancing through translation: a deconstruction of French colonialism through the choice of a French-
of Women. women: “they suffer, they cry, they die”. Puccini’s opera La Bohème embodies this “undoing of women”, accented woman of colour for the role of Mimi. Thriller is theoretically dense and Potter draws parallels
Translated by culminating in the death of the heroine by tuberculosis. Sally Potter’s experimental short film Thriller between several types of cinematic and historical exploitation. Mimi assesses her memories: “I’m trying
Betsy Wing,
University (1979) pits Mimi, the female protagonist of La Bohème, against the misogyny of opera’s narrative logic, to remember, to understand. There were some bodies on the floor. One of them is mine. Did I die? Was
of Minnesota creating a film noir that is considered a classic of feminist cinema. By reimagining the plot from Mimi’s I murdered? If so, who killed me, and why?”
Press, 1989. perspective, Thriller allows the opera’s heroine to question the patriarchal necessity of her tragic demise. Sally Potter staged Thriller in a threadbare brick-walled room, which reflects both the film’s small
“Was I murdered?” asks Mimi, speaking instead of singing. The film gives a subjective, feminist voice budget and the poverty of the characters. Mimi sits on a simple chair. A mirror hangs on a wall.

“Potter tears the opera to pieces”

to the opera’s doomed heroine.
Sketching the central story of La Bohème helps us grasp Potter’s subversion. Composed by Giacomo
Puccini with a libretto in Italian and debuted in Torino in 1896, it became one of the most popular
operas of all time. The opera adapted Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851), a romanticisation
of the lives of artists in Paris’s Latin Quarter. The plot goes like this: four bohemian artists huddle in
their cold attic loft in Paris on Christmas Eve, where they burn manuscripts to keep warm. Rodolfo, an
impoverished poet, stays behind while his buddies go out for a night on the town. Mimi, a poor young
seamstress – a role sung by famed sopranos from Maria Callas to Anna Netrebko – knocks on his door.
Her candle has gone out. She has dropped her keys. Rodolfo later finds her keys but doesn’t tell her, thus
forcing her to visit. Mimi is pale and sick. They fall in love, singing a passionate duet ending in “Amor!
Amor! Amor!” Meanwhile, in a lively cafe scene, the bohemians party with bad girl Musetta, a flirtatious
singer who helps the group skip out on their dinner bill. By Act Three, Rodolfo abandons Mimi because
Actors pretend to box, or lift Musetta in balletic arabesques across the room. The film quickly relates
the opera’s narrative via a bare-bones voiceover that ends with “Mimi dies”. But Potter’s Mimi refuses
to accept her fate: “Can these be the facts? ... Is this the story of my life? Was that the story of my
death?” Next, images of bodies on the floor are paired with more shower-scene screeches (again, from
Psycho) and the effect of this is intensified by the dramatic shadows of the black and white 16mm
cinematography, shot by Potter herself. The created effect? Crime scene. Mimi, the detective, looks in
the mirror for clues. Clue number one: she realises that Rodolfo hid her key to prolong her visit – that
is, to keep her from leaving (which, to contemporary ears, already sounds suspicious). Clue number two:
another woman flits through the film’s stage-like setting. Who is she?
Potter tears the opera to pieces. The visual narrative is first built up of still photos that Potter took of
her actors – something that calls to mind Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills from the late seventies
and early eighties, which similarly deconstructed the representation of women in cultural production –
sequenced in slow animation. Mimi deduces that the male bohemians were “making something” in their cold studio,
maybe art, maybe even the plot of an opera, and re-inscribes herself as the subject of the plot instead of its object.
“Would I have preferred to be the hero?” she asks as the film enacts a gender inversion, with Mimi balletically lifting
a tutu-clad Rodolfo. Throughout the film, dance provides a layer of meaning that complements or contradicts the
voice-over or on-screen narration. At the analytical crux of the film, Mimi reveals, in the third person, that “she was
searching for a theory that would explain her life... her death”. She reads Mallarmé and Marx aloud in French from
a thick book, while the other woman, who we learn is Musetta – the flirtatious bad girl singer who didn’t die – is
carried off stage. “Was she the victim also?” Mimi asks in regards to Musetta. A fleeting seductive caress is exchanged
between them. The intriguing interaction between Mimi and Musetta raises the possibility of a sort of sisterhood.
While in the opera both Mimi and Musetta consort with men as a strategy for survival in the face of their economic
victimhood, in Thriller an alternate, erotic connection between them is implied.
Thriller’s release in 1980 marked a high in feminist analysis of the gaze in British cinema and, by extension,
societal power relations. Key works of the era, including Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s Riddles of the Sphinx
(1977) tackled patriarchal ideas through theoretically rigorous investigations that countered dominant modes of
representation, in which women were simply objects of visual pleasure. In her essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema’ (1975), Laura Mulvey argues that film audiences take pleasure in female suffering. Likewise, Clément
and others point out that in opera, the death of the female characters is linked to auditory pleasure. Mimi’s death
scene in Puccini’s opera is accompanied by intensely beautiful orchestra music and virtuoso singing. Paradoxically,
the dramatic crux of opera encompasses both soaring musical heights and tragic narrative lows. The “undoing” of
women is both narratively necessary and musically climactic. Echoing the feminist film theorists of its moment,
Thriller critiques the stereotype of women as passive victim, utilising 1980s-vintage postmodernist appropriation and
deconstruction. In a mélange of critical theory, borrowed and staged imagery, mise-en-scène, strategic sound design
and dance-influenced staging, Potter’s cinematic apparition rewrites La Bohème as feminist film noir.
Repetition uncovers hidden layers of meaning. When Mimi curtly retells La Bohème a second time, we are
presented with a class-based analysis of Mimi’s status as producer. Mimi is recast as “a flower maker sewing satin
flowers… often until the early hours with a cold and a candle as companions. They produce stories to disguise how
I must produce their goods”. At this point, Potter inserts historic photos of needlewomen from England’s labour
history museum. Mimi dies of consumption – which is really tuberculosis, an endemic infectious disease of the
urban poor in the 19th and 20th centuries that caused nearly one in four deaths in Europe in the 1800s prior to the
advent of antibiotics and a vaccine. Thriller leads us to see that Mimi dies not of consumption but of production –
she is forced to produce the endless satin flowers whose scent she cannot enjoy, and her death is used to produce the
generative engine of the opera’s logic.
For me, the most poignant moment in the film is when Mimi imagines other options for herself, and Potter’s
script communicates frankly the unglamorous reality of a 19th-century French seamstress.“What if I hadn’t died?”
asks Thriller’s Mimi; “Without my death, my love with Rodolfo might have bore children. I would have become a
mother. I would have had to work even harder to give them food... And if they had let me live, I would have become
an old woman and an old seamstress would not be considered the proper subject of a love story.” The film deftly
unpacks how the heroine is required to be young, single, and vulnerable with a death that serves the interests of the
hero’s grief-fuelled self-posturing, fulfilling patriarchy’s skewed logic. The final verdict? “Yes, it was murder,” Mimi’s
heavy French accent declares with solemn finality.
The other shadowy loss brought to light in Thriller is that of Musetta (Rose English), whose pale white face lurks
in the mirror, or is glimpsed as she is carried off by the two male artists, Rodolfo and Marcello. Although Musetta
remains alive in La Bohème, the regret for Potter’s Mimi is the lost possibility of a feminist or lesbian connection
between the two women: “We never got to know each other. We could have loved each other,” says Mimi. As the
imaginary curtain drops on Thriller, Mimi and Musetta – both alive – embrace silently in the closing shot: a glimmer Stills from Sally Potter’s Thriller, courtesy of Adventure Pictures
of an alternate, queer, revisionist, utopian vision of the opera’s ending.

78
 by
Lucie
Elliott Kathleen Conwell
Collins Prettyman was born in Jersey
City in 1942, and died in New York in

“Collins’s collection of work moves through realms of melancholy, sexuality, and the shifting constructs of Black identity”
1988 at the age of 46 from metastatic
breast cancer. As one of the first
Black female filmmakers to write and
direct a narrative feature film, Collins
achieved a great deal in a short space
of time. Losing Ground (1982) was
made against a political and cultural
landscape designed to, at best, ignore,
and, at worst, prevent Black women
from attaining positions of power.

Kathleen Conwell Collins Prettyman was born in
Jersey City in 1942, and died in New York in 1988
at the age of 46 from metastatic breast cancer. As
one of the first Black female filmmakers to write and
direct a narrative feature film, Collins achieved a great
deal in a short space of time. Losing Ground (1982)
was made against a political and cultural landscape
designed to, at best, ignore, and, at worst, prevent
Black women from attaining positions of power. In
an interview with David Nicholson for Black Film
Review, Collins spoke about the difficulties she faced
when trying to make her own films: “Nobody would
give any money to a black woman to direct a film. It
was probably the most discouraging time of my life.1”
Once Collins did manage to make her own films she
faced endless challenges from distributors who felt
audiences wouldn’t be interested in the ‘niche’ content
of her films. Ronald K. Gray, the cinematographer
for Losing Ground (her first and only feature) explains
Expansive Territories: this negative response thus: “Art houses wouldn’t take
Collins taught as a professor in film history at City
College in New York. She was also a French teacher,
an established playwright, an editor and writer, a
mother of three, and an independent filmmaker.
She applied much of her own lived experience to her
work, recording bouts of depression, failed marriages,
impotence, interracial relationships, and creative
turmoil. Her small but radical oeuvre, full of potential
and insight, was tragically cut short by her illness,
and as a result Collins never lived to see her work
garner much traction. Losing Ground was restored and
commercially released for the first time by Milestone
Films in 2015, and a collection of her short stories,
titled Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?, was
published by Granta last year. The revival of her
corpus is largely due to her daughter, Nina Collins,
without whom most of Collins’s work might still be
unrecovered, facing near-disappearance.
Losing Ground explores the marital malaise of a
middle-class Black couple from New York: Sara is

Remembering Kathleen Collins it because they didn’t know what audiences it would
attract. Even in Europe, in Amiens [France] for
example, the audience – at least some – didn’t respond
positively because there was no ghetto in the film, no
‘poor suffering black folk’.”
Her own life also ran counter to these stereotypes.
an academic professor played by Seret Scott, and her
husband Victor, played by Bill Gunn, an abstract
painter. The film is comprised entirely of African
American characters with a supporting cast of Puerto
Rican characters. The portrayal of African American
intellectuals and creatives is itself unusual and

81
rarely seen. Collins depicts these characters without
succumbing to caricature or bombast and as a result,
provides an alternative narrative of nuance and
inclusivity. Despite the absence of white characters,
Losing Ground’s primary subject is not race. By
circumventing race as a central narrative Collins
subverts the expectation for a Black woman director
to make a film primarily about race and, as such,
the film resists classification. Collins’s collection of
work moves through realms of melancholy, sexuality,
and the shifting constructs of Black identity. Her
peripatetic characters negotiate their identities from
classrooms to bedrooms and through the spaces
between, often questioning the importance of race,
the possibility of self-definition, and transcultural
freedom.
Challenging perceptions of racial identity and
authenticity is now often filed under the heading
of identity politics or ‘transculturality’. For Collins
to be making art that scrutinised these issues in the
seventies was extremely progressive. Her writing
often feels strikingly contemporary. Now more
than ever there is a demand from both artists and
audiences for these alternative narratives to exist, and
they are starting to emerge. ABC’s television series
Black-ish (2014), for example, follows a middle-class
African American family: the Johnsons. The show
explores issues of race in America, challenging what
Black familial experience looks like. The traditional
paradigms through which Black characters have
been able to express themselves have historically been
rigid and narrow: both the maudlin slave narrative
and a version of ghettoised poverty porn continue to
dominate in mainstream television and film. Black-
ish complicates these binaries, asking penetrating
questions about cultural assimilation and identity,
and poking fun at those looking to homogenise Black
characters and their experiences. This seems timely
and appropriate now, but Collins was too early:
her work was deemed too recondite and niche for
mainstream audiences.
In the central story of Losing Ground, Victor sells
one of his paintings to a major gallery for the first
time, and this inspires him to spend the summer in a
village in upstate New York. Once there, he becomes
infatuated by the landscape and the resident Puerto it deserves. Her recently
Rican women; one woman, named Celia, comes to published Whatever Happened
the fore as both the subject of his art and the object of to Interracial Love? conjures
his affection. Sara, meanwhile, splits her time between a multifaceted portrait of
the summer house and the city, where she continues Black female interiority that
her treatise on aesthetics and the pursuit of ecstasy. has rarely before been seen.
Feeling ignored and marginalised in her marriage, The stories depict a landscape
Sara agrees to act in a student film, a vaudevillian re- of melancholy, interracial
enactment of an old folk ballad, ‘Frankie and Johnny’. relationships and urban
The ballad tells the story of a woman who kills her alienation (her stories, much
husband after discovering he is having an affair. It is like her films, are largely set
in the metafictional narrative that Sara, playing the in New York). The collection
experience it for herself: “Nothing I do leads
part of Frankie, is able to lose herself to herself in a is cinematic in content and in form: many of
to ecstasy”. Her introspection is a marked
moment of transcendence. The double narrative offers the stories are located on film sets, or written in
contrast with her husband Victor’s extroverted,
an alternative ending and identity for Sara, in which the style of a film script, and the language itself
chauvinistic character. Victor is freely able
she can find freedom and passion through artistic also has a movie-like quality. Collins described
to experience ecstasy: he exercises freedom of
Despite the absence of white characters, Losing Ground’s primary subject is not race.
expression and performance. herself first and foremost as a writer, but also as
expression through painting and he acts without
In a tribute to Kathleen Collins from 1989, a “literary filmmaker” looking to “find a filmic
responsibility or consideration for those around
American filmmaker and academic Michelle Parkerson language of [her] own”, an objective that can be
him, specifically his wife, “You stay in a trance,
confirmed that the phenomenon of African American traced in both her writing and filmmaking. The
you ever notice that? A kind of private ecstatic
women directing feature films still remained a rarity. literary language of Losing Ground is verbose
trance; it’s like living with a musician who sits
Parkerson describes Collins as a mentor to the small and often stylised, layered with metaphor and
around all day blowing his horn”. Feminist
but fertile community of Black women filmmakers: symbolism and full of discursive fluidity. It
film critic and theorist Geeta Ramanathan
“She was among the first generation of Black female could be argued that the meandering plot is
discusses the authority of female desire in
directors breaching the ‘inner sanctum’ of feature secondary to the characterisation, which is
Desire and Female Subjectivity and suggests
film production”. Revered by her contemporaries what really drives the narrative. Collins often
that “Losing Ground moves towards recording
and students, Collins was a forerunner of alternative cited Eric Rohmer as “the only person who’s
women’s desires with reference to the male
independent African American filmmaking, and ever influenced me cinematically”, and parallels
articulation of desire, but not in connection
Parkerson goes on to assert that “Losing Ground have been drawn between Losing Ground and
with their fulfilment; the discourse of desire
paved the way for dramatic work in cinema from Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s (Ma Nuit chez
being cast in terms of the creative endeavours.”
the black female perspective”. Collins’s film is now Maud, 1969).
It is through Sara’s transition from the denial
considered the antecedent to Julie Dash’s Daughters The opening scene of Losing Ground shows
of chaos to the acceptance of chaos that she
of the Dust (1991), the first narrative feature directed Sara in a lecture theatre addressing a classroom
is able to find a creative expression for herself
by a Black woman to be commercially released to full of students: her hair is pulled back, with
through performance. This reinforces the film’s
wider audiences. Unfortunately, the trajectory for her glasses covering most of her face. Sara’s
surprising embrace of Black female creativity, its
Black women filmmakers has not risen steadily: the physical composure is mirrored emotionally
refusal to capitulate to the male gaze, the white
absence of representation and inclusivity within the and creatively: “Order. That’s what Victor loves
gaze. Losing Ground presents an empowering
film industry speaks volumes about female visibility. about me. No chaos anywhere.” This sentiment
image of a Black woman engaged in intellectual
Women in film are under-represented both off- and is later echoed and ironised in a lecture that
discussion in a position of power at an academic
on-screen, and Collins’s career evidences the two-fold Sara gives on existential aesthetics: “The natural
institution, achingly frustrated by her creative
tribulations faced when making art as a woman of order, if there is such a thing, has been violated.
impotence.
colour: her film, difficult to make, has subsequently Chaos exists. As a physical and emotional fact”.
In Losing Ground, Sara is almost invisible to
been forgotten. Sara researches academic and philosophical
Victor, nor does he take her academic pursuits
It’s only in the last three years that any of Collins’s viewpoints but feels the limitations of writing
seriously. “If I did something artistic, like
work has received the exposure and admiration that on the pursuit of ecstasy when she is unable to
write or act, would that get me a little more
82 83
 “Collins was too early: her work was deemed too recondite and niche for mainstream audiences”
consideration?” Sara asks, considering how her professional endeavours are rendered
invisible and eclipsed by Victor’s artistic pursuits. Gradually, Sara’s appearance becomes
more vibrant and relaxed – the prim white blouse gives way to a delicate pink slip. By the
film’s coda, Sara appears in direct contrast to the image of herself in the opening scene:
Works Cited: she wears a luminous pink-purple leotard and skirt ensemble, her hair is dishevelled,
Kenya Barris, and her makeup smeared across her face. She stands alone, pointing a gun toward the
Black-ish. ABC
Studios: USA. 2014. camera, on her new stage: the vast, abandoned, derelict car park. It is here that Sara
Television.
explores the possibility of experiencing her own excruciating ecstasy and her sexual
Kathleen Collins,
agency. In ancient Greek, ekstasis is to stand outside – in mythology it came to signify
SECTION FOUR
Losing Ground,
16mm. Piermont: moments when a door into one’s soul opens up, fostering an intensity of feeling or an
New York. 1982.
Film. expanded state of being; to stand outside oneself. In her performance, Sara is able to play SOUNDS AND
Julie Dash,
Daughter’s of
with her identity. The more she does this, the more she finds herself on “shaky ground”, V I S I O N S
the Dust, as she confesses to her mother in the penultimate scene of the film. The metafictional
Kino International:
USA. 1991. Film. narrative gradually merges with the central narrative, and the marital strife in Sara’s
Phyllis Rauch
life is mirrored clearly in the film-within-a-film. The embedded narrative is displayed via
Klotman. the form of dance, without speech, accentuating the visual aesthetics of scenes. Painterly
Screenplays of the
African American cinematography and lighting create euphoric dream-like visuals as Collins forges unique
Experience. Indiana
University Press: and sensory ways of replicating inner life.
Bloomington. 1991.
Online. The absence of speech in these scenes emphasises the rest of the film’s erudite and
David Nicholson,
cerebral discourse. Losing Ground is knowingly self-aware; characters casually and
A Conversation flippantly tease one another about racial excuses and ethnic humour. Sara’s mother,
with Kathleen
Collins Prettyman: Leila, is an actor appearing in a “thoroughly coloured play – we sing, we dance”. When
Black Film Review
5, No1, (Winter Victor asks what her ideal role would be, she responds, “I’m not a snob really, I don’t
1988.89). Web.
long to do Macbeth. I would like to do a real sixty-year-old negro lady, who thinks more
Michelle Parkerson,
Remembering
about men than God”. This is followed by Leila asking Sara to write a play about her
Kathleen Collins: life, to which Sara responds, laughing: “nobody would believe it’s about a real person,
Black Film Review
5, No.1, (Winter it’s too eccentric!” These candid, self-reflexive moments suggest that Collins knew the
1988/89). Online.
kind of categorical demands she would likely face from distributors and audiences alike.
Geeta
Ramanathan, But, in spite of this, she stayed true to her ambitions. It is exactly this kind of gumption
‘Desire and Female
Subjectivity’ :
that makes Collins so inspiring: the breadth of vision that allowed her to see beyond
Feminist Auteurs: normative binaries and to create the art that she wanted, one that replicated the reality
Reading Women’s
Film. Wallflower: of her own and others’ lived experience. Collins worked beyond the confines of gender
London, 2006. Print.
and race, but she also knew the importance of pushing to create a level playing field. She
was light years ahead of everyone else.

84
 by
Anna
Coatman

Dunbar always seems to be framed by a scuffed brick wall, or a dingy stairwell.

In May of last year, I attended the 30th anniversary screening of Alan

It’s notable that in documentaries, news reports and photographs from the time,
Clarke’s Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987) at the British Film Institute in
London. The film is adapted from two plays by Andrea Dunbar and
follows two schoolgirls from a rundown, Bradford council estate,
as they embark on a sexual relationship with an older, married man.
With the tagline, ‘Thatcher’s Britain with her knickers down’, it’s not
surprising that Clarke’s film divided opinion when it premiered.
While some saw a defiant, irreverent depiction of a contemporary working class community,
others complained that it was crude, sensationalist and unrealistic. The audience at the
anniversary screening were clearly from the former camp. The atmosphere in the packed-out
cinema was celebratory: people laughed throughout and clapped rapturously as the credits rolled.
And the members of the cast and crew who took part in the panel discussion afterwards seemed
delighted to be there.
And yet, as I sat on the bus home that night, I felt uneasy. A couple of weeks earlier, I had
rewatched the film alone, on my laptop. I had not felt like laughing then. There were a lot
of things I liked about the film, including the relationship between Rita and Sue (portrayed
brilliantly by Siobhan Finneran and Michelle Holmes), and the way in which these protagonists
are determined to squeeze all of the fun they can out of life, in spite of everything and everyone.
But I felt uncomfortable with another aspect: namely the predatory nature of Bob’s seduction – if
we can call it that – of the girls, and the way this seems to be passed off as a joke in the film. Why
was the problematic relationship at the heart of Rita, Sue and Bob Too seen as being acceptable,
and even amusing, in the eighties? And why were we still laughing along in 2017?
Now, it seems, the laughter might have finally stopped. In December, the Royal Court cancelled
its production of Rita, Sue and Bob Too, in light of allegations concerning its original co-director,
Max Stafford-Clark – and following a Day of Action organised by the theatre’s current artistic
director, Vicky Featherstone, in response to the Weinstein scandal. In a statement, the Royal
Court and the Out of Joint theatre company explained: “On our stage we recently heard 150

“My View Not Their View”: stories of sexual harassment and abuse and therefore the staging of this work, with its themes of
grooming and abuses of power on young women, on that same stage now feels highly conflictual.”

The Rewriting of The decision was quickly reversed following outcry in the press and social media, but the whole
affair will undoubtedly change the way the play – on which Clarke’s film is largely based – is
Andrea Dunbar’s Story viewed. Those themes were always there, plain for all to see. Only now, it seems, are we actually
seeing them. If she were around today, what would Dunbar make of it all?
Stafford-Clark ‘discovered’ Dunbar in 1980, when he was artistic director of the Royal Court.
She was 19 at the time, pregnant, living in a refuge for ‘battered women’, and had decided to
enter a play she had written when she was 15 into a national writing competition organised by

86 87
the theatre. The Arbor – a play named after Dunbar’s own street – was staged later that year. “A full-length balcony, bobbing his knees and shouting things like: “Send ‘em on Manningham Lane [the red light
version of The Arbor existed in my head,” Stafford-Clark later commented, “but I wasn’t altogether certain district in Bradford]. It’s the best place for ‘em!”
the same play occupied Andrea’s thoughts.” Dunbar’s debut was a success, with the dramatist and screenwriter Dunbar was quick-witted and deadpan, and the plays from which she derived the film’s screenplay
Shelagh Delaney (herself a working glass prodigy from ‘the north’) describing her as “a genius straight from – The Arbor (1980) and Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1982) – are full of her dry sense of humour. But this
the slums with black teeth and a brilliant smile”. Delaney was using her own artistic license here: Dunbar did humour is of a different, quieter sort than that found in the film itself. The difference is perceptible
not have black teeth, or a particularly brilliant smile. She did, however, have scars on her face from when she in a notorious scene that features in both the original version of Rita, Sue and Bob Too and the film:
fell (or was pushed) through a glass door, strawberry blonde hair, worried eyes and a stubborn jaw. Bob (George Costigan) drives the girls home, taking a detour over the Yorkshire Moors to have
In any case, the tagline stuck, and understandably so. Dunbar had never even set foot in a theatre when she sex with them in his car, one after the other. In this scene, the dialogue in the film is lifted directly
wrote her first play; her raw talent came as a surprise to her as much as everybody else. “I stumbled across it from the play.
by accident,” she explained. “I didn’t actually know I could write, nor did I know I ever would.” And so she Bob Are you both a virgin?
was hailed as a kind of miracle, or anomaly. The trouble with this idea, as Dunbar herself pointed out, is that Sue What do you want to know for?

unintentionally – connected to being young, female and working class”

it underplays the likelihood that there have always been innumerable “geniuses” in the “slums”, though few of Bob Just curious, that’s all. Well are you?
them ever been discovered. “Other people haven’t had the opportunity,” she noted. Rita You’re nosy aren’t you?

“Framed this way, sexual licentiousness is subtly – probably

Dunbar is woefully underappreciated, though interest in her has been growing again recently, with the Bob Nosy no. Curious yes. I often wonder what young lasses get up to nowadays.
rerelease of Rita, Sue and Bob Too on DVD, the (fraught) restaging of her play, and the publication of Adelle Sue Well that’s not much. ‘Cause there’s never nowt to do around here.
Stripe’s, Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile (2017), a novel based on the playwright’s life. During her lifetime, she Bob You haven’t answered my question. Are you or not?
was known for writing about her own experiences, which included teenage pregnancy, poverty, domestic abuse Rita Yes, we both are.
and alcoholism. Her honesty made her reputation, but it also made her life even harder. Bob Oh.
Throughout her short career, Dunbar was forced to defend her work against hostile critics, and some of When reading these lines, Bob comes across as creepy and coercive. Rita and Sue respond sassily,
her own neighbours, who were angry at the notoriety that Rita, Sue and Bob Too brought to their estate (the but their sass could well be a strategy for masking uncertainty and fear, as much as amusement, or
Bradford Tourist Board even waded in, accusing the film of painting a “slummy, fake” picture of the city). In excitement. The (written) play leaves room for these ambiguities but the film makes its own call.
a BBC Arena documentary broadcast in 1980, Dunbar insisted, forcefully: “I’ve got to see it as I want to see As the above exchange is volleyed between the threesome, the camera switches back and forth from
it and not as they see it. My view, not their view.” Bob’s amused eyes in the rear view mirror, to the knowing smirks that pass between Rita and Sue.
It’s notable that in documentaries, news reports and photographs from the time, Dunbar always seems to It’s all a joke, the eyes are saying. The scene descends into slapstick, as Bob struggles to arrange the
be framed by a scuffed brick wall, or a dingy stairwell. Or else she’s drinking in a pub, or pushing a pram. girls’ limbs on his reclining car seat. In the dark of the cinema at the BFI, the audience roared with
This is not how other playwrights, artists or intellectuals usually tend to be shown (although there have been laughter.
rare exceptions such as Delaney, herself a working class ‘prodigy’, often shown walking among the soot-stained In the play, Rita winds up having a baby and marrying Bob. Her friendship with Sue falls apart,
terraces of Salford). Though well meaning, there was undoubtedly a kind of othering going on here. The other though she names her daughter after her. At the very end, Sue’s mother and Bob’s ex wife come
being the northern, the poor, the young, the female. It’s as though Dunbar could only be understood within together in solidarity, the former declaring: “All fellas do the dirty on you sometime or other. Only
this specific context. Rather than being about her life, Dunbar’s work came to be seen as a commentary about let them come on your conditions and stick to them. Don’t let them mess you around.” But the film
working class life in general. ends differently – with a kind of punch line, though it is unclear whom the joke’s on. In the final
Dunbar’s modest fame peaked with the film version of Rita, Sue scene, Bob literally jumps back into bed with both Rita and Sue.
and Bob Too. Over the years, it has acquired the status of a cult What did Dunbar make of Clarke’s adaptation? She wrote the script, and in the discussion at
classic, not least because of the way it bucked the trend for cinema the BFI, the members of the panel described how she was on-set everyday (she lived there, after all),
featuring working class characters. Tired of seeing depressing social providing directions and throwing in the odd bit of improvised dialogue when called upon. They
realist films about how grim it was ‘up north’, Clarke wanted gave the impression that the playwright was an integral part of the filming process, despite being
to make an upbeat, light-hearted alternative. As I discovered intimidatingly “hard, tough” and down the pub every evening. Yet, according to Stafford-Clark, she
during the panel discussion after the BFI screening, many of the was unhappy with the way the film turned out. Writing in 2000, he recounted that when Dunbar saw
characters and extras in Clarke’s film were played by residents of how the film ended she commented: “That would never have happened.” In light of the revelations
the Buttershaw – the council estate where the film was shot and about Stafford-Clark, you have to wonder whether Dunbar felt similarly uncomfortable with how
where Dunbar lived almost all her life – and many of them were her plays turned out under his supervision (“It weren’t so funny when it was happening,” she’s said
involved in the local working men’s club comedy circuit. This, in to have protested during a rehearsal for The Arbor.) It’s tragedy that’s she’s not around to tell us.
part, accounts for the peculiar, bawdy tone of the film. There are Dunbar only went on to write one further work after Rita, Sue and Bob Too – Shirley, about a
scenes in which the locals make cameo-like appearances – such as mother and daughter relationship. She died of a brain haemorrhage in 1990, aged just 29. Having
one towards the end where Bob’s wife (Lesley Sharp) confronts Rita complained of headaches for weeks, she collapsed in her local pub and could not be revived. She
and Sue outside Sue’s house. An old man with a combover (Danny left behind three children – Lorraine, Lisa and Andrew – and a couple of plastic bags worth of
O’Dea, a ‘funnyman’ with a background in music hall theatre), unfinished work: the beginnings of a novel adaptation and an outline for another play.
performs a kind of comedy skit commentary from his overlooking Clarke – like Stafford-Clark before him, and several others after – had been fascinated by Dunbar,
and saw her work as an opportunity to make
his own broader points about the state of
society. And perhaps because he was eager
to avoid censoriousness, condescension or
moral judgment – and perhaps because he
didn’t want to make another film about
social problems, per se – he seems to have
gone out of his way to show how free from
any sense of shame Rita and Sue are, and
how they enjoy “shagging” as much as
Bob does. Bob’s upwardly mobile wife, on
the other hand, is pitted against the girls,
subtly mocked for being cold and frigid,
only willing to have sex with the lights off. Framed this way, sexual licentiousness is subtly – probably
unintentionally – connected to being young, female and working class.
In one particularly troubling scene in Clarke’s film, Bob appears on a hill overlooking the school
grounds, where Rita and Sue are playing tennis in their white PE kits, flashing their knickers. We,
the viewer, are encouraged to laugh along as the girls desperately try to get out of their lesson so that
they can go “for a drive” with Bob. It’s a disturbing scenario, presented to us as farce. In the panel
discussion after the BFI screening, my friend asked George Costigan what he thought the audience
was laughing at, when they watched the film. “What are you laughing at?” Costigan countered.
Among the panel, there seemed to be a consensus that the laughter in the film was ‘real’ and that the
humour was ‘of the time’.
Clearly, we have to appreciate that things were different in the eighties. Is it wrong to condemn
the film – and the play – from a contemporary (post Saville, Operation Yew Tree, and more recently
Weinstein) perspective, for the casual sexism – not to mention racism – that appears in it? It would
be unfair to suggest that the attitudes displayed by some of the characters were shared or condoned
by Clarke. That would be a deliberate misreading of his intentions. And yet the film undoubtedly
encourages us to laugh such attitudes off. And the fact that audiences are still laughing – until very
recently, at least – leads me to question how much things have really changed.
Shortly after I watched Rita, Sue and Bob Too, the BBC drama Three Girls was broadcast. Written
by Nicole Taylor and directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, this harrowing drama tells the true story of
how young, working class girls in Rochdale were systematically sexually exploited by a network of
older, mostly Asian, men between 2008 and 2012. Based on the testimonies of the victims, Three Girls
refutes the rumours – still pervasive to this day – that the police were unwilling to intervene because
they were afraid of being accused of racism. Rather it shows how the police did nothing – despite the
sexual health worker Sara Rowbotham, played superbly by Maxine Peake, repeatedly reporting the
crime – because of an ingrained belief that the girls were implicated in their own grooming, that they
were somehow ‘asking for it’. Owing to their social status and their ‘difficult’ behaviour, they did not
fit the accepted ideal of innocent ‘victims’.
Watching Three Girls, a scene in particular struck me: one of the girls, Holly, is cross-examined in
court, via video link. She responds to the first question by nodding her head, and the judge intervenes
to tell her: “Rather than gestures, Holly, you’ll have to speak words.” Ironically, her words are then
twisted and used against her by the defence team. Reading her original police statements back to
her, verbatim, the lawyers emphasise the “likes” that pepper her speech, subtly mocking her, and
undermining her authority. She tries to explain why she didn’t fight back when she was raped: “I was
trying to say no in, like, a giggly way, because I didn’t want to say it in a stern way, because I didn’t
want to offend him. And I was scared. Cos if I said it, like, nastily to him, I didn’t know what he
would do, so I…” At this point a look crosses her face, as she realises how this must sound to the people
90
in the courtroom.
What this scene highlights is the absurdity, the danger, of taking words – and giggling – at face value
without really trying to understand, to empathise, with the speaker, and what they really mean. At the
same time, it brings to the fore the common misconception that consent is simply a matter of ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
I mention it here, in connection to Rita, Sue and Bob Too, because I think it’s important to remember that
Rita and Sue are schoolchildren and Bob is an adult. And it’s equally important to remember that there has
long been, and still is to this day, a pervasive belief that working class girls are more ‘up for it’, more sexually
available than their middle class counterparts.
It’s rare to come across Dunbar’s work in ‘unmediated’ form; other people have used it – and Dunbar
herself – as source material for plays, films and books – Clarke’s Rita, Sue and Bob Too being just one example.
Invariably and unavoidably, these writers and filmmakers have brought their own preconceptions about
working-class people – and specifically working-class women – into the equation. Clio Barnard’s 2010 film,
The Arbor, is intriguing in that it addresses this problem. By mixing documentary and drama, the real and
the invented, Barnard draws attention to her own part in the making and remaking of Dunbar’s legend.
Barnard – who is, like Dunbar, from Bradford, albeit from a very different background – wanted to
bring the playwright’s story back into the public consciousness. But her film is no straightforward biopic.
She devised an unusual technique: she had actors lip-sync to recorded interviews with Dunbar’s friends and
family, the result being something halfway between talking heads interviews and dramatic performances. The
effect is disorientating at first. You become conscious of the artifice of the film – that what you are seeing is
staged, and not ‘reality’. And at the same time you are prevented from making any unconscious class-based
judgments of the speakers based on their appearances. In using this technique, Barnard paid homage to A
State Affair – a play by Out of Joint, who returned to the Buttershaw Estate in 2000 and used interviews
with residents as verbatim dialogue. Interestingly, she also unwittingly anticipated Three Girls, which used
real police interviews and court recordings as dialogue, to add ‘authenticity’, but also to blur the line between
fact and fiction.
In Barnard’s lip-synced interviews, the people who knew Dunbar describe their memories of her, giving
slightly differing accounts of the same incidents from her past – such as how a house fire started – and
conflicting judgments of her character. Her youngest daughter, Lisa (played by Christine Bottomley), is
more forgiving. She remembers her mother shutting herself away in her room, trying to write – but also
being doing her best to care for her children. Lorraine, on the other hand (played by Manjinder Virk)
remembers things very differently. Being mixed race (her father is Pakistani), she felt like an outsider in
her community and experienced constant, casual racism. It becomes clear that for a long time, Lorraine has
blamed her mother for not protecting or loving her enough. “I think part of it is because she does miss her,”
Lisa speculates. “But she’s got a mad way of showing it.”
Lorraine is articulate and, so it appears, painfully honest. Her story is harrowing, and over the course of
the film, it begins to overshadow all of the others, painting a fairly dark picture of Dunbar as an alcoholic,
neglectful mother. Intermittently, however, the interviews are intercut with documentary footage from
the 1980s, and the contrast between this grainy, bleached archive material and the sharp contemporary
camerawork comes as a jolt; as does seeing the and hearing the ‘real’ Andrea Dunbar. It is a reminder that
she is no longer around to tell her side of the story; that her story has been retold and rewritten by others
ever since she first put pen to paper.
The film ends with some footage of Dunbar catching a train with Lorraine when she was a baby. Dunbar is
still just a teenager herself, and in the voiceover she talks about having kids when you’re young. “Sometimes
you wish you hadn’t ‘cos you wanted to do this and that,’ she says, ‘but when you’ve actually got them, if they
were taken away from you you’d soon miss ‘em and want ‘em back… Maybe it’s just Lorraine because she’s a
good baby, I don’t know.” She wipes her sleeve on the glass to clear away the condensation, and together she
and Lorraine look at something out of the window, beyond the view of the camera.
91
 CONTINUAL
DISCONTENT:
THE CINEMA OF
OUSMANE SEMBÈNE
by David Lee-Astley
To take part in the African revolution it is not enough to write a
revolutionary song; you must fashion revolution with the people
– Ahmed Sékou Touré.
At the beginning of Ousmane Sembène’s La Noire de… (1966),
Diouana arrives in the French Riviera. She is following the family
for whom she had worked as a nanny in her native Senegal; after
the country gained its independence, the French couple left their
sprawling house, cook, nanny and cleaner in Dakar and returned
to their flat in Antibes. We learn that Madame first saw Diouana
on a street corner amid other women desperate for work, and hired
her for her submissive and unforthcoming nature. It is this nature
that the couple deliberately exploit in France, where Diouana’s
role is not limited to being a nanny: she must also clean their
house, cook their meals and wash their clothes. For her labour, she
receives nothing. She is without money, friends or company, and is
unable to escape. In France, Diouana is entombed; she leaves the
ship and enters Monsieur’s car that takes her to the flat that she
doesn’t leave. Through a series of fluidly shot flashbacks, Sembène
contrasts these experiences with the openness of her life in Senegal.
Diouana’s dialogue in the film is mostly limited to her time in
Dakar: in Antibes she only speaks in voiceover. This contrast
underscores the way in which, for Sembène, voice and power are
intimately connected.
The themes explored in La Noire de… were preoccupations that
Sembène studied throughout his work. His early French-language
novels drew upon his experiences as a labourer in his native
Senegal and in France, to which he migrated in 1947. His most
famous novel, God’s Bits of Wood (Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu, 1960),
Black Girl (La Noire
depicts a railroad strike across Senegal and Mali, dwelling on the
solidarity that was shared between the oppressed of both nations.
His first novel, Black Docker (Le Docker Noir, 1956), explores the
racism and exclusion that Sembène encountered during his time in
France; it was an experience he shared with Diouana. Concerned
that these French-language novels would only reach an elite
readership, Sembène turned to film in the hope of achieving social
transformation via art. La Noire de… his debut feature and the
92
first film by a sub-Saharan African director, was released in 1966.
Diouana’s story is based on an account of an African maid that
Sembène happened upon in a newspaper. He was drawn to the
intersection of colonial and gendered oppression it exposed.
Everything Diouana expects of her new life in France falls
through, as, over and over, she runs up against the cultural and
social dominance of her employers and their world. While in
Dakar, Diouana studies fashion magazines and hopes to replicate
the style of the French models, but when she arrives in Antibes,
she is ridiculed for wearing dresses and heels. They are not the
clothes of a servant; they are not the clothes of an African. In
response to Diouane’s misstep, Madame forces her to wear an
apron. Her dignity is further undermined when she receives a
letter from her family. Monsieur reads her mother’s letter to her
and then proceeds to write a reply on her behalf: their subjugation
of her extends to control over her communication. (The letter to
Diouana was also penned by a male teacher – played by Sembène
– her mother being illiterate. Patriarchy is the gatekeeper to reality
and communication, in Senegal as well as France.)
Diouana is an everyman: her oppression is that of all
African workers under colonialism. But more
importantly, Diouana is an everywoman.
Sembène also explores domination through the symbol of the
mask. Originally given to Diouana’s employers in Senegal, the
mask travels with them to Antibes and, like her, is out of place.
The mask is a novelty and, like the Senegalese food that Diouana
prepares for guests, serves as a signifier of the French couple’s
colonial past: something that they can use to set themselves apart
from their fellow bourgeois guests, bringing a borrowed exoticism
and mystery. Diouana herself is called upon to play the part of the
exotic object – a guest asks for a kiss, noting he has never kissed
a Black woman before. When Diouana later removes the mask
from the white wall, she restates both her agency and heritage. In
the ensuing struggle with Madame over the mask, Diouana nearly
breaks into a smile – in this conflict with her oppressor, she is
more than equal, ridding Madame of her exalted status.
But Diouana cannot escape the flat and only finds freedom
Above, stills from
in death. Her suicide both confronts her oppressors with their
de..., 1966) injustices and, allegorically, marks the end of the colonisers’
oppression of the colonised. Monsieur returns to Dakar to
bring Diouana’s belongings, including the mask, to her family;
Diouana’s mother refuses his money and the mask is taken from
him by a young boy. Monsieur is left bewildered by the reality of
post-colonial Senegal. As he leaves, he is terrorised by the boy, who
chases him out of the village, wearing the now-terrifying mask.
Sembène presents us with the power and potential of a people with
agency over their labour, culture and history.
93
 and monogamy, capitalism and socialism, white tie and patterned
It is significant that Ousmane Sembène chose to depict the
fabric. Indeed, Sembène visualises this opposition by presenting
experiences of a black female worker in France over his own,
the characters in front of different maps in Xala: El Hadji and a
understanding the further subjugation that women experience in
colonial map, Rama and a pan-African depiction. For Sembène,
any oppressive system. Diouana is an everyman: her oppression
Rama is the future that Senegal needs in order to rid itself of the
is that of all African workers under colonialism. But more
neo-colonialism embodied by El Hadji.
importantly, Diouana is an everywoman.
Just like the colonists of old, El Hadji cares little for the
*****
impoverishment of the country: in his role as an official he diverts
Released nine years after La Noire de… and fifteen years
vast government food supplies meant for drought-stricken areas
into Senegal’s independence, Xala (1975) is set at the start
into private slush funds, financing his lavish lifestyle. Eventually
of decolonisation. In the opening scene, we see Senegal’s new
El Hadji’s debts catch up with him. Wives two and three leave
economic leaders enter office dressed in traditional clothes, hailed
him, his business is taken over and, most importantly for him,
by a similarly dressed crowd. They rid the building of colonisers,
his cheque to the shaman bounces and so the xala returns.
who leave with handfuls of briefcases, presumably filled with
Through El Hadji, Sembène portrays the unsustainable nature of
illicit profit. The new leaders proclaim their commitment to the
neo-colonialism, whose only remedy is the promised arrival of a
socialism their compatriots demand. In the following scene, the
socialist society. In the final scenes of the film, we see the people
colonisers return with a bribe for each of the officials, who are now
who may bring that change. Arriving back from their desert exile,
wearing suits, as military men clear away the celebratory crowds.
the poor and infirm, the wretched of the earth, overrun El Hadji’s
El Hadji is one of the newly corrupted officials.
house and proclaim themselves to be source of the xala. To lift the
In accordance with his reading of Islamic obligation, El Hadji
curse, he must be humiliated by the impoverished. El Hadji agrees.
believes that, to celebrate his economic and social ascendency, he
The film ends with the disgraced capitalist covered in the spit of
must take a third wife – one who is much younger than him.
those he had claimed to represent and yet exploited.
After a lavish celebration in which we see new officials exploiting
*****
their status to secure tenders, El Hadji is unable to consummate
Moolaadé, Ousmane Sembène’s final film, was completed when
the marriage. Aggrieved, he searches out a cure to the erectile
he was 81 and released in 2004, three years before his death.
dysfunction that he believes is brought by a curse, the xala. After
Shot in a village dotted with termite hills in Burkina Faso, with
modern medicine fails, he finds a shaman who will cure him for the
a cast from across sub-Saharan West Africa, Moolaadé derives its
right price. El Hadji’s impotence is mirrored in the ineffectiveness
name from the spell of protection that a woman, Collé, brings
of the leaders of newly independent Senegal, men (always men)
over four girls. Escaping their purification ceremony, the central
who sideline socialism to capitalise on their new status. As such,
element of which is female genital mutilation (FGM), the girls
Sembène points us towards greed as the ultimate source of these
seek refuge with Collé, whom they know to have forbidden the
impotencies. But Xala is much richer than a simple political satire
cutting of her only daughter. The young girls fear the ceremony
about erections. Each scene is filled with imagery that Sembène
for its guaranteed pain, the possibility of death and the impact it
uses to lament the state of post-colonial Senegal in the realms of
will have to their sexual and maternal futures. The lasting suffering
culture, class and gender politics.
brought by FGM is depicted via Collé, who, we learn, has suffered
The conflict between Western and African cultures in the
the death of two children, with a third, Amasatou, delivered only
post-colonial state is apparent throughout the film. One official
by a life-threatening cesarean. The pain of Collé’s purification
proclaims that “modernity mustn’t make us lose our Africanity”,
returns during the sex she endures. Sembéne’s editing cements the
but neither word is ever defined. Sembène visualises this ambiguity
connection, juxtaposing the images of intercourse and the FGM
through El Hadji’s marriages: his first wife is religious and wears Above, stills from
Moolaadé (2004) ceremony. The experience of Collé that is explored in Moolaadé
traditional clothes; his second, by contrast, is seen wearing a little
underscores the life-long implications of FGM.
black dress; he marries his third to satisfy his interpretation of
Collé’s protection of the girls enrages the Salindana, the elderly
Islam. When he is confronted by his daughter, Rama, about his
women who carry out the cutting ceremony, and the mothers
polygamy, El Hadji defends the practice on the grounds that he
of the children. The mothers’ rage is borne of a fear that their
is maintaining Black African culture. But in other ways, such
daughters will be ostracised – girls who are bilakoro, uncut, are
as in their use of language, El Hadji and the other officials are
ineligible for marriage. The male elders of the village admonish
not so concerned about tradition. Rejecting his daughter’s use
Collé for standing in the way of tradition (signified by the
of Wolof with rage, El Hadji sticks to the colonially imposed
mythologised termite mounds) and their interpretation of Islam.
French. For Sembène, El Hadji and Rama represent opposing
Fearing disruptive change, the patriarchy confiscates the villagers’
articulations of post-colonial culture. French and Wolof, polygamy
radios and demand that Ciré, Collé’s husband, force his wife to lift the protective spell.
The action is further complicated by the return of Ibrahima, whom it has been arranged that Amasatou will
marry. Living in France, Ibrahima is the son of the village king. Bringing the gift of a television, a more potent
symbol of modernity than the radio, he is flummoxed by the regressive attitudes of his father and the other elders.
Yet Ibrahima also remains conservative when responding to his father’s rule, ultimately siding with the other men.
Collé is undeterred by this opposition: she will not utter the word to lift the moolaadé. Under continued pressure
from the village patriarchy, Ciré publicly lashes Collé. The village splits: the men cry “harder” in the company of
the Salindana; the women, on the opposing side, shout their support, begging her not to say it. The brutality is
stopped by Mercenaire, a travelling salesman. Through his intervention, he destabilises the sense of male solidarity
within the village, an action that means he is run out of the village and presumably murdered.
Collé’s resistance brings the women of the village together. As the men set fire to the pile of confiscated radios,
the women stop the Salindana’s procession of girls before the purification ceremony can begin. They take the knives
from the Salindana and regain control over their bodies. Collé confronts the men with these knives in the company
of another woman, Sanata, who takes up the role of griot (the repository of oral tradition), further emphasising the
women’s control of their story and future. She uses the knowledge that she has learned from listening to the radio
to confront the men with the inaccuracies in their interpretation of Islam, and throws the knives into burning pile
of radios. The women dance and celebrate as Ciré and Ibrahima cross the square, past the symbols of the women’s
oppression: the termite mounds, representing tradition; the mosque, with its corrupted religious teachings; and the
burning radios, the final attempt to isolate them.
Of course, in Moolaadé, Sembène is talking for women. But the women in the film liberate themselves. It is the
strength of their shared experience that makes change possible. Through these women, Sembène reiterates his belief
in the possibility of revolution, no matter the circumstances.
*
Ousmane Sembène cited his greatest influence, above all other filmmakers, as Bertolt Brecht. The Brechtian idea
of art – that it “is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it” – is expressed throughout
Sembène’s cinematic work, which always aimed to influence as a large an audience as possible. For Sembène,
cinema was capable of crossing social divides. La Noire de… presents the exploitation carried out by colonial rule,
expressing Sembène’s belief that independence must mark the end to all oppressive systems; Moolaadé illustrates
the cruelty of female genital mutilation but focuses on women’s struggle, and ultimate victory, over these regressive
structures, providing a blueprint for future action. The battle against these systems can also be seen in the changing
languages of his films. Sembène moves from the French of La Noire de…, to the mixture of French and Wolof
in Xala, and finally to Bambara, a language which transcends colonial borders, in Moolaadé. When the novelist
and academic Ngugi wa Thiong’o decided, inspired by Frantz Fanon, to write in Gikuyu instead of English, he
wrote: “language carries culture, and culture carries, particularly through orature and literature, the entire body of
values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world.” For Ngugi, ridding African literature
of colonial tongues is a necessary step in the anti-imperialist struggle. Sembène echoed this sentiment in the
conflict between El Hadji and Rama in Xala over her use of Wolof. He deliberately left the subtitled translation
of Wolof incomplete, emphasising his audience was an African one, not one of bourgeois ‘world’ cinema. Moolaadé
was dubbed into a series of languages, engaging a transnational West African audience, creating a cinema of anti-
imperialist solidarity.
For Sembène, revolutionary action never ceases. This can be seen in his focus on audience engagement, with
the hope of working towards a truly emancipatory cinema. The subject of his cinema evokes a spirit of continual
discontent. Though the geographic scope narrows through these films, from international to local, Sembène’s gaze
remains wide open, weaving class, gender and race throughout. The intersectionality of his work makes Sembène’s
Portrait of Dyana Gaye (b. 1975, France),
gaze strikingly relevant to all audiences, as the structural oppressions that he examined still endure. And though
this is the cinema of a man, it is not the cinema of men; it is a cinema for Collé, not Ibrahima.
whose work explores multiple identies, across Europe
and in Senegal. She has directed films including
Under the Starry Sky (2013) and Saint Louis
96 Blues (2009) – a Senegalese musical.
 by
Imogen
From Fantasy
West-
to Reality: Knights
How do we
Screen Rape?

Following the breaking of the Weinstein allegations and the birth of

the Me Too movement, sexual assault is currently the most discussed
problem in mainstream culture. Given the historic neglect of the issue,
this is astonishing, particularly because the discussion began in
Hollywood where, as we now know, women have often been ignored,
mistreated and abused to an even greater degree than was suspected.
We are now hearing vows to tackle sexual assault and rape culture from
every corner of the film industry. What does this mean, if anything, for
the way mainstream cinema depicts these things on screen?
Long before the recent developments, filmmakers have contributed to a wider cultural conception
of rape through the ways that they choose to portray it. But it seems obvious that Hollywood
committing to change the way it handles rape culture will necessarily involve a reconsideration

“If we accept that cinema has the power to change minds for the better, it
of what we want to see, or even should see, in the cinema. When looking at recent releases from
the current cultural perspective, everything looks different – Paul Verhoeven’s 2016 film Elle is a
particularly controversial example. The positive critical reception with which this film was met is an
illustration of what can go wrong with the depiction of sexual abuse and how careful we need to be
Left, still from Fat in assessing it, given that rape on screen is necessarily informed by what goes on behind it.
Girl, Catherine
Breillat, 2001; Above, *
must also have the power to change minds for the worse”
from Elle, Paul
Verhoeven, 2016. In the soundproofed basement of his suburban home, Patrick repeatedly smashes Michèle’s head
against the wall. She knees him in the balls in retaliation, then he throws her to the ground, pins her
1. Mark Olsen, ‘Paul
Verhoeven and Isabelle down, straddles her and goes for his belt, preparing to rape her for the second time. But now, instead
Huppert lean in to the
incendiary revenge of fighting him off, Michèle says, “Do it.” Patrick freezes. She has, it seems, ‘killed the moment’ for
of ‘Elle’’, LA Times,
November 2016, him. This is where a film about a vicious rapist and his victim turns into a film about two people
(Online).
engaging in rape role-play.
2. Eric Kohn, ‘How Paul Elle was supposed to be controversial. Verhoeven has long prided himself on his provocateur
Verhoeven Survived
‘Showgirls’ and status, often saying in interviews that he likes to depict things that are “against the norm”1 with
Turned His Back on
Hollywood’, IndieWire, “complete artistic freedom”2 – a typically blasé approach to the depiction of violence against women
November 2015,
(Online). by a male director. In making Elle, a film about a woman repeatedly raped by a masked assailant,
3. Benjamin Lee, ‘Paul Verhoeven expected to be “hated”3 (in his own words) for making a film that played fast and loose
Verhoeven on Elle: “It
is not a rape comedy”’, with the idea of sexual consent. But this was not the reaction of the majority. Quite the opposite:
The Guardian, May
2016 (Online). critics have fallen over themselves to praise Elle for its boldness, for daring to make the morality of
4. Ibid.
the film ambiguous and troubling. In an interview with the Guardian in May of 2016, Verhoeven
admitted that, “to [his] astonishment, there isn’t much controversy yet”.4

98 99
 This is troubling, because the film is not, as some reviewers have interpreted it, a rape revenge story. the victim. It is possible to make a rape scene graphic without making it feel gratuitous: early
Michèle does not seek to avenge her rape – rather, the film portrays a raped women becoming complicit noughties films like Baise-moi (Virginie Despentes, 2000), Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)
5. Victoria Coren
Mitchell, ‘I’m so
in ensuing sexual assaults by the rapist. Verhoeven’s film intentionally reframes rape as an aggressive Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002) – loosely belonging to a movement sometimes called New
glad to spoil this French Extremism – all feature graphic and sometimes nauseatingly long rape scenes, but
but erotic encounter. Elle is a film that seems as though it will be an artful exploration of the complexity

“The depiction of rape on film is more immersive than in most other art forms: it is played out in front of your eyes, often in
film for you’,
The Guardian, of a woman’s reaction to her sexual assault, but ultimately ends up doing a woefully botched job of it, never in a way that could be called glamorous or sexualised. At the end of Fat Girl, the gawky
January 2017,
(Online) instead becoming a film which allows (if not encourages) sympathy with a rapist. 13-year-old we have been following from the start, Anaïs, stumbles helplessly into a forest,
6. Claire Henry, Elle belongs to a regrettably rich tradition of male directors depicting aestheticised sexual violence pursued by a murderous stranger, who then rapes her. The whole thing feels meaningless and

unflinching detail, and especially if you are viewing in the intended cinema space, you are a near-captive audience”
Revisionist
Rape-Revenge: against women on screen without understanding that this can have real-world consequences. This was appalling. Compare this with the leering aestheticisation of something like the rape scene in
Redefining a
Film Genre, a complaint made, for instance, about Tom Ford’s last film: Victoria Coren Mitchell wrote in the A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971), where the focus is on the rapist’s arousal as he
2014, Palgrave
Macmillan USA Guardian that “if you want to believe that a pair of raped, murdered women would be a lovely sight snips the red dress off his buxom victim. And the depiction of rape in Elle is a lot closer to
7. Sonya
to behold, then Nocturnal Animals is the film for you.”5 It’s a problem of representation that feels that of A Clockwork Orange than Fat Girl — the scenes are violent but not with a focus on how
Saraiya, ‘The that violence might be experienced by the victim, which would detract from the artfully shot
truth about
particularly pressing in the case of film. The depiction of rape on film is more immersive than in most
TV’s rape other art forms: it is played out in front of your eyes, often in unflinching detail, and especially if you scene’s visual appeal.
obsession: How
we struggle with are viewing in the intended cinema space, you are a near-captive audience. Probably the only medium Due to their mainstream appeal it is more important how films like Elle deal with rape.
the broken myths
of masculinity, that goes further is that of video games – and it’s interesting that in Elle the highly immersive quality There are credible, nuanced depictions of rape in films like Fat Girl, but is at least in part
on screen and
off ’, Salon, June of video games with regards to sexual violence is an ongoing theme. because they depict rape in an entirely unglamorous, difficult-to-watch way, they never receive
2015, (Online).
Michèle is the CEO of a video game company that is working on a game with a graphic rape the same distribution as films like Elle. The result is that their influence is limited – confined
scene, to be enacted by the players. Sequences of sexual violence in games like Grand Theft Auto are to film school lists, torrenting sites and the occasional YouTube appearance – incapable of
discomforting because the implication is that they are there to be enjoyed: the distance of the avatar, changing how these issues are perceived in society at large. And that is what depictions of rape
the fact that this is a game, enable the player to see the experience as a benign erotic fantasy. The same on screen are capable of doing. If we accept that cinema has the power to change minds for the
ambiguity is present when we see rape on film – are we meant to be enjoying this? In fact, Elle itself better, it must also have the power to change minds for the worse. Filmmakers, therefore, have
has a plot strand about the potential for fictionalised violence to become actualised. One of Michèle’s a kind of moral responsibility. Although Elle was made before the Weinstein allegations broke
employees anonymously makes and distributes a reworking of this scene with Michele’s head grafted on Hollywood’s silence on sexual assault, it certainly wasn’t any less important to call out and
to the victim, and she’s disturbed by this explicitly because she thinks that her real life rapist and the fight against rape culture when the film was released – 2016 was, after all, the year of President
creator of this simulation might be the same person. It is jarring that the film includes this and yet still Trump’s sexually aggressive rhetoric in the lead-up to the election. It’s fantastic that we are
depict sexual assault in the way that it does. The function that rape should play in films and our need to talking about rape culture and acknowledging that sexual assault is still going unpunished far,
see it is a question that has engaged cultural critics and theorists, especially n the last two decades. Film far too often in the film industry, but we should not pretend that it is enough to merely do the
theorist Claire Henry wrote in 2014 that rape in film serves a “cultural need to try to understand what talking. Although rape in cinema opens a space in which the issue can be discussed, we ought
rape is, what impact it has, and how to respond”.6 There is also the argument that we should depict rape to be careful: dialogue about rape in a culture where rape is consistently normalised cannot
on screen simply because not to do so, in the words of the TV critic Sonia Saraiya, would be to, “pretend entertain sympathy for rapists.
that this isn’t a crippling social problem, an epidemic that we appear to lack the political will or interest This is where Elle comes back in. Isabelle Huppert protested the reading of Elle as a story
to fight”.7 Although rape is difficult to discuss, it’s necessary to do so. Henry goes on to argue that that commiserates with her character’s rapist. At a press conference in Cannes, she corrected
showing rape on screen provides our wider culture with a “forum for the complexities of rape politics those people: “The story shouldn’t be taken as a realistic story, it’s not a statement about a
to be worked through”. That said, filmic depictions of rape can serve wildly different functions: they woman being raped and accepting her rapist, that’s not what it’s about. It should be taken as
can sometimes be socially informative but they can easily also be exploitative. Irresponsible directors more of a fantasy.” But the representation of fantasy in this scenario is indefensible because
use rape for shock value, as a convenient plot intensifier or motivating factor for men’s actions, or as rape, as a crime that is so particularly entrenched within our society, has a moral uniqueness
a narrative tool of punishment for women transgressing societal norms. All of these are depressingly that precludes cinematic fantasy. And another problem with Huppert’s comment is that you
prevalent. Socially informative reasons for depicting rape include giving voice to women’s experience, can’t tell people how to take anything. It is eminently possible to watch Elle and feel sympathy
highlighting the pervasiveness of rape culture, and examining the effect of rape on the victim. for the rapist. The film intentionally blurs the lines between sexual assault and consensual rape
Another contested area is the question of how rape should be depicted on the screen. There are fantasy. The rapist himself is described at the end of the film as a “good man” with a “tortured
films that veer too close to ambiguity, using stylised representations that evade the brutality of the soul”. And this is why Verhoeven has done a dangerous thing. It profoundly matters how
act itself, and films that concentrate on the experience of the rapist over that of the victim. These are we depict rape, or domestic violence, or violence against minorities because these are serious,
treacherous waters to navigate – I think that cinematic depictions of rape have an obligation to be insidious and chronically under-convicted crimes.
truthful, to follow the reality of these situations and to capture what rape is like from the perspective of It has become almost fashionable for mainstream critics and reviewers (most of whom,

100 101
 remember, are male) to see controversial films like Elle and say that it’s not clear how we’re

If there was ever going to be one, this is the perfect moment for women’s perspectives on sexual assault to be made visible on film.
supposed to view the rapist, and to continue by framing their acceptance of this subversive
ambiguity as proof of their enlightenment. Take Geoffrey Macnab, the Independent: “The director
observes his characters but doesn’t judge them. Instead, he leaves us to make up our mind about
their behaviour and motivations”.8 Or Robbie Collin, the Telegraph: “it forces you to critically
confront every myth and cliché about sexual violence it dredges up and subverts”.9 They suggest
that Paul Verhoeven means to let the audience decide what they think, rather than impose a
8. Geoffrey
Macnab, ‘Elle readily obvious moral message on the viewer. Indeed, he claimed this himself in an interview with
review: Paul
Verhoeven’s Jezebel: “the movie refuses to be this or that”.10 But because we are talking about the ethics of rape,
richest, most
complex, and this “refusal” cannot be as neutral as he wants it to be. “This movie is outside the discourse about
troubling
film yet’, The rape”11, he told the Independent – a comment that seems naive to the point of being disingenuous.
Guardian,
March 2017,
The argument made by these critics and by the director boils down to this: that art can and
(Online) should be made on all topics without recourse to what its effect might be. But if a film can be
9. Robbie read as sympathising with a rapist, we shouldn’t be calling it a “daring” or “provocative” film,
Collin, ‘Elle
review: Isabelle but a dangerous one. As Projansky puts it, “Rape discourses have the capacity to inform, indeed
Huppert chills
in a troublingly embody and make way for, future actuations, even physical ones.”12 This is not hypothetical. The
funny,
subversively chic glamorisation of rape in films can lead to rape in real life: we should remember that soon after
rape-revenge
thriller’, The
A Clockwork Orange came out, a group of British men raped a teenage girl while singing ‘Singing
Telegraph, in the Rain’.
March 2017,
(Online) Paul Verhoeven’s pre-Elle work cannot be called forward thinking on the subject of rape. Basic
Instinct (1992) is one of a string of late eighties to early nineties films that contain rape scenes
10. Rich
Juzwiak, ‘’We framed as erotic sexual encounters. Or take Showgirls (1995), another Verhoeven offering and
Knew That We
Had Burning one that features a particularly nasty gang rape scene but has still reached Cult Bad Film status,
Material’:
Isabelle watched with ironic glee alongside Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975) and The
Huppert and
Paul Verhoeven
Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003). This is because rape on screen isn’t just allowed to be sexy, but
Discuss the funny, too. Critics have referred to Elle, in all seriousness, as a “rape comedy”, in reference to the
Rape-Themed
Elle’, Jezebel, jarringly slapstick elements of the subplots. Perhaps this is partly why Elle stings: while it may
November 2016,
(Online). have some superficial credentials as a progressively feminist film, like Michèle being a middle-
11. Nick Hasted, aged female CEO of a video games company, its depiction of rape is out-dated and damaging.
‘Elle’s Oscar
nominated It’s tempting to point at Verhoeven’s output, as well as older films like Sam Peckinpah’s
Isabelle
Huppert: ‘The
Straw Dogs (1971), or A Clockwork Orange, and observe that male directors consistently make
camera is really the mistake of portraying rape as rough sex. And in fact, a handful of people have taken Elle
like an X-ray of
your thoughts’’, specifically as a cue to protest against men making films about rape at all. At last year’s Sundance,
Independent,
March 2017, Jill Soloway addressed male film directors on this topic explicitly: “We get it, guys. You want us to
(Online).
stay inside, because you want us to be afraid we’re going to get raped… Stop making movies and
12. Sarah
Projansky TV shows about rape. Let women make those movies if they want to.”
(2001),
Watching This is a deliberately extreme standpoint, but Soloway’s comments highlight a real and
Rape: Film and
Television in
continuing issue with mainstream cinema. It is not the case that honest, realistic, victim-centred
Postfeminist depictions of rape cannot be directed by men. Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991) is an
Culture,
New York often-cited example, or Jonathan Kaplan’s The Accused (1988). But most films that contain a
University
Press, New York rape scene are still directed by men, because most films full stop are still directed by men. This is
and London.
a problem, just as it would evidently be a problem if all films about racist violence were made by Portrait of Claire Simon (b. 1955, France),
white people, as indeed most are. If there was ever going to be one, this is the perfect moment for whose narrative and documentary work focuses on
women’s perspectives on sexual assault to be made visible on film. It remains to be seen, though, subjects that often defy easy geographic or racial
whether Hollywood will make good on recent promises to honour these perspectives, both in categorisation. Her latest film, Le Concours,
front of and behind the camera. deconstructed the mythology behind the prestigious
La Fémis film school in Paris.

RECONCEIVING TR ANS
WOMANHOOD AND SEXUAL
PLUR ALISM IN ROSA VON
PR AUNHEIM’S ‘STADT DER
VERLORENEN SEELEN’
by Matthew Robinson
A seminal figure in the Queer German Cinema and a key
proponent of AIDS activism, Rosa von Praunheim has cemented his
position as one of the most significant individuals in the German gay
liberation movement and perhaps as the most provocative German
queer filmmaker to date. While his contemporaries, including Rainer
Werner Fassbinder, Werner Schroeter and Ulrike Ottinger, regularly
depicted nihilistic visions of queer suffering, Praunheim insisted on
the possibility of hope, even within an era of social repression. Setting
himself against the widespread vilification of queer individuals during
the European AIDS epidemic, Praunheim remained an unabashed
champion of the eccentric outsider. His films offer wildly amusing,
and at times disturbing snapshots of marginalised, idiosyncratic
individuals as they form their own spaces within hegemonic states.
Praunheim’s earliest films provide groundbreaking critiques of
the rigid segregation which existed between gay subcultures within
Germany’s burgeoning queer scene in the 1970s. In It Is Not the
Homosexual Who is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives (Nicht
der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation, in der er lebt, 1971)
Praunheim leads his protagonist, Daniel, a naive and provincial gay
man, on an episodic journey through the various milieus of the Berlin
queer scene. His innocence is soon lost as he develops an appetite for
the adrenaline and danger of big-city gay life.
Daniel’s fleeting experiences are accompanied by a non-
synched voice-over, which provides disparaging commentaries
on contemporary gay communities. Within one iconic scene,
Praunheim uses static tableau imagery to record half-naked sport
jocks as they sit flexing their muscles in a park (see image to right).
Via a combination of audio-visual schisms, ironic voice-overs, and
deliberately wooden acting, Praunheim satirises the posturing of
these subcultural identities in hyperbolic fashion. Whether depicting
flamboyant queens and their obsession with the latest fashion trends,
homoerotic jocks with their fixation on body image, or leather-clad
daddies, the strict tropes of these exclusionary forms of kinship are
laid bare and, in turn, dismantled. While Praunheim was criticised
for appearing to attack the queer community, ultimately he was taking
aim at the depoliticisation and internal segregation which he saw as
being propagated by the queer community itself. In turn, he advocated
for the deconstruction of queer segregation, and promoted solidarity
and queer fluidity as the root of queer liberation.
While Praunheim’s early films laid the groundwork for the
deconstructive stance he would take in response to hetero- and
homonormativity, it is within his later films, notably City of Lost Souls
(Stadt der verlorenen Seelen, 1983) that he displays the true force of his
queer politics. This film centres on the patchwork world of a Berlin
boarding house-meets-burger joint, owned by American transsexual
superstar, Angie Stardust. The fast food joint is staffed by the boarding
house’s eccentric occupants, which include an array of drag queens,
trans people, erotic trapeze artists, showgirls, and magicians. In fitting
style, the film opens with a chorus performance of ‘Burger Queen
Blues’, as the residents prance around the space, straddling its dirty
countertop (see image overleaf).
The film follows the residents’ stories as they descend on Berlin
in search of sexual liberation and respite from stifling American
conservatism. For instance, the erotic trapeze artists, Judith Flex and
Tron von Hollywood, arrive in the German capital in anticipation of
sexually liberated audiences. Their artistic ambitions are, however, cut
short when Tron descends into drug addiction and sexual promiscuity
in Praunheim’s typical slapstick style. Judith subsequently elopes with
a Jewish American lesbian and a German man with Nazi sympathiser
parents.
“What at first glance parades itself as a messy, ebullient
fanfare of hot-headed queer personalities, in fact conceals
a delicate and at times poignant commentary on queer
isolation and the search for queer agency”
The experience of Tron and Judith, as with many of Praunheim’s
protagonists, is one of dislocation, as they exist in transnational spheres,
forced from the oppressive hegemony of contemporary America.
This displacement, along with their intercultural and non-binary
relationships, forms a process of ‘deterritorialisation’. The boarding
house becomes a transitional space that allows for the creation of new
forms of queer nationhood, and comes to define Praunheim’s depiction
of queer liberation. In an iconic scene, the residents congregate around
the television to sing The Star-Spangled Banner, in a dystopian parody
of the American nuclear family, thousands of miles from home. While
the image of the nuclear family once signalled the absolute exclusion
of queer individuals from mainstream society, Praunheim uses parody
to both pervert and reform this image, creating a space for queer
individuals within the institutions that previously rendered them
abject. The residents do not entirely relinquish their American roots,
nor is this space wholly denationalised. Instead, the boarding house
provides a space in which a reinterpretation of typically hegemonic
American ideals can take place.
While these scenes are riddled with irony and absurdity, it is
directly within Praunheim’s excessively camp and highly aestheticised
image that the true power of his film arises. Praunheim’s cinema
is purposefully rough around the edges and delights in its own
implausibility. Within this cinematic excess, which Bradford Nordeen
called a “fabulist punk cabaret”, all essentialism and referentiality are
stripped away, and a queerer vision of cinema appears. This absurdity
reaches fever pitch when Gary (a resident of the boarding house
and a connoisseur of black magic) is arrested after leading a nude
therapy session through the streets of Berlin. He is swiftly dealt his
deportation papers, and distraught at the prospect of his forced return
to America, burns down the pension, killing both himself and Tron
von Hollywood in the act.
In one of the film’s rare serious scenes, the boarding house
matriarch, Angie Stardust, is seen lamenting the loss of all her worldly
possessions while stranded in a moonlit park. Yet in typical Praunheim
fashion, any hint of nihilism or narrative authenticity are short-lived,
and the film ends with an absurd chorus in which all characters,
both dead and alive, join Angie Stardust for a musical rendition in
the shop front of her burger joint. The deliberate implausibility of
this scene shows Praunheim acknowledging the fabrication of his
narrative head on. A propensity for free performance, improvisation,
and the deconstruction of narrative integrity allow Praunheim to
implode phallogocentric conceptions of cinema, and in turn create
a space for the coexistence of diverse on-screen sexual identities and
experiences.
It is within this patchwork aesthetic that Praunheim revises archaic
conceptions of gender binaries. The figure of Tara O’Hara, a fearless
transgender woman, is used to challenge these repressive social
norms. After hooking up with a German hunk, Manfred Finger,
Tara is violently rejected by the man for apparently concealing her
transgender status. Yet in a scene of sexual enlightenment, Tara
educates the man of her revisionist conception of womanhood, as
an identity based on gender rather than sex. Tara and the man
subsequently make love, and Praunheim succeeds in creating a space
in which transgender women and sexual pluralism are celebrated
without violence or rebuke.
Yet despite the revelry and absurdity which give rise to the sexual
freedom enjoyed by Tara O’Hara and the younger generation of
trans and queer individuals, Angie Stardust is quick to remind her
that queer history is still rooted in suffering. In a seminal scene,
Angie laments Tara O’Hara’s apparent obliviousness to the struggles
of the previous generation of trans women. Whilst Tara rejects the
106
need for surgery, stating “I don’t want the operation, I am happy as
I am,” Angie describes the struggles she endured to become, in her
view, “fully female”. Angie says, “We pumped the hormones, puked
in school, put up with every bum calling us faggot, drag queens. Now
it’s easy for you. You get tits, grow your hair long, you’re a woman.”
While Praunheim avoids entering into a political judgement on
what constitutes transgender womanhood, he reinforces the historical
experience of trans women as one still rooted in loss. Indeed, Angie
alludes to her own distressing history, rising to stardom in the
cabarets of New York, at a time when being transgender was still
illegal and drag performers were expected to enter theatres in male
attire. This is underlined in Angie’s iconic ballad ‘Im Exil’, in which
she sings: “I came from a land of many different races… as dumb as
it is they’ll always hate each other. That’s why I had to leave the land
that I love … I’m not happy, but yes, I’m satisfied…I’m in exile.”
While she finds a degree of freedom from the transphobia and racial
prejudice she experienced in America, her liberation in Germany
is hard-fought, and has demanded an existence of exile. Yet just as
Praunheim’s social outcasts locate a strand of queer agency within
the transitional space of the boarding-house, Angie too grounds
her liberation in her dislocation. Praunheim acknowledges within
Angie’s ballad that even within the comparatively liberal post-war
German society, queer individuals may never find full acceptance
within mainstream society. It is instead through Angie’s continual
process of dislocation and exile that she manages to frustrate the
hegemonic project which aims to subdue her, and in turn carve out
her own narrative within overwhelmingly repressive states. This
transitory and patchwork world ultimately paves the way for a more
settled and utopian vision of transgender and queer representation,
as seen within the figure of Tara O’Hara.
What at first glance parades itself as a messy, ebullient fanfare
of hot-headed queer personalities, in fact conceals a delicate and
at times poignant commentary on queer isolation and the search
for queer agency. While this film was regularly cast aside as a glib
mockumentary about Americans in Berlin, it in fact opens out
into a layered and highly politicised diatribe against the way highly
conservative states manage sexual and gender pluralism. Indeed,
behind the lurid façade of Praunheim’s film, lies a powerful dialogue
about the queer and trans struggle for representation, which remains
highly pertinent over 30 years later. Praunheim conjures up an
alternative, phantasmatic world, in which society is experienced in
inverse; where subversive lifestyles have become custom, and the
heteronorm is nowhere to be seen. Whether Praunheim sees this
world as a genuine political manifesto, or simply a wry incarnation
of an unattainable queer ideal, it is safe to say we are still a way off
reaching our very own City of Lost Souls.
 by
Desirée
de Jesus
Why ‘Lady Macbeth’
is the Intersectional
Feminist Film You
Didn’t Know You Needed
We’re often a little too happy to classify as
‘feminist’ anything that presents lead female
characters confronting gendered oppression,
but we don’t always consider how these
narratives might conceal and preserve
other systems of oppression. I was recently
reminded of this fact while watching William
Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (2017).
Oldroyd’s film centres on Katherine (Florence Pugh), a young woman given in
marriage to an older man as part of a package deal involving land, and on the
effort she expends while trying to change her circumstances. When considering
1. There
the constraints that Katherine’s marriage places on her economic, sexual and

Katherine’s confinement to the house’s interior is indicative of Western culture’s

are also two reproductive freedom, alongside her ingenious use of limited resources to escape

glorification of fragile, white femininity as the pinnacle of female desirability.

other actors
of colour them, it is easy to see why critics describe the film and its heroine as ‘feminist’. But to
in the film.
William
focus solely on Lady Macbeth’s engagement with conventional feminist themes is to
Oldroyd, ignore the film’s greater depths. The use of a “[colour] blind casting” process for all
‘Portrait
of a Lady’, roles, with Oldroyd, writer Alice Birch, and casting director Shaheen Baig seeking
interview
by Amber
the best actors, regardless of their racial identities, offers a rare opportunity to wrestle
Wilkinson, with hard questions about race, class, gender and feminism.1 Naomi Ackie, a Black
Eye for
Film, actor, was selected to play Katherine’s maid Anna, and Cosmo Jarvis, an actor with
March, 2017
(Online)
a darker skin tone than Florence Pugh, was chosen to portray Katherine’s lover
Sebastian. Inspired by archival material documenting the lives of Black families in
mid-19th century England, Oldroyd and his team fashioned a period piece that is a
corrective to the whitewashing of British history and the national imaginary.2
Previous adaptations of the source material – the 19th-century Russian novella
and opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District – have characterised Katerina
2. See David
Olusoga,
Lvovna (Katherine in Oldroyd’s film) as a representation of bourgeois society under
‘Black people critique: an overreaching and ungrateful shrew who finally gets what’s coming to
have had a
presence in her. Adapted by the playwright Alice Birch, Oldroyd’s version places its heroine
our history
for centuries.
in northeastern England and does little to acknowledge her backstory. We learn
Get over nothing of Katherine’s upbringing other than that she had a mother who taught
it’ The
Guardian, her about nature. This omission makes her seem more like an abstraction, a symbol
August, 2017
(Online)
of female victory over misogyny, than a fully fleshed-out and complex character.
Perhaps this narrative economy is a formalisation of what happens to women in
patriarchal discourse when they lack the tools and space to define themselves apart
from in relation to men. Katherine is confined to the house and to a daily routine that

109
 3. In her study
leaves little space for her agency and self-expression, but plenty of room for the kind of boredom, way of being in the
6. There are
of the Africanist sexual dissatisfaction, and insatiable sexual hunger Betty Friedan describes in The Feminine world. Inflected with a major differences
presence in between this film
canonical American Mystique (1963). Her overbearing father-in-law, Boris Lester (Christopher Fairbank), regularly mixture of apprehension, sequence and a
literature, novelist
Toni Morrison
scolds Katherine for her boredom-induced lethargy and what he perceives to be the neglect of her challenge, curiosity, scene in the source
material involving
urges readers to wifely duties. It comes as no surprise, then, when the severely groomed and corseted Katherine and barely concealed Sergei’s weighing
consider how black of Aksinya,
characters are begins grasping for more than an existence marked by the slow-moving passage of time. contempt, Anna’s gaze Katerina’s cook.
often used as the
reverse images
So far, so conventional – but Oldroyd changes the dynamics of the story radically through is transformed into a Where Anna runs
naked from the
of “championed the addition of Naomi Ackie’s maid, Anna.3 That many viewers missed or were reluctant to critical mode of looking room and is tearful
characteristics” and during Katherine’s
narrative themes. explore how crucial the relationship between Katherine and Anna is to the former’s eventual self- that recalls the Black questioning (about
She asks that they
consider what
emancipation and the film’s overall message is surprising.4 Another outcome of Lady Macbeth’s female spectatorship Sebastian), Aksinya
is playful and
the addition of colourblind casting is the generation of an unintended but weighty narrative subtext, largely theorised by bell hooks. gossipy, sharing
blackness or Black tidbits about
characters does reflected in Katherine’s relationships with Anna and Sebastian. In the first few moments of Lady In The Oppositional Gaze: Sergei’s romantic
for a narrative.
Toni Morrison,
Macbeth we are introduced to both the inner workings of the Lester household and to Katherine, Black Female Spectators, exploits with her
employer. Nikolai
Playing in the veiled and turned away from the camera. As she sneaks a peek at the groom, Alexander, standing bell hooks traces the genealogy of the relation between racialised power relations, in which slaves Leskov, ‘The Lady
Dark: Whiteness Macbeth of the
in the Literary beside her at the wedding altar (he remains off-screen), viewers are given a glimpse of her face. were denied the right to gaze, and the cinematic apparatus. She describes an interrogative mode Mtsensk District’
Imagination (New
York: Random
But instead of showing the object of Katherine’s gaze, and offering a glimpse of her perspective, of visual pleasure that operates as a site of resistance through its refusal to centre the male gaze, to in The Enchanted
Wanderer and
House, 1993). the editing challenges our expectations through the use of a match-on-action reverse shot that characterise white womanhood as lack (in relation to white men), and to perpetuate the negation Other Stories,
of Black female subjectivity.8 In this way, Anna’s penetrating gaze draws attention to and evaluates translated by
continues to follow her movements. In this new image, Katherine’s head is framed between two Richard Pevear and
4. Also, worthy
of consideration
characters: Boris and Anna. The significance of this framing comes to light later when Boris tasks Katherine’s behaviour, becoming the film’s moral compass. Larissa Volokhonsky
(New York:
here is Boris’s role, Anna with the responsibility of watching Katherine closely to make sure she stays awake until In making Sebastian darker skinned than Katherine, Lady Macbeth inadvertently draws on the Random House,
as patriarchal 2013), p6-8.
head of household, Alexander joins her in their bedroom (although there is much left to be desired when he finally problematic legacy of brutish Black male sexuality on screen and traces the political contours of its
in creating this
friction between the
does). Under Boris’s direction, a dynamic arises that privileges Katherine’s pleasure and protection relation to white femininity. As visual shorthand, his skin tone functions as a signifier of difference 7. Florence Pugh,
‘Standing by
women. at the expense of Anna’s humanity. Both Anna and Katherine are subject to Boris’s patriarchal in a way that surpasses the class difference presented in the source material. Indeed, Sebastian’s the monster you
sexually-charged introduction to the film (during his suspension of a naked Anna in a weighing created’, interview
5. There is a scene authority, but where Anna is able to empathise with Katherine when she is mistreated, Katherine by Chandler
where Katherine
rebuffs Boris’s
finds Anna’s humiliation to be amusing.5 device and flirtation with Katherine) is followed by his forcing his way into her bedroom and Levack, The
Review, TIFF,
insults and is In a sequence adapted from the novella, Katherine discovers that male workers have suspended overcoming any lingering traces of propriety that Katherine still possesses. Their lovemaking is August 2017,
slapped across (Online)
the face. Anna, Anna, naked, in a sow-weighing device.6 She orders the men to release Anna immediately, but often marked by aggression and presents itself not as a passionate, illicit affair between equals but as
watching this
exchange from
instead of seeing the overlaps between the maid’s experiences of male dominance and her own, an illustration of the old adage wherein one person holds the knife’s handle while the other holds 8. bell hooks, ‘The
Oppositional Gaze:
an alcove in the Katherine flirts with Sebastian, the ringleader. Back in the house, Katherine finds the tearful, the blade – an imbalance of power. Black Female
background, Spectators’ in Black
steps forward to visibly distressed Anna in a stairwell, and doesn’t attempt to comfort her. Instead, she asks Anna is witness to all of this and more: we see her in the background stealing glances at Looks: Race and
intervene. The
choreography of
questions about Sebastian. Once Katherine’s curiosity is satisfied, she leaves Anna and we are left Katherine during her interactions with Sebastian, Boris and even the local priest. When Katherine Representation
(Boston: South
their blocking is to witness Anna’s attempts to compose herself as she watches Katherine’s retreating figure. Anna poisons her father-in-law, Anna is present and her shock and grief cause her to become mute. End Press, 1992),
indicative of the p115-31.
three characters’ is not ignorant of Katherine’s indifference to her suffering, and the camera ensures that viewers Alexander is also soon dispatched after on a surprise return to the estate finding Katherine in
relationship.
Another scene
aren’t either. Although initiated by the elder Lester, Anna’s surveillance of Katherine takes on a bed with Sebastian. She makes quick work of his murder and enlists Sebastian in the disposal of 9. Both Teddy and
his grandmother
involves Boris life of its own, outlining both within and beyond the story’s historical moment the limits of her Alexander’s body and that of his horse. Sebastian soon takes his place as the man of the house, but are played by actors
humiliating Anna of colour.
when she refuses agency. Florence Pugh’s claim that “Anna has more power, in a sense, because she’s allowed to go his enjoyment of this new status is tainted by Anna’s worrisome presence. He fears that through
to disclose that
Katherine finished
outside, to walk around…to have a life” rests upon the problematic assumption that the modes of its documentation of this chain of events, Anna’s critical gaze will upend the life he and Katherine
the reserves of mobility accessible to women weren’t informed by their racial and class positioning.7 Katherine’s have created. These fears are put to rest when Katherine reminds him (in Anna’s presence) that the
his favourite
wine. Boris orders confinement to the house’s interior is indicative of Western culture’s glorification of fragile, white maid is mute and is therefore unable to reveal their crimes. Most strikingly, this exchange makes
Anna to crawl on
all fours, while
femininity as the pinnacle of female desirability. Conversely, Anna’s outdoor excursions are linked explicit Sebastian’s dependence on Katherine, as well as his willingness to oppress others living in
an inebriated to her domestic labour and punctuated by Sebastian’s threatening behaviour. precarious circumstances: he might be the one wearing the pants, but he’s clearly not the one in
Katherine, sitting
in the background, As the film progresses and Anna’s surveillance of Katherine intensifies, it would be easy to suggest charge. Their conversation shows the way in which Katherine explicitly links her freedom with
stifles her laughter.
that this activity was warranted given Katherine’s increasingly erratic behaviour during the absence Anna’s voicelessness and foreshadows a significant change to the story’s conclusion.
of the Lester men. Left to her own devices and Anna’s ministrations, Katherine explores the wild In Nikolai Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Katerina and Sergei’s affair is
and wet countryside, relishing the temporary reprieve from male oppression and the pleasures of interrupted by the sudden arrival of Fedya, a young nephew who is heir to her husband’s estate.
defying the direct order to stay indoors, while Anna’s watchfulness is presented as her primary Katerina kills him, confesses to committing the murder to stay with her lover, and both she and

110 111
 Sergei are arrested. Shortly after Katerina gives birth to their child, their relationship falls apart and
10. BFI, ‘Lady Sergei becomes involved with another prisoner whom Katerina kills while simultaneously taking her

In Conversation With
Macbeth: Florence own life. Along similar lines, in Lady Macbeth, a boy named Teddy (Anton Palmer) arrives. He is
Pugh on her dark
and dangerous turn heir apparent to the estate of the missing Alexander. And Agnes (Golda Rosheuvel), his grandmother,
in 19th-century
drama’, filmed reveals that Teddy is the result of Alexander’s relationship with another woman.9 With Teddy on the
October 14, 2016 at scene, Sebastian must hide in the outhouse (where Anna was assaulted at the beginning of the film)
60th BFI London

Alice Diop
Film Festival, and Katherine becomes desperate for him to return to the house. In the source material, Sergei is
London, UK,
Video, 21:14 aware of Katerina’s plans to murder Fedya, but isn’t actually involved. However, in Oldroyd’s version,
Sebastian has an opportunity to kill the boy, but instead rescues him from harm and returns him to
11. Heidi Safia
Mirza, ed., Black safety. Eager to again share her bed with Sebastian, Katherine enlists him in a plot to smother the
British Feminism:
A Reader (London child. After Teddy’s death, Katherine tells Teddy’s grandmother and the skeptical authorities that he
and New York: died in his sleep. Tormented by his role in Teddy’s death, Sebastian confesses to the police, a doctor,
Routledge, 1997).
See also, Patricia and the boy’s grandmother that Katherine incited his participation.
Hill Collins, Black
Feminist Thought: What happens next is both a surprise and to be expected: Anna is given the punitive narrative
Knowledge, trajectory that Katherine receives in the source material. Instead of confessing, Katherine accuses
Consciousness,
and the Politics of Sebastian and Anna of committing not just Teddy’s murder, but also the murder of her father-in-
Empowerment
(New York and law and husband. While this act of self-preservation consigns the two accused to death, the camera’s
London: Routledge, lingering look at Anna suggests she is impacted most by Katherine’s lies. Unable to speak and reveal
2000)
the truth, the all-seeing Anna fills the frame, looking from person to person, then shuts her eyes.
12. Their
misgivings also When we next see Anna, it is after a tracking point-of-view shot of the sky, which is attributed to
suggest that Sebastian, who is lying beside her, shackled, in a moving wagon. Anna’s face is turned towards the
there might be a
logic underlying wagon wall, almost as if she no longer wants to see anything. Lady Macbeth ends with Katherine,
colourblind casting
that causes it deserted by household staff, resuming her position on the settee where she previously sat in boredom.
to differ from In an interview, Alice Birch describes this change to the story’s denouement as a feminist act because
inclusive casting
approaches. its open ending offers Katherine an opportunity to have another life.10 But what does it say that a
Where the latter
makes space for film heralded as feminist for its depiction of a woman’s self-liberation frames this process as a benefit
the subtext of resulting from its heroine’s silencing of another woman? Birch’s argument is troubling because
their actors’ racial
identities to create it privileges the lives of certain women over the lives of others. Furthermore, given the optics of
thematic subtext
not originally Lady Macbeth’s casting and its accompanying racialised subtext, this conclusion only emphasises the
present in the resemblance between Katherine and Anna’s relationship and long-standing antagonisms between
work, the former
approach relies white and Black women within feminist circles, wherein white feminists both ignore the specificities
on an ideology
that suppresses or of Black women’s lived experiences of oppression and add to these experiences of oppression.11
denies meanings By emphasising Anna’s reactions to Katherine’s behaviour and criminal allegations, Lady Macbeth
associated with
racial differences invites viewers to shift focus from the film’s more obvious treatment of gender oppression to
because it doesn’t
‘see’ race. consider how the women’s racial and class identities inform their relationship and their experiences
of oppression. Katherine and Anna experience male dominance differently because of their social
classes, but Katherine’s mistreatment of Anna is also charged with this patriarchal economic system.
Their lack of female solidarity across class difference is only compounded by the visuals of their racial
differences, and exploring their intersections reveals a thematic richness that exceeds the filmmaker’s
intentions. As patriarch of the Lester household, Boris manages the ways the women experience
themselves, the world and each other. This aspect of Lady Macbeth’s story takes on greater weight
through its casting and draws attention to how patriarchal systems provide a basis for gender, racial,
and economic discrimination. As a result, a reluctance to engage critically with the ways the racial
identities of the actors of Lady Macbeth impact its feminist perspective does the film a disservice and
ignores the necessity of understanding how experiences of gender oppression are informed by other
intersecting social identities, like class and race.12

112
 Alice Diop is a French-Senegalese filmmaker who
investigates, above all, the way French society deals with those
on the margins. Her latest film, On Call, investigates life in a
Parisian health centre for immigrants and refugees.
AG – Can you trace your interest in
becoming a filmmaker back to a specific
point in time?
AD – I studied Human Sciences at the Sorbonne in Paris
and so I was engaged in academic studies. In one of the classes
a teacher showed me a documentary film by an anthropologist,
Éliane de Latour, who uses not writing but film as a medium.
I had no practice or knowledge of films at that time, and the
film surprised me – her films are very cinematographic and
I’d previously thought that anthropological films would be
fairly didactic, ‘university’ films. And that’s what seduced me
– the idea that you could say extremely complex and precise
things, question a whole society, almost traverse the whole
research process not using the pen but, in fact, the camera.
It was at that point that I started to make my way
through documentary cinema and discovered the films of
Frederick Wiseman, Chris Marker, and then I knew that
this was what interested me. They are extremely complex and
profound films, speaking about and to society. I realised that
documentary cinema, contrary to what one generally thinks,
is a cinema that perpetually invents its own form. There’s a
great capacity for formal innovation. And it's also a medium
which speaks directly to the world.
AG – Can you tell me more about the
process of making On Call?
AD – It was very important for us to enable people to put
a face to a ‘problem’ that is always presented as faceless. Often
when we speak about the refugee crisis it’s in a very general
way: even the images that we’re shown are of undifferentiated
masses, anonymous masses where we can’t even make out a
face. It’s the case with crises which are global – you get images
shot in the same way so as to not be able to individualise
anyone. The idea of the film was to subvert that, to oppose
these images with the singularity of an experience and of
a face. Above all, it was important that these people were
named. All the people I filmed are named by the doctor. To
name them is to recognise them. Not only are they named
but they are also looked at and we take the time to look at
them and to bear witness to what is at the heart of being
a ‘displaced' person, an exile. And that's why for me it's a
political film.
AG – I was really moved by the end of
On Call, where you abandon the camera to
approach the crying woman. Can you tell
me about this?
AD – Yes, already the experience we’d gone through in
114
this place was quite violent for me as a filmmaker. It was so
hard to finish the film because it was as if we were sending
these people back to their anonymity, their invisibility. The
camera had made them clear: it had watched them and it had
borne witness to what these people were going through. And I
also think that it was therapeutic for them, the way in which
the camera looked at them, like what the doctor could do for
them. I felt responsible, that we had to be in this place, to
look at these men and women – that’s what made it so hard
to finish. It's also the case that the film works through the
violence off-screen. These people have gone through extremely
violent things and then they find themselves in a place where
they are looked at by a doctor and a psychiatrist – a place of
refuge – and this distances the violence because they are given
time to be looked at, warmed up. But once they leave that
room they are sent back to their violence, to their solitude,
to their distress.
And so as a result, finishing the film with this woman who
breaks down in front of us, who forces me to abandon the
camera to look after her, betrays the limits of cinema and tells
us about the necessity of care. At the end of it all, I’m just a
woman in front of another woman. So I think that’s why this
scene at the end is important, that this woman is crying for all
those other people before her and it’s a cry that is more than
just her own cry. It’s a cry that recounts all the violence that
these people have suffered, all that they are unable to say. The
only thing I could do at that point was to take her in my arms
and to just be there: a human in front of a human.
And then there’s also the gaze of her child who looks at the
camera: in some ways he is looking at us as spectators and also
as society. And what future are we promising this child? And
it's not that these eyes are accusing us, but rather that they are
implicating us. What are we doing collectively? I think that
that provokes a reaction in the spectator or, at least, I hope
so. And when she talks and you see the door being closed,
that’s something so violent because it says something about
the limits of this place.
AG – The idea of this one, unifying space
works is so interesting. Your camera mainly
remains in one room but also occasionally
interrogates the waiting room. Can you
describe how you approached it?
AD – I wanted to explore the way that space works in this
world, more generally. The door itself plays a very important
role in the film because it’s a barrier between refuge and
non-refuge. You enter into this place, that has in some way
been made into a place that represents comfort. It’s a place where
voices are heard, it’s welcoming, but outside of this there’s the
violence of the outside world.
I felt the need to address the question of exile because
the pain of exile is something that’s almost indefinable and
unfathomable. And in the film you understand what their
little physical pains are made of. These people come to the
place first of all because they have a pain in their back, or
aren’t sleeping. At the end of the film you realise that they
are, of course, ill with something else – with the pain of
displacement. But they never say that. They never put words
to that. They are totally depressed and traumatised but they
don’t seem to know it. It’s much more simple to talk about a
little physical pain than it is to talk about a more existential
pain. The film shows the apparent banality of their words and
of medical diagnoses, but it’s speaking about something else,
something that can’t be named.
AG – Again, back to the question of
your appearance at the end of the film --
documentary is often wrongly described
as being ‘objective’. Do you put yourself
onscreen deliberately in order to interrogate
this?
AD – Yes, because I don’t think that objectivity or
transparency exist for the filmmaker. There’s always someone
there filming, otherwise it would have to be a surveillance
camera. You can’t help but film in a way that means that
you are exposed to viewers all the time, but it's true that,
for On Call, we were discrete – we were positioned behind
the doctor and at a certain point the people forgot about us
because they were in their own world. But these moments
where they interpellate me are important because we were
there, and because it’s me that filmed them. I really don’t
believe in objectivity and I think that any claim to objectivity
is dangerous – the belief that there isn’t someone choosing to
film this or that, to keep or discard this or that in the editing
suite. The so-called objectivity of direct, documentary cinema
doesn’t exist.
AG – And obviously your work has always
taken as its subject those ‘on the margins’.
France has a great many women filmmakers,
and documentary has always been a part of
the industry more open to women. Do you
think about being a ‘woman filmmaker’?
AD –No. It’s true that I’m a woman, a Black woman, I’m
a woman who grew up in the banlieue, the outskirts of Paris,
so necessarily I look at the world in a particular way, based
on the experience I’ve had. For me, the race question has
been more problematic than my gender. It’s harder for me
to be a Black woman than it is to just be a woman in France
today. I think that French cinema is a white cinema, where
the bodies you see, and those of the people who film them, are
white people that live in the centre. And that’s what French
cinema needs to work on more. It needs to integrate other
gazes, other stories, and other journeys. But this isn’t limited
to cinema: French society as a whole would benefit from this.
In the violence of what happened in 2015 – Charlie Hebdo
in January, and the attacks in November – you discover the
profound fracture present in this society. And the people
capable of narrating this fracture aren’t able to because they’re
not authorised to produce images and sounds… Or, at least,
there’s very few of us. I think that today documentary is the
most important and necessary tool to try and decrypt the
society in which we live. To go and confront reality and to
look at this reality in the face… To go to the margins. I think
it’s necessary to go to these limits, to narrate them, to show
them, to finally denounce them. And so that France can look
at itself, as it is, in the face. For me, the real fight is situated
there.
AG – Are you able to see a strand that
runs through your work?
AD –Before, I couldn’t see a strand that ran through all my
films, but now I think it’s that I work at the limits, whether
territorial or social, in order understand and interrogate
them. I think you can better examine the centre by looking at
the peripheries – through this we can show what France is in
reality. I think that France only thinks about its history and
not about its modernity, the fact that it is multicultural. This
is the modernity: I am French – I’m Black, but I’m French.
All of a sudden, it’s become political to say it like that. There
are plenty of us. France doesn’t want to think of itself as
multicultural. It makes me sick and I think it makes the
whole of France sick. If cinema can allow the French reality
to be shown, and not the ideal France, immemorial, that
certain people conserve, then I hope my films can allow them
to question it. France has big principles, extremely humanist
values – it thinks that it’s, ‘the country of human rights’, the
asylum country, but then the idea of it as a land of asylum
in On Call, in this public hospital, frankly, is painful. So at
some point France has to interrogate itself, accept the reality.
We can try and reach this ideal, but not through churning
out phrases like ‘France is the country of human rights’ – that
won’t make it true. By showing how this is less and less the
case, we can maybe try and make it true again. That’s why I
think it’s important to confront and question reality, to put
it on display for everyone to see, so that France can see its
mirror image. That’s what I think probably links all my
films.

A WOMAN’S ART:
SOPHIE MAINTIGNEUX,
ERIC ROHMER AND
FEMALE FRIENDSHIP
by Fiona Handyside
François Truffaut once claimed that cinema is a “woman’s art, that’s
to say the art of the actress. The director’s work is to make beautiful
things happen to beautiful women.”1 This view – of a woman’s place
in cinema as a composite of actress, model and muse – does not allow
for women to take on any role behind the camera. Yet Eric Rohmer,
Truffaut’s New Wave contemporary, presents a bracingly different way
of seeing cinema as a ‘woman’s art’. Throughout his career Rohmer
undertook a feminist revision of Truffaut’s depressingly misogynistic
view of the cinema, offering an alternative gaze at the pressures
and contradictions lived out by girls growing into womanhood in a
world where gender roles have been questioned, but not overturned,
by feminist politics. One of the ways in which he did so was to work
extensively with women behind the camera, and in the two Rohmer
films that address female friendship and isolation most directly – The
Green Ray (Le Rayon Vert, 1986) and The Four Adventures of Reinette
and Mirabelle (Les Quatre Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle, 1987) – a
crucial role was played by the cinematographer, Sophie Maintigneux.
His first major film cycle, ‘The Moral Tales’ (Six contes moraux,
1963-72), concentrates on the romantic dilemmas of a series of male
protagonists torn between Woman A (to whom they are in some way
promised by intention, engagement, or marriage) and Woman B: a
seductive temptress, whether a fantasy, a possible one-night stand or a
full-blown affair. Writing in Women and Film as early as 1973, Beverly
Walker noted a nascent feminist sensibility in this cycle, which presents
free-spirited women and shows admiration for the woman “who dares
to be different”2. Rohmer’s interest in, and sympathy with, heterosexual
women struggling to reconcile their desire for independence with their
yearning for sexual fulfilment and male companionship intensified in
the eighties, with his ‘Comedies and Proverbs’ (‘Comédies et proverbs’,
1980-7) series frequently featuring lead female characters. However, it
was not until his decision in the mid-eighties to undertake two self-
consciously different film projects – both of which privileged the New
Wave values of spontaneity, improvisation, realism and youth – that his
work began to embody the idea of a new gaze on the feminine, and he
employed Sophie Maintigneux.
After a minor acting role as a child of 11, Maintigneux had decided
that she wanted to work behind the camera. She gained experience
working alongside Elisabeth Prouvost, director of photography on
Marc Jolivet’s Ote-toi de mon soleil (1984). Working as assistant director
of photography on Jacques Nichet’s La guerre des demoiselles (1983),
she met Claudine Nougaret, who was employed in an assistant role
to the sound recordist. Nougaret introduced her to Rohmer, who was
specifically looking for a female cinematographer for his next film
project. Having impressed the director with a test film shot around
Paris’s Square Brignole-Galliera, she was hired as cinematographer for
The Green Ray as part of a small female crew, all in their mid-twenties:
Nougaret on sound, Françoise Etchegaray as production manager and
Marie Rivière as lead actor and co-scriptwriter. According to Etchegaray,
Rohmer chose this young, female crew to support and provide friendly
company for Rivière in her emotionally demanding role as the lonely,
depressed Delphine. His attempt at creating camaraderie paid off: the
four women named themselves, along with Rohmer, ‘le club des cinq’
(‘the gang of five’).
Before employing Maintigneux, Rohmer had only taken on male
cinematographers, chiefly Néstor Almendros, who went on to a
successful Hollywood career, winning an Oscar for Days of Heaven
(Terrence Malick, 1978). Rohmer’s decision to work with a young
woman was remarkable then and remains so today: cinematography
is still a highly male-dominated occupation, as Alison Smith’s 2012
investigation ‘Les chef-opératrices’3 shows. In 2009, only ten of the
prestigious Association Française des Directeurs de la Photographie
1. Mathilde Televison Industries:
Cinématographique (AFC)’s 107 members were women. The American
Blottière, Creativity, Systems,
‘Comment Truffaut Space, Patronage, Society of Cinematographers counts only seven women among its 334
tombait-il amoureux 2012, Bloomsbury
de ses actrices ?’, Academic., London listed active members. Of the more than 60 people to have won a César
Telerama, October
for Best Cinematography since the award’s inauguration in 1976,
2014, (Online). 4. Priska Morrissey
‘Interview With only five have been women: Agnès Godard, Jeanne Lapoirie, Caroline
2. Beverly Walker, Eric Rohmer: Does
‘Moral Tales: Eric Cinematography Champetier, Claire Mathon and Irina Lubtchansky. Meanwhile, until
Rohmer Reviewed Have An Artistic
and Interviewed’ Function? in Fiona this year, not a single female cinematographer has been nominated for,
Women and Film 1 Handyside, Ed., Eric let alone won, an Oscar.
No 3-4 (1973), p18. Rohmer Interviews
(Jackson: University The question of how much creative input and influence the
3. Alison Smith, ‘Les Press of Mississippi),
Chefs-Opératrices: 2004, p.146-64 cinematographer has and to what extent they are ‘merely’ a technical
Women Behind the element in the film production process is key in a film culture which
Camera in France’ Above: A Still from
In A. Dawson, & The Green Ray privileges the director as authority. Rohmer preferred not to hire
S. Holmes (Eds.), (1986).
Working in the Opposite: ‘Le Club cinematographers based on their professional credentials but to establish
Global Film and de Cinq’
a complicity and mutual understanding of any given film’s aesthetics.
In a 2004 interview with Priska Morrissey, he claimed that the best
cinematographers are those who are able to translate the director’s vision
using their technical expertise.4 For Rohmer, the cinematographer has
an important technical and artistic function but remains at the service
of the director’s aims. Given Rohmer’s small budgets and tiny crews on
The Green Ray and Reinette and Mirabelle, Maintigneux was forced to
give up on any idea that her cinematography would be an exercise in
polished perfection. Both films were shot using a 16mm Aaton camera
with very little recourse to artificial light, but Maintigneux was able to
use these limitations to achieve a distinct artistic effect of rawness and
fragility.
For example, some scenes in both films are underexposed, testing
Maintigneux’s 16mm film to its limits. During the meeting of Delphine
and Jacques in The Green Ray at the station in Biarritz, this underexposure
“evokes the friability of the photographic image and the fragility of
Delphine’s day dreams,”5 according to Jacob Leigh. Or take the barely
visible night sequence in which Reinette and Mirabelle await the ‘blue
hour’ in their white nightgowns, the ghostliness of their images suggesting
the evanescence of youth. For Rohmer, the 16mm film conveyed reality
more clearly, giving a documentary force to the images and helping us
to understand them as the swift capturing of the everyday. Maintigneux’s
facility for capturing these images fulfils the complicity that Rohmer
sought.
The amateur conditions Rohmer favoured on these two projects also
gave Maintigneux an extraordinary amount of freedom in determining
the composition and framing of the image, since Rohmer was unable to
intervene and demand certain kinds of shots. Maintigneux therefore had
total control over how she would move the camera and frame the image,
partly by using a zoom lens (albeit a rather clunky, old-fashioned one). In
some of the most memorable scenes from both films the combination of
a highly mobile camera and the paradoxical need for a relatively discreet
camera presence leads to extraordinary results.
In the famous scene in The Green Ray where Delphine has to defend
her vegetarianism to a group of friends-of-a-friend, the camera starts on
Delphine then moves to the right as a character places a plate of pork
chops onto the table. The camera doesn’t pan upwards to capture the man’s
face but stays at seat level, focusing on the plate heaving with meat and
Delphine’s strained smile as the plate looms above and around her. The
camera moves around the table as the other characters help themselves
to meat and ask Delphine facetious questions about vegetarianism, then
zooms forward, framing her in a single shot that underlines her isolation
from the group. As she goes on to explain that she thinks people eat meat
out of sheer force of habit (“they don’t think about the animals being
killed”) the camera moves again, framing two children silently eating their
pork chops and ignoring the adults’ debate. It is a brilliant piece of comic
timing that allows the camera (and audience) to sympathise with Delphine.
For the dialogue-free sequence where Delphine spends a day by herself
at the beach in Biarritz, Maintigneux and Rivière spent part of the day
alone with sound recording carried out separately. This approach allowed
Maintigneux to capture the crowds unnoticed, her framing sometimes
echoing holiday snapshots and sometimes seeming like an ethnographic
observation of lifeguards moving their watch tower, children building
sandcastles and people jumping in and out of the waves. One particularly
memorable shot films Delphine from the sea itself, looking back to the
beach, so that the camera is pushed and jogged about by the force of the
water. In the next shot, the camera is at ground-level alongside Delphine as
she lies on the sand. Maintigneux’s camera becomes part of Delphine’s day
at the beach in a way that more sophisticated techniques could never allow.
Rohmer was so impressed with Maintigneux’s work that he hired
her again for his next film. Reinette and Mirabelle continues to showcase
Maintigneux’s ability to place her camera sympathetically alongside
her characters and their experiences, and gently pokes fun at Rohmer’s
obsessions with weather and geography, often through the device of the
camera picking up an image that directly contradicts a man. For instance,
in a comic scene in which Reinette asks the way to the Rue de la Gaîté,
two male passers-by begin to argue over the best way to the street. Reinette
spots her destination and walks out of shot, but the two men carry on
arguing, ignoring Reinette’s shouts. The street itself offers a comment on
the narcissism and hubris of these men arguing over partitions of space: just
between them is a poster for a production of King Lear. At last the camera
leaves the men and follows Reinette as she looks at the street sign, and holds
the image long enough we clearly see it too.
Maintigneux, although still using what Derek Schilling calls ‘undressed’6
16mm photography, also demonstrates an astonishing handling of light and
colour in scenes such as the wonderful long shot of Reinette and Mirabelle,
both clothed in red jackets, sitting at a table covered in a white tablecloth.
The table is in a field, with a large pear tree framing the scene and a clump
of white flowers in the right foreground. The low evening sun creates stripes
of light and shadow over the scene: a symphony in blue, white, green and
the contrasting bright red of the jackets. This beautiful image is not the
individual creation of Rohmer, Maintigneux or their actors, Joëlle Miquel
and Jessica Forde). Rather this idyllic image, reminiscent of Impressionist
painting, is the product of their combined talents. The image’s impression
of harmony and sympathy echoes the complicity between director,
camerawoman and subjects.
With films that pay such close attention to female experience, it is hardly
surprising that Rohmer easily passes the now-notorious Bechdel test: does
a film include two female characters talking to each other about something
other than a man? Reinette and Mirabelle is the more radical of the two
in this respect: the friends discuss almost everything apart from men,
including nature, money, art and morality. So noticeable is the absence of
any love interest in the film’s four adventures that it drew critical comment
in Cahiers du cinéma at the time of the film’s release. The girls’ developing
friendship spans a series of disagreements, over whether, for example, one
should accept stolen goods or give money to beggars. These small, everyday
incidents are recorded by Maintigneux in obviously real places – streets,
cafés, supermarkets, train stations, traffic-choked roads – so that we are
constantly aware of how these decisions are framed by a broader socio-
spatial context.
For Rohmer, the value of female friendship lies precisely in how it allows
5. Jacob Leigh, The 6. Derek Schilling, Eric
Cinema of Eric Rohmer – French girls and women the space in which to figure out who they want to be
Rohmer: Irony, Film Directors Series,
Imagination and the Manchester University
and how they wish to act. As Felicity Colman explains in her 2005 essay
Social World, Press, 2007 ‘Hit me Harder: The Transversality of Becoming-Adolescent’: “friendship
Continuum, London,
2012, p135. 7. Felicity Colman, contains the possibility of becoming not the other, but becoming self-
‘Hit me Harder: The
Transversality of
sentient. I become aware of my own desires, of what I do not desire, of
Becoming-Adolescent’, what I do aspire to, through my interactions with my friend.”7 Through
Woman: A Cultural
Review 16:3, 2005, his engagement with relations between women, not just on screen but
p356-37.
also between his female crew and actresses, Rohmer did more than most
directors to foster this space, showing one possible way for cinema to truly
be a woman’s art.
 INTIMATE CONTACT: most crucial to and pervasive in all of her work, whether
addressing pleasure or pain, is an approach that refuses –
both in terms of subject matter and style – to renounce the
IMAGES OF SUFFERING IN artist’s own subjectivity. For Schneemann, to appropriate
the familiar slogan of second-wave feminism, the personal
THE WORK OF is political – an idea which, as the art historian Mignon
“Revealed in the complex mechanics of
CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN Schneemann’s art is her own ever-present
subjectivity, through which the works are able to
insist on the painfully personal nature of what we
by Gabrielle Schwarz
often call ‘global’ issues.”

Nixon has pointed out, can go both ways, making

politics personal as well as bringing the personal into
“I live for the nude rabble rousing of the realm of politics.4 However, Schneemann’s work on
Carolee Schneemann”.1 These words, written in a war remains comparatively under-recognised, despite the
recent Facebook post by Lena Dunham, creator of artist’s ongoing commitment to the theme, beginning
and frequently nude actor on the HBO series Girls, with her early anti-Vietnam war film Viet-Flakes (1965)
demonstrate Schneemann’s current role as a rightly and continuing into the 21st century with works such
revered goddess of feminist art. However, as Dunham’s as Terminal Velocity (2001), Schneemann’s response to
words suggest, the American artist’s pioneering role is 9/11, and More Wrong Things (2001), a video installation
nearly always attributed to a small pool of performances bringing together footage from various atrocities. These
and films, created in Paris and New York in the sixties works deserve further attention, and not only because
and seventies, which centre on the artist’s own often of the chaos that Western interventionism continues
naked body. The notorious group performance Meat Joy, to perpetuate around the world today. Revealed in the
a “celebration of flesh as material” that included eight complex mechanics of Schneemann’s art is her own ever-
nearly naked dancers, wet paint and raw fish and meat, present subjectivity, through which the works are able to
was first presented in Paris in 1964 and then later that insist on the painfully personal nature of what we often
year at the Judson Dance Theatre in New York.2 The call ‘global’ issues.
following year Schneemann again courted controversy For Schneemann, this insistence on the
with Fuses (1965), a self-shot film depicting scenes personal is foundational not just for her ethical but also
of Schneemann and her then-partner, the composer for her aesthetic philosophy. The following poetic words
James Tenney, having sex. Perhaps the artist’s most were originally written for a film entitled Kitch’s Last
direct feminist statement can be found in Interior Scroll Meal (1973–78) and reused in Interior Scroll:
1. Lena Dunham, 3. See Jeff Nagy, piece’ and deemed it
(1975/77), first performed at an exhibition of paintings ‘Peeking From Between “Carolee Schneemann’s irredeemably obscene.” I met a happy man
by women artists, in which Schneemann undressed in My Fingers: some Unforgivable Art”, 15
disjointed thoughts December 2016, Public 4. Mignon Nixon, a structuralist filmmaker–
front of her audience and proceeded to read out a series on the ‘Famous’ video’, Books. Nagy writes: ‘Schneemann’s Personal but don’t call me that
of feminist texts written on a scroll pulled out of her Facebook, 27 June 2016. “Schneemann recalls Politics’, in Carolee
having been accused Schneemann: Kinetic it’s something else I do–
vagina. At the time, these works were not only reviled by 2. Carolee Schneemann, of ‘playing into the Painting, ed. Sabine he said we are fond of you
‘Meat Joy’, in More most prurient of male Breitwieser (Salzburg:
conservative critics, but ignored or dismissed by many of Than Meat Joy: fantasies,’ and even Museum der Moderne you are charming
Performance Works
her fellow feminist artists, who found her unabashedly and Selected Writings,
Agnès Varda, director and Munich: Prestel,
but don’t ask us
of feminist New Wave 2015), p. 45.
eroticised, corporeal approach difficult to reconcile with ed. Bruce R. McPher-
classics like Cléo de 5 Images from to look at your films
son (New Paltz, NY,
their critique of visual pleasure and the fetishisation Documentext, 1979), à 7 and, later, Sans Interior Scroll (1975/77),
we cannot
p. 63. toit ni loi, ‘hated the Courtesy of Hales Gallery
of the female body. Now they are roundly embraced there are certain films
for their radical reconciliation of female sexuality and we cannot look at
subjective, creative agency.3 the personal clutter
Schneemann’s feminism does not, however, the persistence of feelings
begin and end with iconic images of her own naked the hand-touch sensibility
body. Counterbalancing her groundbreaking work on the diaristic indulgence
sex and pleasure, Schneemann has also produced an the painterly mess
important body of work exploring pain and suffering, the dense gestalt
international disasters and violent conflicts. What is the primitive techniques
 represent war is significant
not just for its blatantly
misogynistic overtones. As
The offending elements of Schneemann’s work encompass subject matter (“personal Schneemann recognises,
clutter”), tone (“feelings”), form and materiality (“hand-touch sensibility”, “painterly mess”, “primitive the symbolic nature of
techniques”). It is not simply that these elements, although often gendered in this way, are offensively the language serves to
and therefore subversively ‘female’ – Schneemann’s work contains no such reductive essentialism. generalise the experience
Rather, they reveal the centrality to Schneemann of an avowedly personal approach, rooted in the of war. Abstracted, even
concrete particularity of lived experience. Indeed, while Schneemann generally resists the incorporation idealised, as a heroic
Opposite:
5. Simone of her work into pre-existing philosophical or theoretical frameworks (as might be expected from her Terminal assertion of masculinity,
de Beauvoir, satirical takedown of the “structuralist filmmaker”), convincing arguments have been made for her Velocity (2001)
The Ethics of war is distanced from the
Ambiguity (New indebtedness to Simone de Beauvoir’s particular brand of existentialism – one based not on essential 8. Schneemann, all-too-real experiences of
York: Citadel being but on the lived experience of particular subjects. Branden W. Joseph draws parallels between ‘The Lebanon
Press, 1948), pp. Series’, in Car- its victims: the physical
17–18; quoted what he calls Schneemann’s “aesthetics of ambiguity” and de Beauvoir’s ethical critique of “impersonal olee Schnee- destruction of their bodies,
in Branden mann: Imaging
universal man” as “the source of values”.5 These values, de Beauvoir argues, can only be derived families and homes.
W. Joseph, her Erotics
‘Unclear Ten- from “the plurality of concrete, particular” lives in “situations whose particularity is as radical and as (Cambridge, Indeed,
dencies: Carolee MA: The MIT
Schneemann’s
irreducible as subjectivity itself”. Schneemann’s aesthetics are similarly opposed to universalised values Schneeman, when
Press, 2003), p.
Aesthetics of and abstract “truths”, whether of structuralist films or militaristic discourse. It is the abstraction of 170. See also asked about her choice to
Ambiguity’, in ‘Schneemann’s
Carolee Schnee- the latter discourse that is so powerfully undermined by the works explored in this essay. Through a turn to the form of the
analysis of the
mann: Kinetic range of artistic strategies, from documentary filmmaking and photomontage to painterly gestures and discourse on the documentary film, stated:
Painting, p. 40. 1990–91 Gulf
sculptural installations, this body of work reveals its engagement with one of feminism’s most valuable “It’s a proto-feminist issue
War in “Carolee
lessons: the imperative to break down the barrier between the self and the ‘other’, by attending to and Schneeman-
[…]. Documentary work
n”’(interviewed
connecting with the stories and experiences of unheard and silenced voices. by Andrea Juno), begins to seize the actuality
Schneemann’s first major foray into the territory of war is the film Viet-Flakes (1965), Angry Women,
of lived experience in its contradictions and to start tearing away the horrible aggrandized mythology
Re/Search 13
one of the first works of art made in protest against the ongoing Vietnam War. In the early sixties, (San Francisco: that comes out of the worst of self-righteous Americana.”9 Schneemann has made it her task to bear
Schneemann had begun to become aware of the United State’s devastating involvement in the war Re/Search Publi-
witness to documentary footage depicting real living – and dying – bodies. But the resulting art
cations, 1991), p.
in Vietnam, which was going largely unreported in the mainstream media. She began building 77: “It’s a phal- works are not just a matter of documentation. Rather, they reflect on the ways in which we experience
what she termed her “atrocity image collection” of photographs collected from foreign newspapers locentric mania,
it’s psychotic, and documentation, on how different forms of mediation can make the same image seem comfortably
and underground press depicting the war.6 Suffering from nightmares arising from these images, the language distant or intensely personal.
Schneemann began to compose Viet-Flakes. She used a 8mm camera, to which she had taped multiple of this war has
all been about In Viet-Flakes, Schneemann’s intrusive animating techniques – what her happy structuralist
magnifying lenses, to create an animated album of her collected atrocity images. In extreme close-up, ‘creaming them, filmmaker might have described as “primitive” or a “hand-touch sensibility” – highlight and enact this
the camera travels joltingly over the surface of these photographs, which show Vietnamese people dying, surrounding and
killing them, mediation. The camera lingers and returns to the same faces contorted with grief, using strong spotlights
6. Schneemann mourning or seeking to escape, the black-and-white film toned a ghostly blue. The uncomfortable, at pounding them and zooming in impossibly close until the pixelated image disintegrates under the pressure. Mignon
and Duncan relentlessly’
White, ‘On the times nauseating experience of viewing the film is heightened by the discordant soundtrack, a music Nixon rightly points out the ethical implications of this process: “subjective engagement with war
[…] It’s like a
Development of collage of choppy fragments of Western classical music, pop songs and South-East Asian folk songs, gang-bang, an
Snows and Other endless rape
might deepen the psychic dimension of political responsibility.”10 Crucially, for Schneemann, subjective
Early Expanded composed by James Tenney (who featured in Fuses in the same year). Viet-Flakes and the performance with the heaviest engagement does not imply a single, integrated perspective or moral imperative. Rather, in her dense
Cinema Works’, Snows (1967) – into which the film was incorporated – created a template for subsequent projects, battering ram,
in Expanded the battering
collages – her “painterly mess” of broken images, discordant sounds and distorted film – fragmentation
Cinema: Art, which continued to explore images of contemporary conflicts. Throughout the eighties, Schneemann cock.” rules, and emphasises the multiple layers of mediation and interpretation that form our experiences
Performance and produced the ‘Lebanon Series’, which also arose from her dreams of war following Israel’s invasion of
Film, ed. A.L. of contemporary events. The only real imperative is to empathise with the lives and deaths of others.
Rees, Duncan Lebanon in 1982, and eventually encompassed an artist’s book, several paintings, a film and kinetic Nowhere, perhaps, is this imperative more evident than in Schneemann’s unusually pared-
White, Steven 9. Schneemann,
sculpture. Today, Schneemann is focused on the ongoing conflict in Syria, working with images of the back response to the attacks of September 11. Schneemann has described Terminal Velocity as a “eulogy”
Ball, and David ‘Interview with
Curtis (London: corpses of victims to create new film work.7 Katie Haug ,’ in to the victims of this tragedy, arising less from a sense of the urgency of political action (this is certainly
Tate Publishing, Imaging Her
2011), p. 86.
For Schneemann, there have always been clear parallels between the violence inflicted no call to arms for the war on terror) than as a public record of “[o]ur own vertiginous grief, rage and
Erotics, p. 37.
by patriarchal culture on the individual female body and that inflicted on communities as a whole, sorrow”.11 The work takes the form of a photomontage depicting scanned and enlarged images, arranged
particularly during times of war: in seven columns and six rows, of people falling from the World Trade Centre. Each column focuses on
Beirut fulfilled a military sexual metaphor – they could not stop jerking off on this harlot. Beirut was one falling body, a series of increasingly cropped images enlarged up to the point of maximum legibility.
asking for it. They could not stop raining down their toxic ejaculations – rockets aimed into the half-moon curve 10. Nixon, p. 53.
The grid – the emblematic modernist form devoid of time, space, bodies or chaos – comes to resemble a
of the sea. The language that’s always used – “penetrating the southern border”, “raining down bombardments”, frame-by-frame breakdown of the final moments of people falling to their deaths. Schneemann writes: “The
7. See ‘Vincent
Honoré in “coming in low and hard”, “pounding villages”, “blasting off ” […]. Often the valorous, unspeakable shattering of computer process allows intimate contact with each horrific isolation […] In this communal nightmare,
Conversation the enemy will be characterized by images of women and children in the ruins.8
with Carolee fleeting visual attributes of nine lives become clearer by enlargement.”12 While today the images
Schneemann’, The “military sexual metaphor” underlying the visual and verbal language used to Schneemann used may have become familiar, at the time the tragedy was nearly always depicted through
Cura Magazine
(Online)
 the comparatively impersonal
images of the towers in flames.
When Terminal Velocity was
Right: first exhibited soon after the
Viet-Flakes
attacks, American audiences
(1965)
found the overwhelmingly
11. Schneemann,
‘Terminal Veloc-
human specificity revealed by
ity’, in Carolee Schneemann’s enlargements
Schneemann:
Kinetic Painting, of the anonymous victims too
p. 286. intimate, too much to bear. As
Schneemann wrote: “I have
had to consider the violence of
12. Ibid.
initial reactions due to facing a
vulnerability which counters
our American mythology of
invulnerability, of sustaining
heroics.”
For decades
Schneemann would draw on
her collection of atrocity images
to make films (occasionally
integrated into performances
or sculptural installations), artist’s books and photomontages about global suffering. While clearly rooted,
both in style and philosophy, in Schneemann’s distinctive approach to making art, on a thematic level
Schneemann’s ‘war’ works always stood apart from her work exploring her own life. In 2001, however,
she first presented More Wrong Things, an installation which, in a ground-breaking move, brought together
Schneemann’s proliferated archive of atrocities (now featuring footage not just from Vietnam and Lebanon I N
but also Sarajevo, Haiti, Palestine, Afghanistan and more) with another archive: footage of her own personal
disasters in recent years, from the lives and deaths of her cats to the alternative therapy she was undergoing
as cancer treatment, as well as short, sexually explicit fragments of celebrated past works, including Interior C O N V E R S AT I O N
Scroll and Fuses. These short clips have, in various iterations of the work, been projected in blown-up format
onto walls, displayed on between fourteen and seventeen monitors, suspended from the ceiling, and embedded
in a tangled mess of cords and cables. Through this exposed wiring, a literal embodiment of Schneemann’s W I T H
insistence on clutter, mess and exposure, the mediating processes of image-making and -viewing are turned
inside out. With the clips dispersed across multiple screens, all playing out of sync, endlessly repeating, their
frenetic violence accumulates – almost to the point of emotional paralysis. But not quite. C A R O L E E
“[T]here is a boundary crossed where her pain becomes our pain. The inescapability of grief fills
the room.”13 Thus one reviewer, although unable to locate the precise “mechanism” through which More Wrong
Things succeeds in moving her to tears, describes the landscape of empathy the installation presents. While
S C H N E E M A N N
in previous works it was Schneemann’s insistent intervention on the surface of the images that enabled her
13. Barbara
Leon, ‘Carolee and her viewers to make intimate contact with the depicted pain, here it is the suggestion that a direct parallel
Schneemann can (and should) be drawn between the ‘public’ disasters taking place around the world and the personal ill
exhibit: More
Wrong Things’, 21 health, loss and grief from which we all suffer – and that none of this can really be kept separate from the rest
May 2001
of our lives, the pleasures of sex and creativity. In this work, explicitly a piece about war, technology, military
conflict, and geopolitics, the resolutely inappropriate intrusion of Schneemann’s own “personal clutter” finally
brings together the two strands of her art. Yes, the personal is political; but the most abstract politics also has
a physical shape. It is the shape of our human bodies, in pleasure and pain.

124 125
It seems that every time there is a
frame, I want to break it. The only
time I want to protect the frame is
when I’m raising chickens – I’ve got
to keep the foxes out and build a very
strong frame.
AG – Can you trace your fascination
with the image back to a particular
point?
CS – I was drawing before I could speak. I really
believed that I had to make images. My childhood
drawings are curious, because they’re very primitive,
but they’re in sequences. So, in order to have an image
– let’s say, of a person coming into a room – I would
take 15 pages and strike with the line, and there might
be a finger, and then more lines and a hand. They’re
very curious and odd because it’s as though I were
anticipating filmic time. And I had never seen a film
when I was four years old. So, it began very early, and
then, gradually, I remember being discouraged when it
seemed that, although this is a serious preoccupation,
it wasn’t considered appropriate for a girl.
AG – How did you turn from painting
– a more static medium – to the moving
image?
CS – It’s really the implication of abstract-
expressionist energy to increase dimensionality.
Motion was always part of my energy and drawings.
The energy of translation: from what I was looking at,
to the hand, to the page. How the body had to inflect
and activate perception: that was always an element in
my thinking about how to realise imagery. Starting
in 1963, I was determined to include my body as
subject as well as subject-maker. As I have written
about and as people know, my work was considered
ridiculous at the time. If you were an attractive young
woman, you couldn’t add another subversive energy;
you had to ensure that your body behaved in a way
that conformed to patriarchal expectation. So that
was a big struggle and I didn’t know that it would be
acknowledge or understand that it was a form of resistance
to the male tradition. As soon as it came to female
ways of discussing form and formulation and its potential
meanings against what we inherit.
embodiment, they said: “You must be playing into the
traditions of the patriarchy.” So that was really painful at
There are amazing Inuit fertility figures that I have
studied. These are fierce little goddesses that sometimes
the time. But it did eventually evolve.
You were reclaiming ownership over your own body,
have big exposed vulvas that are like seashells, very
defined. And they may not have any arms, because the
and also personal agency through your body.
Gradually and finally, through extended feminist
statues were made of corn or leaves or grasses. So we are
looking at reconfigured aspects of materiality, and the
history and analysis, the culture began to see my work
as transgressive and aggressive, as well as being in
power of grass, corn and leaves, responding to an erotics
and a fecundity. But female fecundity belongs to a female
contradistinction to inherited traditions. I was inspired
by negative feelings about the use of women’s bodies by
psyche and spirit; it does not belong to male possession as
an attribute, as a thing that has to be controlled – which
some contemporary artists: it was so mechanistic. They is what our historic traditions all insist upon: that we are
such a set of contradictions for so long: that my use
turned all women’s bodies into dolls. Like Hans Bellmer just material to be used by male culture.
of the naked body would not belong to my work, not
and Yves Klein. These men manoeuvred and manipulated
belong to my authority. Finally, that has evolved, but
the woman as part of their materiality, but it was obvious AG – When we speak about your work,
it took quite a while, and a lot of cultural prejudice
that they never made themselves vulnerable – or, when we tend to focus on the central bodies
and resistance. So it’s different now; it’s great. But,
they did, they were attacked by their colleagues, and and aspects of pleasure. But there are
in the sixties, when I was first introducing this visual
that was interesting. Jim Dine, an American artist who also important aspects of your work
concept, it was completely rejected. My body was
lived in London for many years, did an incredible solo that expose pain and suffering bodies.
completely rejected.
performative work based on his diaries and psychoanalytic So I wanted to talk a bit about this kind
theory. He presented himself in a vulnerable light. And the of work as well, and why you think this
AG – What motivated those early
male artists who were his friends were very antagonistic aspect has been perhaps a little neglected
works?
and angry with him. They didn’t want him to represent in discourse.
CS – I was filming my erotic life because, while I
this aspect of male being. CS – Yeah, my work always moves between aspects of the
knew what this life felt like, I wanted to see what it
domestic: ecstasy, normalcy, images of pleasure, insecurity,
would look like; because, when I talked about female
AG – You mention vulnerability. The and so on. And then I constantly juxtapose this with the
sexuality, people only offered me pornography. I had
naked body being exposed to an outside imposition of war, terror, rape and destruction, and the
nothing confirming it; nothing that resembled what
gaze is, at once, both vulnerable but also question of why this negative militaristic domination is
I thought my experience might look like. That was a
very powerful. so definitive. American culture, which presumes itself
struggle: to introduce a sacred erotics from a female
CS – I’ve done works where I was very frightened of to be self-righteous and full of good cowboys, is another
perspective. And then the kinetic work: I began to
appearing with such vulnerability – sometimes naked, culture built on assassination, as is most European, and
envision the energy of painting occupying live bodies,
sometimes exposing taboo aspects of sexuality. At times, certainly British, culture. Historically, the West has taken
and then I would choreograph for them. In order
I have felt extremely vulnerable and frightened of my materiality or elements that we want, and destroyed the
to teach the participants in my early kinetic theatre
audience, but I had to experience the contradiction and people in whom they have their origin, so that we’ve taken
work what the movements would be, I had to inhabit
the juxtaposition of what my lived experience was and them over. That domination and constant militaristic
the movement. I couldn’t just tell them what to do;
what the culture showed. And, in these works - one, for destruction is what we really inherit. Not the good guys;
I realised that I had to demonstrate it also: I had to
instance, titled Ask the Goddess [1991] – I rely a great deal not the cowboys; not the American apple pie. There’s an
train them. So I was moving painting into live action.
on archaic imagery: on Christian sacrificial imagery. And underlying residue on which our cultures are built and I
The fact that you used your own body effectively
I juxtapose a sacrificial religion with the ancient goddess keep having to look at it. I just have to see this. What is it
as a canvas was criticised both by male audiences
religions, which have an affirmative, exquisite power, and and why is it more taboo than anything erotic?
and also from self-identifying feminist perspectives.
in whose stories fecundity and sexuality and empowered
Fuses [1965], for example, had a lot feminist critique
female energy are clearly depicted; whereas, in the Western AG – So what is it that draws you to
directed against it.
tradition, they are always misinterpreted. It’s the same that ‘underlying residue’? And how has
Yes, it was really painful and disappointing. I was
with archaic African goddess figuration. They’re always your work developed in this respect over
living in London when I made some of those works
demeaned, misinterpreted, minimised. So feminist theory the years?
and feminist theory was very strict, very determined,
has to rest on non-traditional analysis and non-traditional CS – I suppose part of this is because, as you know, I
and completely rejected my work. They could never
grew up in the countryside. My dad was a rural physician,
so we were in a household which was involved with
accidents and physical problems. We had to bring injured
people into the house and give them towels and go and
get dad and just be responsive and aware. So I am really
responsive to aspects of violence and destruction and the
question of, what is this persistent psychosis and why it
inhabits the male psyche and male power so relentlessly,
so continuously through history. And that’s up to, and
including, our governments today – particularly mine
right now with its sinister transformations and complete
assumption of domination, greed and punishment of
people who might not align with their insistence on
what’s righteous and correct – when this is actually
corrupt and malevolent. So I just always thought I had to
look at both sides, and I’ve certainly never had permission
or encouragement.
But it began with Vietnam. That war completely
overshadows the happiness, the ecological insights, the
intensity of community that were partly formed by the
civil rights movement in the United States, and by a
sense of community and cultural empowerment between
genders, races, and cultures. We were fighting for that, set
against this overwhelming destruction of a culture that
seemed to have nothing to do with us; we didn’t even
know what we wanted there. What did they have that we
had to steal? They didn’t even have bananas. What was
going on; why did we have to eviscerate this culture? So I
was studying images and their poetry and their language
and, then, the atrocity photos that I accumulated in the
early sixties, and with which I created my film Viet-Flakes
[1965], and used as much of Vietnamese culture as I
could find: their music, their poetry, their landscape, but
also the violence against them. That was just a nightmare
for the cultural excitement of the sixties. Sex, drugs and
alcohol: there’s all that. But then it’s under this cloud.
So I worked with Vietnam and then, in the early
eighties, I begin studying the destruction of Palestinian
culture: mostly at the hands of the Israelis – their
neighbours and their genetic doubles. These people come
from the same historic strands – you can’t say that, but
that’s what most studies lead me to understand. So I’m
completely bewildered and obsessed with Lebanon and
what’s left of Palestine.
Then this evolves into 9/11 [Terminal Velocity, 2001]:
just working with those images. It’s not an in memoriam;
I just wanted to get close to those images. They’re all
128
128
haunting. It’s hard to explain: I don’t think I was making a way. I wanted to talk about the idea of
something ‘out of it’; it’s more that I needed to examine the frame, or the boundary, and how your
the details. I wanted to understand the concept of falling, work transgresses these boundaries,
where you think all the bodies have the same momentum, both in an aesthetic sense and in a social
it’s actually completely different. And those people from sense. Your work, perhaps, destroys
9/11 are not necessarily jumping: they have been blown a sort of unity in order to embrace the
out of the buildings. The buildings are exploding. more fragmented or plural aspects of
And what I am working on now (in addition to a lot things.
of domestic images of landscapes, and things blooming, CS – Well, it seems that, every time there is a frame, I
and the cats, and the water, and all the good spring want to break it, or to go into it. With my early paintings,
transformations around where I live): my studio is full when I was 17 or 18, I started painting from historic
of images of dead, naked, tortured, mutilated men from imagery, in particular Cézanne, and then I would take
Syria; there’s hundreds and hundreds of these images from a razor blade and cut into my surfaces, as if there was
a photographer who escaped, barely escaped, from Syria something beyond that I might access. The only time I
with his photographic works. So that, I guess, goes back want to protect the frame is when I’m raising chickens
to your question about the double aspect of my work and – I’ve got to keep the foxes out and build a very strong
why you mention, correctly, that the work surrounding frame. But, with the paintings, a lot of the work that
atrocity is relatively neglected in favour of looking at the became sculptures were paintings that had failed, and I
naked body. chopped them up: the canvas is unrolling; the wood is
breaking; this painting is now a sculpture. And that was
AG – What I found really interesting is very encouraging for going beyond the frame.
And it was really horrible; people kept bringing me these
that the violence to which those bodies There is a wonderful, an amazing, film that I hope
disgusting films, saying “Oh that must be what you need
are subjected becomes a denial of their everyone who cares about my work will see – it’s called
to see!” So, between the refusal of the body as a source of
humanity. I see a complete continuity Breaking the Frame [2011]. It’s a feature by Marielle
expressive power and pleasure and sexuality, on the one
between your work on the female body Nitoslawska. It explores everything about me for anyone
hand, and the body as mutilated, attacked and deformed,
– which has also been reduced to an who would ever have any interest in my work. I’m
on the other, there is the question: What’s the unity
object – and your work on those suffering very blessed with this work: it’s completely true to my
here? Where does the culture go into its psychotic divide?
bodies from war that have been denied history, to my spirit, and to my lived experience. And
Because somewhere they’re the same.
their humanity. You talk about getting the only sounds in it are natural sounds from where I
close to these images; trying to bring live or fragments of music by my originating partner: the
AG – You were also reconfiguring or
the spectator or the audience closer; composer James Tenney. It’s a wonderful work.
rearticulating the relationship between
to create an intimacy – with both the Very important to the structure of my work is gestalt:
what is private and what is public; what
erotic aspect and the suffering aspect. the fragmentation, the tear, the cut, the slice. As soon
is personal and what is political; what is
Would you say there is a form of ethics as you get away from the established boundary, there is
inside and what is outside.
of intimacy at work? another potentiality. And it’s risky; it’s uncertain; you’re
CS – How do we negotiate what is personal from within
CS – Yes, that’s interesting - what you call the ethics not sure where it leads you, but I want to go there.
and from without? What can become public and what is
of intimacy. That’s a very good threshold out of which to
always completely personal or personalised? And how do
examine the separation of pleasurable intimacy and the AG – Our last question: what advice
these threads criss-cross and attach? I do a lot of research,
intimacy of looking at abuse and violence and this other would you give to younger, emerging
and I don’t know any answers, but I read. The history of
realm of secret denial. female artists?
male obsession with blood and female sexuality – Freud
Intimacy is a huge subjective realm for me because it’s CS – You have to trust yourself and you have to
and Jung, and, of course, Wilhelm Reich and Simone de
probably the most deformed, the most distorted aspect trust your history: what you bring to where you are. Be
Beauvoir – these have all been guidelines to try to see
of social configuration. It was the depiction of intimacy persistent and give yourself permission. It’s all about
better what I’m looking at. But I have to insist that I’m
that I could never recognise when I started to film my giving yourself permission, without having to rely on
really just a painter; I am just a visual artist wondering
erotic life; its equity, its pleasurable kind of ecstasy and external factors: which are the ones that constrict us,
about things.
normalcy. Everyone thought it was bewildering because constrain us and try to redefine our experience. You have
they could only approach intimacy through pornography. to hack, chop, cut your own path.
AG – And I guess the skin is the limit, in
129
 I believe that I am a political person. You are a
political person. I have a political body. You have
a political body. I believe that everybody is a po-
litical person and that every day of life is a po-
litical day. Because we have knowledge and we
choose to have politics. Of course art is politics.
One important layer of art is politics. But politics
is rubbish. It is never art. Politics is not art but art
is political. Most artists want to ignore it: “I don’t
want to care about you.” There’s a big challenge
between art and politics. I know most artists say,
“I’m not a political person.” Of course you are not
a politics person, but you are political, because
you are an artist. It is important.

Most people are tired of horrible news, political

news. But that is completely different. I’m talking
I N about the philosophical side of politics, not the
rubbish politics that they throw at people every
C O N V E R S AT I O N day in the news. But of course we have a lot of
W I T H painful news every day: for example, the terror at-
tacks in the UK, the terror attack in Iran [the Teh-
M A N I A ran shootings on 7 July 2017], the terror attack
in France. It was horrible. I’m living here, in the
A K B A R I UK, and we had three terror attacks, and then the
next week there was one in Tehran, where I was
born. It doesn’t matter which country. We are liv-
ing, at the moment, in a really horrible time, which
of course affects every artist. If you are an artist
how can you justify not caring? “It doesn’t affect
me.” Is it possible? I don’t think so.

130 131
 In Abbas Kiarostami’s docufiction
film Ten (2002), Mania Akbari plays
a taxi driver. She listens, with sharp
eyebrows and a focused expression, as
the passengers talk to her. It’s a slow,
thoughtful film and her presence is
central: it’s her own story that provides
a unifying thread, weaving together
the stories of her passengers. This
makes sense, because the film is her –
her ideas, her family, her friends, and
her words. The presence and control
that she shows in Ten is reflected
throughout her later work both as
a director and actress, in films that
range across themes of identity, sexual
fluidity, marriage, infidelity, abortion
and lesbianism.
AG – What was your idea behind doing
a naked interview?
MA – I think sometimes interviews are not just talking
about your art. Sometimes they’re about performing
your body. Around ten years ago, I had breast cancer,
and I had a double mastectomy. I had chemotherapy
and radiotherapy. It was a really hard journey. My body
completely changed. I believe that your body is really
deeply connected with your mind and with your identity,
and I completely accepted my body without breasts.
But after ten years, my doctor in London decided to
do reconstruction. For four years I had reconstruction.
Left and then right – it wasn’t just one operation, it was
around six. It was really interesting for me. What is the
deep meaning of the body’s identity? Woman’s identity?
What is the connection between the changing body
and woman’s identity? It was hard for me to change
my body. I couldn’t find myself. Who am I? I believe
that everything you have experienced in your life can
affect both your mind and can your body. My body is
my canvas, and my artwork is my language and is not
Stills from filmed interview with Mania Akbari
separate from my life. Most of the time when you look
at women on the front of magazines, or in Hollywood
cinema, in news, everyday life, they are making that
value – ‘beauty’ – that society needs. What is a beautiful
132 133
body, honestly? What is the perfect woman’s body?
What do they want to say?
They make an object out of the woman, and they have
just one layer: enjoying the value of her beauty. No other
layer. There’s never the kind of image made for us that
asks different questions about the philosophical nature
of the woman’s body. The woman’s body is not just for
beauty and is not just for enjoying. The government
wants to control society and the people, so they make
a value, ‘beauty’, for the people. I believe that artists are
completely anti-value. In the history of art and artists,
they don’t accept the value the government wants to give
them.
AG – Why do you make art?
MA – I’m living to make art and I’m making art to
live. I believe that all my films are about my history and
my childhood, my experience. I have a deep connection
between my body and my mind, and also my art and
my films, too. They are really connected together. I
never have any answer about the body; I’m trying to
ask a question about the body in all my films. The big
question: what is the body? What is woman’s identity?
It’s really challenging for me because I’m coming from
an Islamic society, the Iranian republic. Of course it’s
really different because I come from Tehran, Iran, where
I was born. My mother and father were teachers and
later they had a private school. We didn’t have any
contact with art or artists and then when we had the
revolution [in 1979], I was just five years old. My body
and my mind grew up with the war [the Iran–Iraq War,
1980–88]. I remember every night there was bombing
in Tehran.
Whenever I want to remember my childhood honestly
I just remember really hard, dark situations from a
depressing time. For example, after the revolution, lots
of my father’s students were arrested and executed by
the government. Our home was a really dark place. My
father and my mother were completely depressed. They
were completely disappointed. The indoor and outdoor
were exactly the same. After the war we had a deep
contrast between indoors and outdoors, and people tried
to make happiness inside the home, which was the exact
opposite of the society. My country is a very beautiful
 country but it is full of contrast. There is beauty, but
there is devastation and darkness too.
Can you discuss Ten [2002], in which
you are credited as ‘actor’, in relation to
its portrayal of that world?
I had a really honestly great experience with Ten, but I
want to explain a little bit about the film. At that time of
Ten, I had a really hard life. I wanted to make my way as
a woman artist and also I was married and a mother to
three boys and was just 22. There were a lot of challenges.
And then one divorce, and two marriages, in Iranian
society. It wasn’t easy. At that time I had a really small
camera. Maybe you know that the son [in the film] was
my son, and the sisters were my sisters, everybody was
my friends and the car was my car and the camera was
my camera. It was a package of my life that Kiarostami
documented and I think he was really clever, because at
that time it was a really important film about Iranians in
Iran. Because most films at that time were in the villages,
and focused on the relationships between children and
their fathers, set against the beautiful landscape of some
village in Iran. Kiarostami never made films in the city
after the Iranian revolution. It was a film in the city, in
the modern city, with a car, and different women without
the hijab and without fashion. It started challenging sex,
ideas around sex workers, and sons’ connection with their
mother, feelings of guilt, fighting. I think it was like a
big bang.
It was an important film that broke many taboos
in Iran. It was something that the many festivals and
awards in Iranian cinema had never seen before from
Kiarostami. It was really important to say to the world:
Look at this, we have this kind of society and these
kinds of women in Iran too. They are challenging and
grappling with many things, trying to find themselves.
I did have a problem with the film; I don’t like the film.
It’s really important for me that I’m honest. Because I
think it was about one part of my life that was really
painful.
AG – Can you expand on that a little?
MA – It is a really important part of my life that
makes me really upset to think about. When I watch the
Stills from Ten (2002)
film it reminds me of my life, it’s a document of my life.
We didn’t have any script, any camera person, any light
– anything. And Kiarostami was never on the set. The
film came out of a conversation with my psychotherapist.
It was her idea. At the time I had a really huge problem.
Why am I a taxi driver? Non-stop I drove to my sons’
schools – three sons. Schools, pools, swimming and
music classes in the city. And also I wanted to make art
and perform my identity, but I didn’t have time. I was a
mother and I was a wife. Also my society didn’t want me
to continue to make my career as an artist.
At that time, Kiarostami really liked shooting raw
footage: we had 70 hours of footage and he started to
edit it. He was very clever and he chose some good parts
and he made Ten. We never had any script and he did no
directing. At that time we had a really lovely relationship.
It was a really hard situation. In Iran there is a painful
history for women … A woman does not have creativity.
If she does, it is off the back of the man. It’s coming from
the man, it’s never coming from the woman. You just
have one chance of creativity: pregnancy, to be a mother.
And if the men make a film, they just use and abuse
women and they completely ignore the woman. They
love to know that a man made this creative work because
they don’t want to know or understand that women have
creativity too.
AG – Yes, of course, time and again,
women are presented as passive and
men as creative and ‘inspired’.
MA – I am a man and a woman too. I am both.
Honestly I don’t care about gender, but I really care
about gender. I don’t like that women/men/women/men.
But I’m really serious sometimes. In a different way.
Some of the important parts of 20 Fingers [2004] are
questions about sex, bodies, gender, lesbianism, and the
relationship between two different bodies. What is the
sex relationship? What is the body relationship? What is
the human relationship? It is really challenging. Also I
remember, at that time, I acted a different personality in
the film. Every woman in Iran has to be a perfect mother
and perfect wife, but you have a different potential as a
human. You can do many things, but most of the time
there is a deep value and an important value for a woman
just in being a good mother and a good wife. It’s really
hard if you want to grapple with the other side of the
woman. It’s not easy.
AG – In 20 Fingers, you really get
the sense of a woman and a man’s
relationship being pulled apart and
reconstituted. Was it important for
you to have a man in the film as well
as a woman, for it to be about that
relationship?
MA – I really like for two bodies to talk together.
Like a body language. Two bodies dancing and fighting
together. In Iran, most of what happens between a man
and woman happens inside the home, and you cannot go
out most of the time because of the Islamic society. Yes,
you can go out, but you cannot have a French kiss in the
street or be without a hijab. But you can do everything
at home. I am in close-up the whole time and I have
humans and people in these almost boxes and they start
talking and challenging together… I try to make a society,
my country and my society, with the sound and music
outside the frame. I think 20 Fingers is coming from this
kind of issue and taboo: challenging my society with my
gender, with my body, with my identity. In this society I
am a woman, I am a mother, I am a wife, I am a lover; but
of course the government, family and society rejected me.
How can you fight this situation? You want to survive
and make your career as an artist and filmmaker. I think
all of this was packed into 20 Fingers. The woman wants
to fight to be a woman.
AG – Your next film was 10+4 [2007],
in which you confront Ten. Why did you
decide to return to it?
MA – After Ten I was completely rejected by
Kiarostami and by society. I had a really hard time. It’s a
beautiful story that I would love to write about. I would
love to explain what happened to women in the history
of art and the history of cinema too. Maybe in Iran it’s
more interesting, because I had a really hard time. It
wasn’t just about Kiarostami or the film; it was about
the society. That relationship was a metaphor for Islamic
society.
136
Then, four years after Ten, I got breast cancer. I
decided that I should return to that film. In one part of
Ten, if you remember, my friend shaved her head. Because
she lost her partner. But I lost my hair in order to live. It
was the exact opposite of her. And then I thought: oh my
god, when I saw her at that time I couldn’t have believed
I would ever be like that, exactly the same. That’s why
I decided to start making a film about my situation. I
started making a film and if I died, Kiarostami would
edit it… if I lived, I could edit it together with him.
It’s a beautiful story. At that time I was having
chemotherapy, cinema therapy and art therapy too. I
didn’t know that I was changing my body for cinema,
for film or for art. Is it reality? What is this? The camera
helped me to survive. It was like art therapy, honestly.
For me that film was a relationship between death and
life, the duel between death and life. I was like a dead
body and a dead woman fighting to be alive. To have a
conversation with life. It was a really deep connection
between inside you and outside you.
At that time I didn’t have breasts. I’d had a mastectomy.
What could I do with this new body? For society, I had
lost my gender and I had to find it again. For women, the
most important part of their body shape is their breasts.
OK, she is a woman. Some people in the street thought I
was a man because I didn’t have any breasts and I didn’t
have any hair. It was really interesting for me. The breast
is a metaphor for being a mother: you feed your baby.
OK, I thought, I cannot have a baby or continue feeling
like a mother. I was 28 and the doctor told me, “You
cannot get pregnant because you’ve had chemotherapy,
your period has stopped and you have no eggs.” But if life
takes something, I am going to fight to get it back. That
was years ago. I’m pregnant now, and it’s a big challenge.
Between the ages of 28 and 42 it was a non-stop fight Still from 20 Fingers (2004)
to be a mother again. I thought, one day I will be. It’s a
really beautiful connection between science and art, too,
because I had IVF. It’s about how science and art can
help two people to make a new life. Now I have a new
body, a new language, a new life.
AG – And From Tehran from London
[2011] was first titled Women Do Not
Have Breasts…
137
 MA – I don’t like that film at all. I have really bad
memories about that film. It was really hard. When
I started making it, Ahmadinejad was president and
[director] Jafar Panahi was in jail. Later, the government
arrested my distributor because she was a really active
woman. Then I stopped work on the film and I decided
to go to some film festivals that I’d been invited to for
two or three months. I went there and I tried to help my
distributor get released from jail. I fought a lot. I have
lot of memories of that time. At the end I did a short
interview with BBC Persian about my work. I never
discussed any political subject or the Iranian government.
I talked about the forms and concepts of my films.
The next day, the government – on around 70 websites
– put up images of me from when I had cancer: when I was
without hair, fat, and with a deformed face. They wrote
that Mania Akbari is HIV-positive, that I am a lesbian,
and that I ran away from Iran. I’m not lesbian and I don’t
care, but I’m not HIV-positive. It was really painful for
me because again and again the government attacks the
gender and sexuality of women. I believe that if I were a
man there would never be this kind of label. I thought,
OK, again there is this terror of women’s identity. It was
really painful for me.
I understood that I could not go back to Tehran and
Iran. I decided, OK, you have to stay in the UK and start
your life again with a new language, a new body and a
new home. Everything from zero again. I was like a child.
When the baby is in the mother’s belly, it is really safe and
secure. Non-stop during our lives we want this security.
We never find this security in our lives, because it is really
abstract, but you do have a really deep connection and
memory with your childhood, your first language, your
homeland and your memory. I believe that I’m living
under my skin, and my skin is full of memory. If you
look at me I have a lot of scars on my body. They are
not scars, they are lines between death and life that are
full of memory for me. It’s exactly like a metaphor for
my childhood. I lost everything one night, but the most
important thing is that you carry your memory. You never
lost it: it’s with you. In reality you cannot touch your
memory. I cannot speak perfect English because it’s not
Stills from 10+4 (2007); From Tehran to London (2012)
my first language. I cannot understand this language. I
have a deep connection with my mother language, because
138 139
when I was born I heard that language, I grew up with
that language, and my body was shaped and formed along
with that language: with Persian. At the moment it’s
really stupid to be thinking, Where is your home? I don’t
have a home. My home is in my studio. It’s my creativity.
But I have memory. I’m living with my memory.
That’s why in Life May Be [2014], with [the critic and
director] Mark Cousins, I started trying to talk about
the Persian language, about Persian culture, Iranian
culture, Iranian society, my religion – I don’t have any
religion, honestly, but I mean Islam. I tried to talk
about different languages, different societies, different
histories, and different cultures with a man who comes
from a different language, different culture, and different
society. What is this combination? What is this dialogue
between two people? I think this distance between Mark
and I helped invent a new language between us. It wasn’t
Persian, it wasn’t English. It wasn’t Iran, it wasn’t the
UK. What was that? It was an art-language. I think that
art-language is the most important language in the world.
That’s why I’m trying in my next project to talk about
the connections between my childhood and my memory.
The connections between the Persian language and other
cultures and other languages with other people from other
countries. I think that’s important. I think it’s a creative
new language of art.
AG – How do you think depicting
women and women’s bodies in new ways
can change things, specifically on film?
MA – I have no idea, but I know that sometimes your
body is your pain, is your thought. You can’t completely
tell it apart from your mind. It is a body and it is a mind.
Sometimes, for me, my body is my canvas and, of course,
my art can change many things. For example, when I
made 10+4, I had a very small screening for some friends
in Tehran. They were very emotional. Some of them
had breast cancer that they were keeping hidden from
their families. They came to the screening and then they
decided to tell their loved ones. Many Iranian women
have lost family because of breast cancer. Their husbands
decide to divorce them because they don’t want a wife
without breasts. Because, to him, she’s no longer a woman.
She doesn’t have breasts and they find that dangerous or
horrible. It’s hard because they cannot look at their wives’
bodies. I have had conversations with many women in Iran
who have said that, since their operations, their husbands
never look at them. When you try to open yourself up –
open up your soul, open up your body, open up everything
– it’s like a pen. It’s like writing. It’s like a powerful essay,
like a powerful painting. It makes other women think, We
can do this. In some societies, such as my own, I believe
that we can change things with our bodies. But we have
to be careful. Because we had this experience before the
revolution. When you look at Iranian cinema before the
revolution, everything was about women’s bodies. All the
stories were about women’s bodies, too – naked women and
things like that. And society gave women’s beauty value
in people’s eyes. Now, after the revolution, it’s exactly the
same. They use women to hurt other women. If you if
want to write with your body, if you want to paint with
your body or think with your body, you have to be really
careful that you don’t make this new beauty into an object.
Making it seem that you are anti-regime or anti-Islam is
dangerous. You have to know the limits.
AG – You use Facebook a lot. You have
a community of female filmmakers that
you talk to. I think it’s a powerful feminist
tool now…
MA – I think that at the moment many things have
changed with new technology. It is interesting. You can
release your thoughts, your ideas and your knowledge
to other people. And it’s growing. I completely believe
that it’s the Internet revolution in Iran that has meant
the government can’t control the new generation. But
in my generation we didn’t have any Wi-Fi, internet or
computers. We had a really hard time. We couldn’t see
any artwork that wasn’t in a book at the university. Some
of the books had naked women in and they would take
out those pages. But now my son can just tap and find art,
news and articles – he can read it. He doesn’t need to go
to the library in Tehran or in the university library. You
can write your idea, your novel and put it on the internet
and people can read it but the government can’t censor
it. I think for an Islamic country like my country, it is
really important. The internet is a revolution for me. It’s a
positive revolution.
AG – What’s ironic is that this will
be censored. This image that we are
creating, this film. It will be censored
from the internet because we can see
your nipples.
MA – It’s interesting: we think that we are living in
a democratic country here, but we have censorship too.
Everywhere we have censorship, but it is a different
censorship. If you want to talk about democracy, we don’t
have any democracy in the world. If you want to talk about
freedom, we don’t have any freedom in the world, honestly.
AG – Tell us about your next film.
MA – My next film is very interesting. It’s like a
film essay. I am really enjoying it because I don’t need
camerawomen or cameramen and I don’t need a group.
I have images, films, narration, sound design, everything,
but with just archival footage. With just a story. I feel I’m
really independent.
The first time I met Douglas White, my partner,
I saw a picture of a huge black palm that he had made
from exploded tires. He made it from such ugly and also
beautiful objects, metaphorical and full of history. I looked
at that, and it reminded me of my childhood. The Iran–
Iraq war. During that time, in the south of Iran, there
were a lot of palms that had been destroyed during the war.
Some of them were burned black. An object can remind
you of your childhood, of some tragic memory or tragic
story. I believe that most objects are storytellers. And also
that there is a connection between the object and my body.
The transformation of my body in relation to the object
and vice versa.
It’s like my body, really honestly, is telling a story to
people. I’m pregnant and it is about what has happened.
I’ve had a change in body and it is about why I’m here. I
lost my country, but I’m in a new country, a new life, a new
body, new baby, new partner, different language. It comes
from one object.
 BEST DOCUMENTARIES
-
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (Sophie Fiennes)
Visages, Villages / Faces, Places (Agnès Varda)
Le Concours / The Graduation (Claire Simon)
The Rape of Recy Taylor (Nancy Buirski)
Kedi (Ceyda Torun)

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHERS
-
Ari Wegner (Lady Macbeth, William Oldroyd)
BEST SCREENWRITERS
Rachel Morrison (Mudbound, Dee Rees)
-
Hélène Louvart (Beach Rats, Eliza Hittman)
Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not A Witch)
Céline Bozon (Félicité, Alain Gomis)
Vivan Qu (Angels Wear White)
Crystel Fournier (Nico, 1988, Susanna Nicchiarelli)
Léonor Serraille (Jeune Femme)
Valeska Grisebach (Western)
Chloé Zhao (The Rider)
Alice Birch (Lady Macbeth)
Céline Sciamma (My Life As A Courgette)
Hope Dickson Leach (The Levelling)
Agnieszka Holland (Spoor) SECTION FIVE
BEST ACTORS Eliza Hittman (Beach Rats)
- Léa Mysius (Ava) L O O K I N G
Florence Pugh (Lady Macbeth, William Oldroyd)
Brooklynn Prince and Bria Vinaite (The Florida Project, Sean Baker)
A R O U N D
Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu (Félicité, Alain Gomis)
Sônia Braga (Aquarius, Kleber Mendonça Filho)
Daniela Vega (A Fantastic Woman, Sebastián Lelio)
Maggie Mulubwa (I Am Not A Witch, Rungano Nyoni)
BEST FILMS
Garance Marillier (Raw, Julia Ducournau)
-
Sally Hawkins (Maudie, Aisling Walsh)
I Am Not A Witch (Rungano Nyoni)
Jeanne Balibar (Barbara, Mathieu Amalric)
Jeune Femme (Léonor Serraille)
Laetitia Dosch (Jeune Femme, Léonor Serraille)
Beauty and the Dogs (Kaouther Ben Hania)
Angels Wear White (Vivian Qu)
Ava (Léa Mysius)
The Party (Sally Potter)
The Levelling (Hope Dickson Leach)
Maudie (Aisling Walsh)
By The Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong)
Western (Valeska Grisebach)
Heal The Living (Katell Quillévéré)
MARIANNE FAITHFULL: FLEUR D’ÂME
Sandrine Bonnaire possesses a face which,
in its planar, geometric architecture, seems
designed to be in front of the camera, rather
than behind it; a face which, when disclosed
on screen, cannot help but bend every ray of
light back on itself. In Marianne Faithfull:
Fleur d’âme, her third feature-length film as
a director, and her second documentary, it
is notable by its absence. While Bonnaire’s
voice regularly intervenes to help narrate
the story of the musician and pop icon
Marianne Faithfull, which the film, via
several direct-to-camera interviews, and
archival footage, takes as its focus – the
French-born actor and director consciously
withholds her own image. This strategy –
also exercised in her first documentary, Elle
s’appelle Sabine (2007) – subtly resists an
economy of ‘star power’ and of fetishistic
visuality. In this unconventional biopic,
emphasis is placed instead on gesture, oral
histories, and a more intuitive dissemination
of the stories making up Faithfull’s vibrant
and eventful life.
The film opens with a clip of a filmed
interview with a young, hesitant Faithfull,
in which she alternates between taking
nervous drags from a menthol cigarette and
responding to questions in her charming,
consciously imperfect French. This sequence
readies the audience for the double game
of mirrors that will presently take place:
or for the strange refraction of Bonnaire,
as archetypal and mythologised ‘French
woman’, making a film about Faithfull, who,
FILM
144
like Jane Birkin, mined her aristocratic,
Anglophilic roots for continental gains. “Je
ne sais pas” is Faithfull’s way of ultimately
batting off the male interviewer’s prying,
predatory line of enquiry, introducing a
motif which will haunt the remainder of this
cogent, 60-minute portrait: that of a self in
exile, estranged from itself in the foreign,
ongoing masquerade of the feminine.
Bonnaire – from the film’s opening settings
– is eager that her project be established
as dual-authored and collaborative. In
another early scene, in which Faithfull has
been primed and lit for a direct-to-camera
testimonial, she asks how her subject feels
about this being a film necessarily constructed
à deux. Faithfull’s response, if filtered
through a parodically haughty and aloof
sensibility, is encouraging and affirmative.
“I like it, because I like you, Sandrine,”
she replies. But her response to Bonnaire’s
subsequent enquiry – of whether she
approves of the more or less equal weighting
between vintage and contemporary footage –
somewhat forfeits this accommodating tone.
A practice of collaborative fusion and of
inclusivity is indeed substituted for a sense
of psychic splitting and a desire to maintain
firm boundaries as Faithfull admits to a sense
of relief at how little of her younger self will
SANDRINE BONNAIRE
feature in this portrait: “Because then it
becomes a film that is not all about me.” An
eerie and disruptive statement that becomes
more lucid if we approach Marianne, as
Bonnaire’s work enables us to do, as someone
who has had to hitch a life on the constantly
patrolled fault line between public and private
worlds.
One of Fleur d’âme’s most convincing
strands is its chronicling of Faithfull’s
graduation from the figure of ‘the girl’
to the evolved woman artist on her own,
uncompromising terms. In many of the
clips that Bonnaire samples of her younger
subject performing songs for television, she is
introduced by invariably male presenters as a
“beautiful girl that came out of nowhere” or
“a very beautiful girl who has only recently
made a name for herself”, as if etherised
from nothing but the potent air of Sixties
London. In another clip, we encounter
Andrew Oldham, the former manager of The
Rolling Stones who ‘discovered’ Faithfull at
a party, convinced – the question of talent
aside – “she had a face” onto which various
projections of consumerist desire could be
screened. Moving through the film, it is
noticeable that this repressive framework
of the face is – echoed by Bonnaire’s own
insistence on her audio, as opposed to visual,
subjectivity – blurred over with the subtle,
yet persistent strain of Faithfull’s voice. She
laughs, coughs into her ashtray, sings. While
such activities might strike the viewer as
mundane, Bonnaire’s framing of her subject
145
 MARIANNE FAITHFULL: FLEUR D’ÂME
as a figure who is always in the process of
articulating herself testifies to the extent to
which culture freezes women at the lissome
point of their photogenic adolescence,
choosing to embalm them at their most
static, and most mute. Such a process is
well known to Bonnaire, who, for many,
will forever be confined to her breakthrough
performance as a wilful and erotically
voracious teenage girl in Maurice Pialat’s
1. Fernand Denis,
‘Entretien avec captivating A Nos Amours (1983). Of her
Sandrine Bonnaire’,
La Libre, Belgium, now taken-for-granted endorsement of such
27th March 2001, a figure, Bonnaire has said, in interview, “I
(Online)
was extremely naïve.”¹
Bonnaire’s project, though undergirded
FILM
146
by a strong desire for reparation, is not
without levity. Faithfull’s wry sense of
humour fumigates the piece, offsetting
reports of the notorious Stones drugs
raid, and subsequent trial, in 1967, with
comments like, “I thought that it would
be just a lovely weekend taking acid with
my friends”. Later on, Faithfull links her
knack for running into difficulties with
US Customs at John F Kennedy airport (a
knack to which even the sporadic flyer to
New York can emphatically relate) to her
life-long identification with the status of an
‘undesirable alien’. “You have been loved by
many men,” is Bonnaire’s counter-protest,
to which Faithfull offers an alternative
perspective: “I was living in a glass house…
and couldn’t get out”. An ensuing sequence
detailing the singer’s temporary gamble
with homelessness – billed as a Burroughs-
inspired ‘art experiment’ rather than material
necessity – demonstrates, perhaps, the padded
strictures of fame’s cage.
In her essay ‘The Double Standard of
Aging’ from 1972, Susan Sontag writes
that “[T]o be a woman is to be an actress.
Being feminine is a kind of theater, with
its appropriate costumes, décor, lighting,
and stylized gestures”.² Such an observation
becomes harder to unpack at the point when
performing for the camera, independent
of the theatre of one’s gender, has become
one’s primary profession, too. In Fleur d’âme,
whose title both rehearses Faithfull’s florid
self-mythology and her ephemeral fragility,
Marianne appears to oscillate between a fierce
attraction to the spotlight and an aversion
to it. She frequently instructs Bonnaire
to turn the camera off, to stop filming, yet
knows to holds her posture and the muscles
of her mouth in place while she does it. In
her definition of the figure of the ingénue, the
critic Carina Chocano notes that she (for we
must assume that her gender, if not strictly her
sex, is feminine), “is credulous and vulnerable
and dependent on a protective paternal figure,
and lives in constant peril of being exploited
or corrupted by some lurking cad or villain.
This threat is the central tension of her life.
What makes her interesting is the question of
SANDRINE BONNAIRE
how she will navigate this world, who she will
become, and what will become of her.”³
Throughout Fleur d’âme, Faithfull’s 2. Susan Sontag,
wariness of excess discursivity punctures ‘The Double
Standard of
Bonnaire’s eagerness to tackle such concerns. Aging’, Saturday
“It won’t be a wonderful film if I go on talking Review,
September 1972
too much” is another typical intervention.
For her part, Bonnaire is mostly tolerant of 3. Carina
Chocano,
Faithfull’s sudden, prickly retractions, her ‘Thelma,
unpredictable shuttling between a desire for Louise, and
All the Pretty
attention and to close off from the world. In Women’ New
York Times
its final minutes, nonetheless, she and her Magazine, April
film risk evading the question that Chocano 21, 2011, (Online)
pinpoints: of how Faithfull will ultimately
make this tightrope walkable, without falling
off one side. A final segment where Bonnaire
attempts to probe her protagonist a little
further on her past addictions is again cut
short by Faithfull’s protests that her questions
are “too deep”. Ultimately, she argues, “the
only thing that matters is love”, which is
ventured as “the bottom line.’
To wish for an alternative conclusion teeters
close to patriarchy’s constant wish to cover
over and to re-inscribe. All the same, I would
have liked Bonnaire’s project to conclude at
a stronger, and less toothless, point. At the
root of Fleur d’âme is something spikier and
more intractable than ‘love’ as idealised cure-
all. Underneath the lingering patois of the
Swinging Sixties lurks a portrait of a woman
who both yearns for fame and the pleasures of
interiority and who dares – despite sizeable
resistance – to have both.
by Alice Blackhurst
147
THINGS TO COME (L’AVENIR)
Does the future look something like the
sea? The opening scene of Mia Hansen-
Løve’s Things to Come (its French title is
simply L’Avenir, the future) ends with both
protagonist and viewer looking out to the
Brittany sea from Chateaubriand’s cliff-edge
grave. Is the future like this? A prospect you
can glance at once, like the tarot hand dealt
at the beginning of Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à
7 (1962)? Or could its vastness – like the rest
of nature, it cares little for us – be a comfort,
like the hyperreal flash that concludes Eric
Rohmer’s Le Rayon Vert (1986)? A sea view
has near-constant proportions, but ever-
changing moods (think of the misty view of
Balbec at the end of Marcel Proust’s Within a
Budding Grove). You could drown in it.
Mia Hansen-Løve’s fifth film asks what
we want of change: what it looks like, what
it costs, what it can offer. Hansen-Løve’s
films are often written from within: Eden
(2014), her last, borrowed from her younger
brother’s story of coming of age within the
French electronica scene of the late nineties;
Goodbye First Love (2011) drew from her own
experiences of love and Bildung. She has
talked of the story of Things to Come as being
based on her parents’ divorce when she was
in her twenties; her mother, when she read
the script, asked only that the cat – a major
character – be given a pseudonym.
Isabelle Huppert plays Nathalie, a prof de
philo, subscriber to Le Monde and the New
York Review of Books, in neat kick-flare indigo
FILM
148
MIA HANSEN-LØVE
jeans and a silk shirt: we see her attending to not felt feelings at the right time: the two- bus window. Nathalie is crying – nowhere
her anxious mother, teaching those who have year wait for anger, the four-year wait for finer to cry than on public transport, only a
made it to class through a protest against tears of mourning (which then didn’t stop); plane is better – when she sees him on the
the raising of the retirement age, paying for the happiness only glimpsed in retrospect. street with the young woman he left her for.
copies of her own book on Adorno at her Nathalie gloriously attempts to shove an Nathalie scoffs, shocked, but then laughs.
publishing house, presenting a bowl of freshly expensive ball-like apology bouquet of peonies Tizziness would belittle her too. He’s the
washed strawberries at the end of lunch. into her sleek metallic kitchen bin, and fails. cliché, she seems to get to say, without having
A friend saw the film before me and wrote: No matter: she can fail better! She puts the to say it at all. Madame Bovary, c’est lui.
“Normally I’m all for bougie Frenchies in stiff arrangement into an IKB-blue Ikea tote He temporarily destroys the white peace of
their €200 scarves getting in a tizz about and leaves the whole thing in the communal their book-lined apartment by removing his
their love lives and their philo classes, but dumpster in the basement. To belittle the tomes and it’s at once comic – “He took my
this one really wasn’t on.” Things to Come has peonies is to belittle the philanderer, but Levinas, with all my notes! And Buber too!
all the aesthetic pleasures – provocations to a mutely, and if it were not for the camera, Bastard! That’s too much!” – and tragic: the
teasing English eye – of watching Parisians. blindly. The door to the basement has been gap-toothed shelves show how their minds
Does well-dressed sangfroid stop us from closed before she turns back, cracks the lid, had grown together, over time, to the point
being able to sympathise with someone going and triumphantly rescues the blue bag. that he forgets her notes weren’t his. He can’t
through a divorce, the declining health of a Tizziness is missing. We glimpse betrayal see what he has lost, but she is starting to see
parent and the erosion of her discipline? Or once, from behind the municipal glass of a what she has gained.
are we simply disappointed if an existential
crisis is so undetectable as to barely merit
the term? How flat do we want the future
to be?I wonder if my friend felt let down, in
the first instance, by the confession of the
husband’s betrayal: sitting calmly on the sofa,
he explains he’s in love with someone else.
“I thought you’d love me forever,” Nathalie
replies. “What an idiot!” “I’ll always love
you, Nathalie,” he says. She goes to get up:
“Oh, arrête.” Instead of passion and infernal
curiosity, there is restraint and numbness.
The emotion is delayed, appearing in fits and
bursts across the film, determinedly unfolding
against any sort of smooth narrative arc. The
scene made me remember all the times I’d

Nathalie’s life isn’t
already written. Not by
her ex-husband, not by
Hollywood. She’s now
sole author, and though
she does knows herself
by now, she is also open
to the future, unchosen
as it is. But how to
navigate? She accepts a
drag of a cigarette from
her most brilliant (and handsome) student,
but she tells him she can’t imagine living
with another man, young or old. She knows
leaving the family’s summerhouse in Brittany,
with the garden that has grown along with
her children, will be hardest. She comes to her
dying mother’s side to tempt her with After
Eights, and ends up discussing not Sarkozy
and Chirac’s policies but their respective sex
appeal. Nathalie swerves from some clichés
and bends towards others. What pattern could
there be when life is newly patternless? The
energy is not that of a racehorse bursting out
of the gates but of a river meandering down a
hill, to the sea. And we will be reminded, as The
Fleetwoods’s version of ‘Unchained Melody’
plays over the credits, that lonely rivers flow to
the sea. She takes a trip to visit her favourite
student in his commune in the Vercors, and
cries, without reserve, into the cat’s black fur.
She tells her student of her luck: here she is,
children grown, mother gone, husband with
someone else. The freedom is total, unexpected
and, therefore, extraordinary.
by Joanna Biggs
150
No, she doesn’t fuck the student. Or
anyone else, as far as the film knows. Rather,
she experiences love and hope in a multitude
of other ways. She prowls her classroom,
reading out a passage from Rousseau’s Julie
ou la Nouvelle Héloïse: “As long as we desire,
we can do without happiness: we expect to
achieve it. If happiness fails to come, hope
persists, and the charm of illusion lasts as long
as the passion that causes it. So this condition
is sufficient in itself, and the anxiety it inflicts
is a sort of enjoyment that compensates for
reality… Woe to him who has nothing left to
desire… We enjoy less what we obtain than
what we hope for, and we are happy only
before being happy.” In the last scene, it is
Christmas, and her husband’s new nana has
returned to her family in Spain; Nathalie is
unwrapping a chicken from its wax paper to
salt. He will spend Christmas with his books.
In the living room, shelves replenished, are
Nathalie’s son, daughter and son-in-law. Her
infant grandson cries; Nathalie offers to go to
him. With his tiny body over her shoulder,
she holds his soft, lolling head in her hand
and sings him a lullaby. ‘A la Claire Fontaine’
is a lament for lost love – she loses him
not because she deserved it but because she
wouldn’t surrender to him – but there is also
a crystalline fountain, which is, as naturally
and gently as the sea, ever-moving and ever-
changing.
Ildikó Enyedi’s On Body and Soul (2017)
is an exercise in counterpoint. From its
opening sequences, the film unravels a
series of contrasts: human/animal, freedom/
captivity, pastoral/industrial, dream/reality,
life/death. More formal than metaphysical,
these contrasts mediate the film’s affective
exploration of touch – its hesitations as well
as its limit-points. The film begins with a
stark-white image: the brief notes of the
opening score fade out, plunging us into
the tonal silence of a snow-covered forest.
The quiet creates a certain pressure within
the frame, directing our attention to the
subtle movements of a stag and a doe. We
watch as the stag slowly approaches the doe,
gently resting his head over her neck. As if
recoiling from his touch, the doe retreats.
She moves off-frame; after a brief moment,
the stag follows. The film cuts to the
restless movement of a herd of cattle; bodies
touching, they vie for space in the crowded
pen. Our perspective aligned with one
captive animal, we peer through the wooden
slats of the pen towards a group of workers
on their break. The cow then looks upward,
orienting his body towards the sun. This
small gesture opens out onto the film world.
One-by-one, the characters turn to face the
blinding sun. This moment of connection,
with its almost cosmological overtones, is
then brutally undercut as we find ourselves
in a Hungarian abattoir, confronting scenes
ON BODY AND SOUL
of slaughter.
Winner of the Golden Bear at the
67th Berlin International Film Festival,
and shortlisted as Hungary’s entry for
Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th
Academy Awards, On Body and Soul marks
Enyedi’s first feature in 18 years, and
follows the path of her inimitable debut
My 20th Century (1989). Counterpoint
also structures this earlier film, which
crosscuts between the diverging lives of
separated twin sisters born in Budapest in
1880, exposing contradictory facets of the
position of women within modernity. The
cosmological overtones of On Body and Soul
are made explicit here. Stars in the sky form
a female chorus throughout the film, their
overlapping, whispered voices providing
commentary on the characters’ actions.
While My 20th Century is shot through with
the ethereal qualities of this celestial chorus
and new electrical technologies, the world of
On Body and Soul is similarly charged – this
time with oneiric correspondences.
Set against the industrial backdrop of
the abattoir, On Body and Soul traces the
unfolding romance between Endre (Géza
Morcsányi), the financial director, and
Mária (Alexandra Borbély), the new quality
inspector. After the theft of a ‘mating powder’
from the abattoir’s medicine cabinet, a
psychologist (Réka Tenki) conducts a series
of interviews with employees to discern
ILDIKO ENYEDI
151
ON BODY AND SOUL
the culprit. The interviews reveal Endre
and Mária have been sharing the same
dream. One after the other, they narrate
an encounter between a stag and doe in
the forest, locating the film’s recurring
imagery within their shared dream world.
In this dream world, Endre and Mária are
transmuted into stag and doe; we listen
as they recall a brief touch of noses while
drinking from a bubbling stream. This
brush of contact draws the two together,
bleeding into their waking reality. We
watch as Endre and Mária visit this dream
world night after night; the film crosscuts
between the two, alone in their respective
apartments. Slowly, brief exchanges at the
abattoir become nighttime conversations.
From its shimmering score to its use of
ambient sound, the film’s sound design
amplifies this slippage between dream and
reality. Ambient sounds are often dislocated
from the urban cityscape depicted on-
screen, until a cut situates them within the
forest’s quiet hum. At the same time, sound
reinforces the counterpoint between the
forest and the abattoir, as metallic clangs
of machinery reverberate throughout the
industrial space.
The increasing proximity between Endre
and Mária proceeds haltingly, marked
by hesitations and misunderstandings.
Through repeated close-ups of Endre’s
contorted hand, and explanatory scenes
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152
ILDIKO ENYEDI
with Mária’s therapist, On Body and Soul The camera later lingers on the blood electromagnetic apparatus; a chimpanzee
draws a parallel between his physical pooling across the tile floor. The credits at a zoo recounting the story of his
disability and her aversion to physical provide a disclaimer that while animals were entrapment), Enyedi’s latest film presents
contact: a characteristic, the film implies, harmed in the making of this film, none us with both the aestheticisation and the
of autism spectrum disorder. In a direct were harmed as a result of filming. The normalisation of this violence, turning its
echo of the opening dream sequence, Mária film only alludes to the ethical implications implications back onto the spectator. The
recoils from Endre’s touch; an initial in this act of witnessing, from the fainting film’s depiction of female suffering and self-
hesitation which forms a turning point of a police officer to Endre’s interrogation inflected violence echo these earlier scenes
in the film. A montage follows: Mária of a prospective employee: “What do you at the abattoir, treading a fine line between
holding her hands against the reverberating think about these animals that we process formal affectivity and aestheticisation as
speakers; reaching through the slats of the here…don’t you feel sorry for them?” exploitation. Ultimately, however, On Body
pen to stroke a cow’s back; lying down While My 20th Century explicitly frames and Soul presents an affecting, tender portrait
on the grass as the sprinklers turn on; scenes of animals in captivity in ethical of our search for contact against – and with –
touching herself with a stuffed puma. Yet, terms (the escape of a dog hooked up to an the violence we do to others and to ourselves.
the film simultaneously withholds this
proximity: close-ups on sensory details and
singular gestures combine with the framing
of Endre and Mária through partitions
and reflective surfaces. Moreover, as the
repetition of Laura Marling’s opening
refrain in ‘What He Wrote’ reminds us,
On Body and Soul sets the hesitations of
touch between Endre and Mária against
ruptures to bodily integrity (human and
animal). From the mechanised slaughter at
the abattoir, to the self-inflected violence of
the protagonist, the film takes touch to its
limit-point.
Early in the film, in frontal close-up,
we witness the mechanised killing of an
animal. The process is laid bare as the
camera follows the initial restraint of the
animal to the flaying and cutting of its
carcass, suspended from an overhead rail.
by Hannah Pveck
153
THE FLORIDA PROJECT
It is said that well-behaved women seldom
make history. In Sean Baker’s The Florida Project,
the badly behaved ones make their own. Echoing
the sun-drenched colour palettes of his earlier
work Tangerine (2015), Baker’s latest film opens
onto a current-day motel complex in the heat of
summer, a deep-lilac pastiche called ‘The Magic
Castle’ in Kissimmee, Florida, where six-year-old
Moonee (Brooklynn Price) is busy spitting on a
car alongside her two friends, Scooty (Christopher
Rivera) and Dicky (Aiden Malik). Trouble ensues
when they get caught in the act, and the giggling
trio zooms across the Magic Castle’s sprawling
corridor and stairs to seek refuge in Moonee’s
room. Upon reaching ‘Room 323’, Moonee
leaps through the window and traipses across the
small, unlit room to her bed, where a heavily-
tattooed young woman in her very early twenties,
with electric-blue hair is lying in repose, wearily
smoking a joint.
We soon learn the young women, Halley
(newcomer Bria Vinaite), is Moonee’s mother.
Confronted by an indignant but kindly motel
manager, Bobby (Willem Dafoe) about her
daughter’s indiscretions – spitting on cars?! –
Halley turns back to look at an unfazed Moonee,
joyfully noting “I’ve failed as a mother Moonee!”
to which her daughter replies with the same light
charm; “Yeah mom, you’re a disgrace”. Rarely is
the trope of the ‘failed mother’ so casually and
lightly handled, particularly by the subjects of
these labels themselves: it is commonly said, after
all, that one of the worst things you can do is
question another person’s parenting. But Moonee
and her single mom Halley, we soon discover, care
little for the moralising straitjackets that prop up
conventional social mores.
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The mother-daughter duo is rebellious, loveable
and carefree. The incensed owner of the spitball-
drenched car, after being exposed to their charms,
is quickly turned into a great friend. Free food
– and don’t forget the maple syrup! – is readily
provided by Ashley (Mela Murder), the adult
from room 223 – and Scooty’s mum – who
clandestinely passes Moonee food through the
back door of the diner where she waits tables.
There is no need for Moonee and pals to bring
along coins to their local ice cream stand; all they
need is to approach a kindly nearly adult and ask,
“Do you have change please? The doctor says we
have asthma and we gotta eat right away”. At
home, cash-strapped Halley remains permanently
unfazed by the various threats of eviction that
might rattle anyone else; her perpetually late
rent payments and the unrelenting hijinks of her
daughter find a generous and patient audience in
the kindly Bobby.
Sean Baker had hoped to make The Florida
Project as the modern rejoinder to Hal Roach’s The
Little Rascals, a series of early 20th century short
films (1922-1944)depicting the adventures of a
dastardly group of ragtag young children. Roach’s
Rascals broke ground for its unapologetically
authentic portrayal of children and all their bare-
naked Freudian ids run wild. Just under a century
later, Baker’s film carries the spirit of these rascals
to a tee. It is largely shot through Moonee’s view,
perfectly hitting the right notes of joy, exuberance,
and the unchecked sense of invincibility that
comes with being a child surrounded by such
boundless love within the pastel-soaked beauty of
Florida in the summer.
Halley, after all, is nothing but devoted and
loving. More big sister than actual guardian,
Halley takes Moonee and friends hitchhiking to
the park near the city, where they eat cake and
marvel at late-night fireworks. A trip to the dollar
store turns into a two-women party all aboard a
shopping cart. A ‘swimsuit selfie’ photography
session is staged to great excitement. Moonee,
I’m getting a phone call – how about you go take
a nice long bath this evening to some fun loud
music? Don’t go outside. When you’re in there,
ignore any strange men who happen to walk into
our bathroom; they’re just lost. Mommy has a new
job – we can finally pay our rent on time!
The storytelling in The Florida Project is
subtle, telling the adult viewer just enough while
maintaining the unadulterated optimism that
commonly filters a young child’s gaze on the world.
And yet it is not a lens that condescends to the
child; the film makes clear Moonee’s inordinate
insight, and the audience is compelled to marvel
at the boundlessness of her imagination and joie
de vivre. While fairy tales are stories framed by
adults for the purpose of educating children, often
from the standpoint of sneering at naiveté from
on high – don’t accept apples from strangers;
be good, docile, and kind
(especially if you’re a girl) –
the tale of Moonee’s Magic
Castle reverses the direction
of the pedagogy. A sceptical
adult might be quick to
frame her motel as a gauche
purple ‘problem estate’ mired
in poverty, a place marked
by endless visits from the
police, local authorities and
food banks. Moonee’s story
refuses this script. There is
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SEAN BAKER
beauty to be found in people and places that the
world is too quick to otherwise cast as perverse – a
project – a problem to be fixed.
The ‘original sin’ of childhood, however, is
that it inevitably jettisons you into a world that
you cannot control, in spite of your best efforts.
The Florida Project, although not a tragedy per se,
sees tragedy by way of how these two magically
exuberant young women are nevertheless cast to
live in a world that is too small for them. In our
world today, only a certain caste of people get to
be truly carefree without consequence; a working
class teenage mother and her six-year-old are not
in that exclusive clique. Baker is not naïve about
the world in which his two characters live; a lesser
director may take this as an invitation to engage
in tragedy porn. Baker opts instead to serve the
humanity of Moonee and Halley by celebrating
how they build their own worlds and kingdoms on
their own terms, while remaining candid about the
ways in which their flights of fancy are tragically
constrained by economic and social realities. And
that makes The Florida Project both deeply human
and sublime.
by Rebecca Liu
FACES, PLACES (VISAGES, VILLAGES)
The spirit of Faces, Places (Visages, Villages)
is present even before its first frame when an
animated version of Agnès Varda appears during
the opening credits. We recognise her from her
distinctive gait, two-tone hair, and the cat on her
shoulder. (An abundance of animals, Varda once
said, is a good way of telling a film is made by
a woman.) Cartoon-Agnès watches as hundreds
of names appear in alphabetical order: this is
the ‘cast’. Then she wrestles the names of the
film’s crew – longtime collaborators, including
her daughter – into place. So begins a film that
celebrates encounters both fleeting and enduring,
that oversteps boundaries of generation, gender,
and class. It is a film by a celebrated auteur, but
one that has always questioned the singularity
of vision that this title connotes. As she says in
the film, she can only generate ideas by meeting
other people.
The film follows a collaboration between two
artists: Varda and JR, whose urban public art
and unconfirmed identity have given him the
nickname of ‘France’s Banksy’. Together they
tour various villages in France, sticking JR’s
celebrated black-and-white, large-form portrait
photography, printed instantly from the inside
of his van, to structures both natural and man-
made. Throughout the film people interrogate
them as to why they are doing this and Varda
always provides the same vague response: “For
pleasure, and other reasons.” We come to realise
that the documented project is only the film’s
framework.
Varda and JR talk about how their
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collaboration started like that of old friends
whose shared history has erased the memory of
the first encounter. What they do recall is that
they’d previously admired each other’s work
from afar. Varda talks touchingly in voice-over
(“You wowed me at the Pantheon”), while JR
cites the enduring impression left by the Vardian
protagonists he grew up watching, as images of
Cléo and others appear on screen. We observe
a bond between two people separated by over
50 years that bears no resemblance to that
of a grandparent and grandchild: JR doesn’t
patronise Varda (at one point he berates her for
not getting up a flight of stairs fast enough) and
Varda never once challenges JR’s experience as
image-maker. After all, it is he who has created
this particular form. Soon enough they set
off, seeking out the inhabitants of harbours,
farmland, seaside and mining towns.
There are things that annoy Varda about
JR: his refusal to remove his dark glasses (an
affectation that reminds her of Godard); his
tactless suggestion that they should start the
project as soon as possible, the implication being
that she might die at any moment. JR dislikes
the way Varda tries to get behind his glasses,
posing personal questions from the outset.
These unedited disputes are not gratuitous: they
give the documentary its self-reflexive flavour
and form an important part of the way the
duo work on the project. Varda seeks out and
builds relationships with the subjects that JR
photographs and together they decide on the
composition, then JR pulls the shutter. Varda
places herself off in the distance, in order to see
the bigger picture, and tells JR how to centre the
image he’s mounting on scaffolding.
A film about the injection of large metropolitan
forms into small villages could easily be
tokenistic. Yet Varda and JR get to know each
of their subjects before taking the photograph,
situating the person within their landscape. They
become engaged in local politics, exploring the
wide spectrum of viewpoints that exist in villages
usually painted in homogeneous provincial
shades by city-dwellers.
They stay around after, too, to gauge the reaction
of their subjects and those around them. When
Jeanine, the last remaining resident on a street
slated for demolition in a small mining town, tears
up looking across the road to her house-sized face,
Varda tells her not to be sad, that it was meant
as a homage to her. A visit to a factory, where JR
and Varda insist on photographing staff pulling
faces together with their bosses, leaves a renewed
working environment long after Varda and JR
leave. At their last stop, Varda draws attention to
the forgotten wives of dockworkers by choosing
to photograph them instead of their husbands.
She asks why one of them describes herself as
being “behind” rather than “beside” her husband.
Sometimes the project resembles performance art,
as the photographed subject interacts with their
blown-up body. And sometimes the photograph
is already gone by the time Varda and JR get
back in their van, as the tide comes in or it is
washed away by the rain. The project is an end in
itself; the encounter, not the photograph, is what
AGNÈS VARDA
matters.
Some critics have presumed Faces, Places to be
Varda’s last film, given the long interludes on
her faltering eyesight and frequent musings on
death. But Varda has always anticipated a future
nostalgia and projected memories into the present
tense, obsessively using the same decades-old
photograph across films. As she puts it, she must
take pictures of all the faces she meets, or else they
will fall down the “memory-hole”.
Between village visits, Varda finds JR the
perfect companion to help her complete her own
bucket list. Against JR’s technical judgment, they
mount a photo of her late friend Guy Bourdin’s
face onto a concrete bunker on the beach where
she and Bourdin met. Later, JR agrees with
amused reluctance to another long-time wish: to
recreate Godard’s Bande à part Louvre running
scene with Varda in a wheelchair. And just
when JR thinks that the project and the film has
finished, Varda has a surprise for him: she has
arranged for them to go to Switzerland and meet
with Godard, the older man with the dark glasses.
But when they arrive at his house in Switzerland,
he is not there. Varda breaks down in tears: “And
to think I brought him brioche from his favourite
bakery.” JR, unable to work through a multi-
decade relationship that is not his own, takes her
to the edge of a lake where he takes off his glasses
for her in an effort to cheer her up. Ironically,
after all her demands, her eyesight doesn’t allow
her to register his unadorned face. But again, it’s
the encounter that counts. “I can’t see you, but
I see you,” she tells him. As she says in her The
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FACES PLACES
Beaches of Agnès (Les Plages d’Agnès, 2008), “Je
connais mes classiques et je connais mes amis”,
I know my classics and I know my friends. She
may have known Godard for most of her life,
but it is JR who has taken up the latter role.
The film is the perfect antidote to Michel
Hazanavicius’s Le Redoubtable, which played
in competition this year. Supposedly based
on Anne Wiazemsky’s first-person account
of her relationship with Godard, it is instead
a love letter from one male auteur to another,
excusing Godard’s abusive tendencies towards
Wiazemsky through reference to his genius,
portraying her mute and naked in every other
scene. Faces, Places posits the auteur as not a
creator but as a bringer-together. Instead of the
easy self-perpetuated mythology of the heroic
individual, it celebrates the creativity that is
generated by empathy, by moments of people
coming together. Last week, we witnessed Varda
and JR pulling faces and holding hands on the
red carpet. Godard, it is rumoured, never replied
to Hazanavicius’s letter.
In her memoir Un An Après (2015,
Gallimard, Paris), the purported basis for
Michel Hazanavicius’s Redoubtable, the late
Anne Wiazemsky recalls her astonishment,
at the start of the May 1968 ‘evénéments’,
on learning from the newspapers that Dany
Cohn-Bendit, a fellow student and friend who
had tried to enlist her as a revolutionary under
the banner ‘solidarity of the redheads!’, was
now Public Enemy No. 1, and that he and his
friends Dominique and Jean-Pierre, whom she
by Daniella Shreir
158
REDOUBTABLE
had taken for the Pieds Nickelés of militancy
– cartoon characters – were now considered a
menace to the Fifth Republic.
Reportedly, Wiazemsky resisted the idea of
Hazanavicius adapting her book until he told
her he would make a comedy of it; while her
instinct was correct, she has been badly let down.
Redoubtable is, as promised, a (mostly leaden)
comedy about Wiazemsky’s brief marriage to
Jean-Luc Godard, but Wiazemsky’s perspective
has been jettisoned entirely – unless of course
I somehow missed the chapter dedicated to her
younger self’s arse. The film is peppered with
homages to Godard, but owes its greatest debt
to the ‘glamour shots’ of Bardot which he was
made to insert into Le Mépris (1963).
In a just world Wiazemsky’s books would be
translated, and Hazanavicius’s film disposed of
in an environmentally responsible manner. But
in this world it will instead provide a false image
of Wiazemsky, played by Stacy Martin, not even
with red hair, and her relationship with Godard,
played by Louis Garrel, and a completely
muddled picture of May 1968, a hallowed date
but one that few under French retirement age
experienced first-hand, referred to knowingly as
‘les evénéments’ because no one seems especially
clear about what they amounted to.
The film begins in the summer of 1967, as
Godard and Wiazemsky – already known to the
press as the granddaughter of François Mauriac,
and to cinephiles as the star of Bresson’s Au
Hazard Balthazar (1966) – get married amid
much fanfare, and launch the first film they
made together, La Chinoise (1967). There was
a 17-year age gap between them, so inevitably
she is shown reading pop magazines, he reading
Mao; and while there are jokes at his expense,
as when the Chinese embassy calls his film
reactionary, there is never a suggestion that
Wiazemsky knew the main instigators of
the insurrection to come – and found them
amusing, nor that she had studied philosophy,
conceivably in more depth than Godard, who
seldom finished a book.
Most of the film takes place in May 1968
– indeed, May 1968 is made to seem like a
permanent state of affairs, with ordinary life
continuing, punctuated by the occasional
riot, even though the couple lived on the Rue
Saint-Jacques at the time, right at the centre of
things. Godard becomes increasingly intent on
abandoning the commercial cinema, and there
are endless political discussions, but I’m not
sure Cohn-Bendit’s name even comes up; at any
rate the riots are never explained, no particular
political position is advanced by anyone, and
there is never the sense – debatable, but attested
to by many who were there – that the future
of the French state was in the balance. The
film sets up two poles of ‘politics’ and ‘cinema’,
and appears to back cinema; but if we accept
this dunderheaded opposition for a moment,
Redoubtable fails on its own terms, falling
short of the basic task of generating cinematic
excitement and interest even out of the historic
events which are more than the background to
its story.
In one scene Godard and Wiazemsky attend
a chic party where Godard gets into an intense
conversation with his future collaborator Jean-
Pierre Gorin, pointedly excluding Wiazemsky,
who, after a quick pout, finds herself being
chatted up by a dancer; once again, though the
joke is partly at Godard’s expense, Wiazemsky
is presented as a simpering ingénue, and the
same thing happens when she wants to go to
Cannes rather than stay on the barricades. There
is a difference between being bored and being
oblivious, and Redoubtable shows Wiazemsky
as the latter. Hazanavicius misses out entirely
the film they made together in England in the
immediate aftermath, One Plus One (1968),
and indeed he never gets as far as describing
or showing the sort of film Godard wanted to
make, for all that he is shown talking about it.
Godard did break with the commercial
cinema – after his sojourn working with the
Rolling Stones – but although this is shown
as the cause of their split in its turn, in reality
Wiazemsky was still appearing in the so-
called ‘Dziga-Vertov’ films as late as 1970,
albeit possibly with less conviction than he in
their appalling Maoist politics. Hazanavicius
never really digs into this question, but it is
precisely because of the – let us be charitable
– incongruity of bourgeois intellectuals calling
for ‘Maoism’ in France that the comic approach
Wiazemsky wanted is probably the only one
by Henry K. Miller
possible. That, however, would have required
a finesse Hazanavicius lacks, and the result is
an evasive film that will please no one, largely
preserving Godard’s reputation – though it
rightly identifies his anti-semitism – while
travestying Wiazemsky’s.
MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS
159
THE FUTURE PERFECT
The future perfect is a strange tense. It
describes actions that are going to be completed:
what will have happened, what will have been
done. It simultaneously looks forward and
back, as if reflecting on the future from some
place beyond it: an already-written. On the
surface, it seems to articulate a world in which
things are inevitable, knowable, factual – I will
have changed, I will have been. Yet even to
assert this is an act of imagination, a projection
of oneself into a time other than the present. It
inscribes an awareness of other possible paths
into the future, just as these alternatives seem
to be closed off.
The Future Perfect is an appropriate title for
Nele Wohlatz’s evocative and gently playful
documentary, which consistently probes the
boundaries between fact and fiction to create
a complex reflection on the grammar of
identity of a young migrant woman. 17-year-
old Xiaobin has moved from China to Buenos
Aires; although her family is already working in
Argentina, she is keen to become independent
from them, finding herself a job and starting to
learn Spanish in secret. The film is structured
around the process of language learning,
following Xiaobin’s development from an early,
pragmatic use of the language to describe the
circumstances that have led to her arrival in
Argentina, to the moment when she is able
to articulate alternative possibilities for her
identity and her future.
The language-learning process functions
as a metaphor for Xiaobin’s coming-of-age
as a young woman in a foreign country. As
a concept, this might have risked slipping
into cliché, but Wohlatz avoids this, instead
FILM
endowing the film with a gently ironic tone and
subtlety, focusing in on the particular charm of
Xiaobin’s personality and allowing it to quietly
anchor each shot. Initially, Xiaobin appears
somewhat passive and isolated, restricted by her
ability to use only a few words. The film hints
at the way in which, as a young woman and a
migrant, others often try to write her identity
and future for her: at the language school,
she has been given a Spanish name, as if she
must take on a prescribed role if she is to be
recognised and heard in Argentina. Meanwhile,
her parents are unhappy about her growing
independence, and the fact that she may be
meeting men they don’t know. They want to
save the money she has earned for when they
return – as they assume they will – to China.
Moments of misunderstanding provide
some light comedy, relatable for anyone who
has attempted to communicate with limited
vocabulary in a new language. When she
begins to date an Indian man she meets at
work, Xiaobin finds that getting to know
each other and even deciding which direction
to go in on a street can be a challenge. Yet,
ultimately the film’s focus is not only what is
lost in translation, but on the way in which
Xiaobin is herself changed – translated – in the
process. In other words, as well as illustrating
how identity is formed through articulation –
within the prescribed spaces of linguistic and
cultural frameworks – the film also depicts the
possibilities for redefinition that these frames
enable.
As the film progresses, Xiaobin becomes
increasingly fluent and confident. The second
language enables her to carve out a new identity,
to more clearly assert her own desires and to take
ownership of her words. When her boyfriend
suggests marrying her, she reflects that she is
still too young, has too many other plans. The
film formally mirrors Xiaobin’s development.
Initially, scenes are short; exchanges between
characters feel stilted and contrived. As she
develops confidence in her new surroundings,
its visual language evolves too, opening up into
longer scenes, more complex perspectives.
One of the strengths of the film is that,
while it draws out the specificities of Xiaobin’s
experience, it does not marginalise it as a
conventional narrative of migration. Rather,
it suggestively depicts the way in which all
identities are formed in translation – through
the imaginative, performative process of
constructing narratives about ourselves. As a
young actor tells a Chinese friend of Xiaobin,
“I’m [acting], just like you are”. Here, the lines
between performance and reality are inevitably
blurred. The actor teaches Xiaobin and her
friends how to cry for the camera; we think we
know that they are acting, yet as the camera
focuses in on their faces, it is difficult to be sure.
The film plays
on its own artifice
throughout, drawing
attention to the
constructed nature
of its scenes through
dialogues delivered
in rehearsed tones,
like the lines
Xiaobin learns in her
language school. In
doing so, it departs
NELE WOHLATZ
from the conclusiveness of a simple
retrospective narrative and avoids facile future
predictions. Instead it creates a provisional,
uncertain narrative of possibilities; a world in
which we can never be entirely sure what has
actually happened or what will happen – only
what might be or have been the case. Even if
we might think we can know Xiaobin’s future,
as her actor friend reminds us: “the forecast is
always wrong”.
This is not a conventional political
documentary. Yet there is something politically
valuable, even radical, about asserting the
potential of a mode of possibility – of a perhaps.
In a world of dogmatic headlines and political
discourse, in which reductive categorisations of
women and minorities are rife, it is maybe more
urgent that ever to not only assert alternatives
by Maya Caspari
in themselves, but to create a discourse in
which alternatives are possible. Beyond official
narratives of what happened, and what will
have happened, beyond fixed definitions of who
you are or should be, Wohlatz’s film reminds
us of the potential, and the need, for imagining
something different.
TOP OF THE LAKE
The first series of Top of the Lake was brilliant,
but it didn’t always make for easy viewing.
Any story in which a 12-year-old girl ends
up pregnant after being repeatedly sexually
abused while drugged by a pedophile ring run
by the local police chief, and in which the only
detective seriously concerned with bringing the
perpetrators to justice is a woman who herself
was gang raped and impregnated at fifteen,
isn’t going to be a cozy watch. It was a dark,
and often-eerie tale of violence and trauma that
interrogated institutionalised misogyny and
endemic rape culture. Set against the stunning
rural backdrop of New Zealand’s South Island,
with fabulous performances from a cast led
by Elisabeth Moss, Peter Mullan and Holly
Hunter, Academy Award and Palme D’Or
winner Jane Campion’s TV directorial debut was
as exciting as it was unapologetically feminist.
Four years on, we’re much more familiar with
the concept of the superstar TV show. So, when
it came to the second season, Top of the Lake:
China Girl, expectations were in some ways
lower, while in other ways higher. How to follow
season one? Well, first thing’s first, begin with a
great cast. Keep Moss – now a household name,
and one that, post-The Handmaid’s Tale, is
pretty much synonymous with ‘feminist drama’
– in the lead role of Detective Robin Griffin;
then add mid-career renaissance Nicole Kidman
– hot off another of this year’s hit TV shows,
Big Little Lies, Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled,
and about to be seen in Yorgos Lanthimos’s
The Killing of a Sacred Deer – and British actor
Gwendoline Christie, of Game of Thrones fame.
When China Girl opens, Robin is back in
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Sydney, readjusting to life in the big city. Gone
is the lush landscape of the show’s former
setting; instead this is urban grit and grime with
a seedy, sepia-tinged seventies vibe. Despite her
professional successes, Robin’s still carrying a lot
of personal baggage – in addition to her ongoing
preoccupation with the daughter she gave up for
adoption seventeen years ago, there’s the more
recent failure of the romantic relationship she’d
reignited with her high school boyfriend Johnno
(Thomas M. Wright) while back on the South
Island. At work, she’s paired up with a junior
policewoman named Miranda (Christie), and
the obvious physical comedy of this little and
large duo is a slightly strange, but not entirely
unwelcome addition to a drama that otherwise
tries to play it serious. Christie is a revelation in
this role and a highlight of the show. As eager
as a puppy, her aim is to learn and to please,
plus she’s emotional and gushing in a way that’s
both at odds with her imposing physicality –
Campion’s very successfully making us re-think
assumptions about femininity and size – and
the demeanour of her introverted, inhibited
partner. Watching the tension between the
two is a delight; their complicated, antagonistic
relationship is one of the most interesting
depictions of female friendship that I’ve seen
on contemporary screens. Less sophisticated,
unfortunately, is the story of the actual crime
that brings them together.
It goes like this: We’ve got a suitcase washed
up on Bondi Beach containing a dead Asian
woman, whom Robin and her team eventually
trace back to Silk 41, one of the city’s brothels.
The murdered woman’s name was Cinnamon,
and she was
pregnant, but
there’s a catch: the
foetus’s genetic
material doesn’t
match the mother’s.
Then there’s
Robin’s long lost
daughter Mary
(Alice Englert,
Campion’s real-life
daughter), whom
Robin, after much
soul-searching, finally decides to make contact
with – but not before we’re given a fly-on-the-wall
view into Mary’s teenage angst-riddled world. Her
ire is directed predominantly at her mother Julia
(Kidman), who recently left Mary’s father Pyke
(Ewen Leslie) to shack up with one of Mary’s
teachers, Isadore (Marg Downey), a woman
who seems so oblivious to the realities of life
that it’s like she’s wandered straight out of GJ’s
(Holly Hunter) commune high above the town
of Laketop back in the first season, and whose
only point in the story seems to be occasional and
slightly uncomfortable comic relief.
Mary is everything her mother isn’t. From
her insistence on quoting Germaine Greer to
her rather hackneyed relationship with Isadore,
Julia is a caricature of a Second Wave Feminist.
Although it makes perfect sense that her
daughter can’t stand her, it seems like lazy work
on Campion’s part to have wasted Kidman’s
considerable talents on this cartoon of a character
– though she does deserve kudos for managing to
convince Kidman to ditch her trademark blonde
locks for the magnificent grey tresses she’s rocking
here. Englert, by comparison, is intoxicating to
watch. Her Mary is a tour de force, so absolutely
convincing I struggled to work out if her acting
was masterful or non-existent. She’s so unhelpfully
stubborn, so naively sure of herself – in short, the
archetypal teenager – so completely taken in by
her boyfriend, the vile Alexander ‘Puss’ (David
Dencik), a German-born, greasy-haired autodidact
who’s twenty-odd years Mary’s senior and who
seems to think it’s appropriate to wax lyrical over
a first dinner with said girlfriend’s parents about
how the “destiny” of man is to “enslave women”.
Julia, of course, is absolutely horrified by the news
that her beloved daughter’s only ambition is now
to drop out of school and become Puss’s obedient
little wife, and she has my sympathy: this is one
hell of a teenage rebellion. Barely a scene featuring
Mary went by without me wanting to shake some
sense into the deluded little idiot. Pyke meanwhile
isn’t exactly happy about it either, but he’s more of
a ‘bottle it up and seethe about it later’ kind of guy.
If this wasn’t already enough, another red flag
JANE CAMPION
163
TOP OF THE LAKE
is Puss’s unconventional living arrangement: his
flat is in the same building as – surprise, surprise
– Silk 41, and he takes a keen interest in the
‘education’ of the girls working there. Piling
coincidence on coincidence, Miranda confesses
that she’s five months pregnant, the result of an
affair she’s been having with her and Robin’s
married boss. This endures until mysteriously
she suddenly isn’t, and it turns out that she can’t
have kids so she’s paid someone to do it for her.
Wait a minute – remember Cinnamon and
the foetus that wasn’t technically hers? What’s
the chance that Silk 41 has a dodgy sideline in
illegal surrogates? Surely there can’t be a host of
desperate infertile couples in this city willing to
do whatever it takes to hear the pitter-patter of
tiny feet? Just when Robin needs this question
answered, lo and behold, a mentally disturbed
woman (who has somehow escaped from a nearby
psychiatric unit) is picked up by cops wandering
down a local freeway while muttering something
about her missing baby. I know I said they were
playing it serious, but as the story progresses
and the melodrama mounts, it’s hard to buy
into the idea that what we’re watching bears any
resemblance to reality, something that’s further
undermined by how much the development of
the plot relies of happenstance. Whereas the
action of season one always felt organic, even
during its most dramatic moments, China Girl
comes across as forced and sensationalist.
I can’t deny it though, the latter element
makes for compulsive viewing. Here’s where I
confess that I binge watched the entire season
in one go, late into the night. And that, rather
than being put off by the bizarreness that comes
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out in episode three – I’m not even going to
think about spoiling it for anyone who’s yet to
have the pleasure – I found myself sitting up
even straighter, all the more captivated. Rather
confusingly, in many ways China Girl makes for
better TV than season one; the plot is pacier,
the characters larger and more full of life, and
scene by scene there’s simply more happening.
But take the time to actually tease it apart, and
you realise that China Girl is nowhere near as
refined and polished a story as that seen in the
first season, and when it does reach toward a
similar finesse, it gets confused, tangled in knots
of its own making.
Puss, for example, lacks the kind of
complexity that made season one’s baddies,
Matt Mitcham (Peter Mullan) – that rare breed,
a self-flagellating ‘alpha ass’ – and Al (David
Wenham), the Janus-like police chief with his
double life, so interesting. It’s not just that Puss’s
misogyny, cod-philosophy and general vileness
makes him completely unsympathetic, he’s also
such an obvious sum of his parts it’s impossible
to fathom what Mary ever saw in him in the
first place, let alone what keeps her so completely
enthralled. This seems especially weird since life
dealt her a rare good male role model in the
form of her beloved father Pyke, one of the few
men on screen who’s not a complete jerk.
Since the very beginning, Top of the Lake has
always been a show about motherhood – Tui’s
pregnancy, the trauma of Robin’s own, the fact
that the detective was in Laketop in the first
place in order to spend time with her dying
mother – and the preoccupation is still strong in
China Girl. As Campion joked at a recent press
conference, the show’s “not just feminist but
fallopian”. But I’m dubious of this recent trend
in storytelling in which female-led thrillers
reduce their protagonists to little more than
their biology. Take The Girl on the Train (Tate
Taylor, 2016), for example, a story that defines
its characters only in terms of their reproductive
organs, in which being a ‘good mother’ is what
each of the female characters aspire to, a standard
the men hold them up to and which ultimately
decides whether they live or die. Refreshingly,
there was nothing so reductive about the first
season of Top of the Lake, Campion instead
presenting a complicated and nuanced portrait
of the pushes and pulls of motherhood. In China
Girl, however, it seems less a site of examination,
and more a formulaic plot device. Until, that is,
the eventual baddies of the season are revealed to
be the small army of over-privileged women who
blindly assume that maternity is their right,
regardless of the cost to others. Sure, there’s a
lone porn-addled geek roaming the city with a
shotgun – remember how I said this was good
TV; it is, so it needs a more traditional action-
packed dénouement – but he’s collateral damage
in more ways than one, a cliché of the kind we
simply didn’t see in season one.
With regards to cliché, there are a variety of
troubling stereotypes here, most glaringly of all
in the show’s problematic attitude to race. As the
title itself suggests – ‘China Girl’ is the nickname
the cops give the dead body before her identity or
ethnicity has been determined – and several other
gross generalisations are at play. The sex workers
are all South-East Asian, while the punters – both
the men who pay them for sex, namely the creepy
JANE CAMPION
band of geeks who only meet up IRL to snigger
and rate their recent screws while demonstrating
a pathetic inability to converse with any women
outside of a transactional relationship; and
the couples who pay them for their uteruses
– are all white. The viewer is whipped up into
sympathising with poor Mary when Puss pimps
her out – incidentally, it only takes one blowjob
for the poor little rich girl to realise she’s not cut
out for life on the curb-side; precisely the kind
of choice the other women simply don’t have –
but expends no such energy on those stuck in
this life day-in, day-out. The only saving grace is
that it’s made pretty clear that the white women
buying surrogates are a monstrous breed all of
their own – or perhaps that’s just my reading of
the situation.
Is Campion offering us a radical critique
of maternal bondage? In the first season we
were given stories about underage girls forced
into motherhood by male abusers; here we’ve
got young women so desperate they’re selling
their own enslavement, a supply and demand
economy created by women driven mad by their
inability to fulfil what they think of as their
‘biological destiny’. Female subjugation comes
in all forms, not all of them male, so I’m all for
Campion condemning white female privilege
– if that’s what she’s trying to do here; I don’t
think it’s quite as clear as it could be. Regardless
of her intent, the end result is a much bleaker
narrative than that of the first season. Gone is
the sisterhood of GJ’s camp, and so too the clear-
cut victim vs perpetrator set-up: on the mean
streets of the city, it’s dog-eat-dog when it comes
to who’s got a working womb and who hasn’t.
by Lucy Scholes
I LOVE DICK
“Unfortunately, most films by women aren’t
that good.” This declaration, made just two
thirds of the way through the first episode of
the 2016 television series I Love Dick is, in at
least two ways, the catalyst for all that follows
in Jill Soloway’s new eight-episode adaptation
of the 1997 cult classic book by Chris Kraus.
The speaker is, of course, a man: the eponymous
love object Dick (full name Dick Jarrett,
played with evident relish by Kevin Bacon), a
celebrated artist who runs an arts residency and
institute in the desert city of Marfa, Texas. Dick
has been invited to dinner by our protagonist
– narrator Chris (Kathryn Hahn) and her
husband Sylvère (Griffin Dunne), a cultural
critic who has just taken up a fellowship at
the Marfa Institute. The conversation turns to
Chris’s work – she is a struggling filmmaker
who was recently devastated to discover that
her latest completed work had been pulled from
the Venice film festival lineup. Dick finds this
unsurprising because most women don’t make
very good films.
For a moment, head tilted and mouth
open in disbelief, Chris remains silent – but
soon she is all fired up, rebutting Dick’s thesis
with a quick-fire litany of important women
film-makers (“Sally Potter! Jane Campion!
Chantal Akerman!”); storming out of her seat
and retreating to the bathroom; returning to
the table and announcing that she has decided,
after all, to stick around in Marfa and take
Dick’s seminars at the institute. The words
‘DEAR DICK. IT’S ON’, all in caps, flash
white across the red screen. It’s not just rage
at Dick’s lazy misogyny that fuels Chris, but
also desire. Desire to prove to him that he’s
wrong – in her case at least – in his judgement
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on the capabilities of female filmmakers? Partly,
yes; but, more complicatedly, it’s sexual desire.
Over the next eight episodes, we witness Chris
become increasingly obsessive, devising an
elaborate art project comprising a series of love
letters addressed to the object of her affections,
which she shares first with her husband, then
Dick, and eventually the whole of Marfa. It’s
a wonderful subversion of the usual narrative
trope in which the stalkerish man becomes
infatuated with the body of a woman he barely
knows, and a glorious affirmation in turn of
female erotic agency – of women’s capacity to
lust deeply, imaginatively, inappropriately over
the male body.
Dick’s words also act as the trigger for a
second creative project, one not devised by any of
the show’s characters but by the television series
itself. Chris’s rapid catalogue of names prompts
a cut-away from the dinner table setting to an
equally swift series of clips flashing across the
screen: brief excerpts of notable scenes from the
films of Potter, Campion and Akerman. This
is the first instance of a technique that recurs
throughout the series, in which clips from the
work of numerous woman film and video artists,
usually with some kind of visual or thematic
relationship to narrative events, are spliced into
filmed sequences. A consulting producer on the
series, Logan Kibens, has described this initial
interruption as “a calling of the ancestors”, an
announcement that “[w]e’re ready to go into
battle”1 to prove Dick wrong.
The intention behind this project,
which spans over half a century of women’s
filmmaking from Maya Deren’s early silent
film ‘At Land’ (1948) to contemporary digital
work by Instagram and Youtube artist Petra
Cortright, is a kind of (re)construction of a
feminist video-art canon. This canon-forming
impulse is mirrored within the narrative
itself in a scene from episode seven set at the
fictional Marfa Institute, which is presented
as a caricature of the emblematic mausoleum
dedicated to the preservation of the white man’s
art: abstract, minimalist, apolitical. The white
male artist who runs the institute, Dick – whose
impressively banal phallic sculptures are at one
point described by another character as clearly
intended to remind “us of the size of your
massive steel and concrete cock” – impulsively
quits, handing over the reins to his chief
curator Paula. After just a moment surveying
her newly won domain, Paula embarks on a
total museum makeover, taking down every
geometric abstraction in sight and slamming a
series of post-its to the walls that act as a roll call
of notable female, queer and ethnic-minority
artists: Laura Aguilar; Kara Walker; Kerry
James Marshall; the list goes on. Works by the
artists in question flash across our screens; tears
fill Paula’s eyes.
Upbeat music and snappy editing give this
JILL SOLOWAY
celebratory scene a euphoric rhythm, but it’s
also a moment that concisely represents the
key problems in Soloway’s highly inventive
approach to adapting Kraus’s strange and hybrid
novel. While Kraus’s text operates in a number
of modes – epistolary novel, autobiography,
cultural criticism – the television series is a more
straightforward narrative tale; however, while
the book focuses on the journey of our narrator-
author, the adaptation expands its universe
to take in a much wider, admirably diverse,
cast of female and gender non-conforming
protagonists. In principle this is not a bad idea:
like the collages of real artworks that recur
throughout the series, this is another attempt to
open up the playing field (or battlefield), bring
in more perspectives through the construction
of a kind of collage of lives and stories.
On the whole, however, these new stories
– Paula’s journey from under-appreciated
curator to head bitch in charge; the evolution
of groundskeeper Devon to become a fully
actualised artist in their own right; Devon’s
love story with Toby, a beautiful young female
fellow – suffer from overly superficial treatment.
 I LOVE DICK
There is one notable exception: episode five,
‘A Short History of Weird Girls’, directed
by Soloway, a series of vignettes presented
particular moments of sexual awakening
for each member of the supporting cast.
These fragments are, as the title promises,
both gratifyingly weird (a pre-teen Toby,
for example, has her awakening when her
older cousin Tara shows her porn for the
first time; Toby ends up with a PhD in the
aesthetics of hard-core pornography) and
unsatisfyingly short, and they only go part
of the way in making up for the repetitive,
simplistic series of redemption arcs that
constitute the narratives of each of these
characters in the rest of the series.
The same problem might be said to apply
to the show’s use of found footage, which
is itself fragmented, often frustratingly
brief and rarely more than superficially
2. Chris Kraus,
I Love Dick, engaged with, feminist art history reduced
MIT Press, to a moving-image mood board. It is
2006. p.215
perhaps ironic that the reason given for the
withdrawal of Chris’s film from the Venice
film festival was copyright infringement
– she hadn’t paid the artists whose work
she used for her soundtrack. Chris rages:
“I pulled that shit from obscurity. I was
going to give those dipshits publicity!”
Of course, there are no actual legal issues
surrounding the use of the film clips in I
Love Dick itself – but there are questions
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168
to be asked about the level of credit which
their makers have received, as well as the
level of actual engagement which their work
deserves. My ambivalence on this issue
is only heightened when considering the
television series in comparison to the source
text, which addresses visual art so carefully,
showing how easily writing about life can
become writing about art. One memorable
passage, which discusses the American artist
Hannah Wilke, is both a beautiful piece of
writing on the life, work and reception of
this feminist icon and a reflexive meditation
on Kraus’s own project: “Hannah started
using the impossibility of her life, her
artwork, and career as material. If art’s a
seismographic project, when that project’s
met with miscomprehension, failure must
become its subject too. … Hannah Wilke
Wittgenstein was pure female intellect,
her entire gorgeous being stretched out in
paradoxical proposition.”2
Soloway’s adaptation, meanwhile, is
set in a predominantly fictionalised art
world populated by parodic stand-ins and
pale imitations – beginning, of course,
with Dick, who, lording it over the Texas
landscape in cowboy boots and hat, is a
barely disguised substitute for American
minimalist sculptor (and founder of the
real-life Marfa-based Chinati Foundation)
Donald Judd. While there’s little question
that the epithet ‘dick’ can be applied to the
artist, at least Judd’s works didn’t always
take the shape of one. It’s also somewhat
reductive to equate, as the show frequently
does, abstraction and minimalism with
misogyny – and, conversely, to suggest
that anything involving a woman artist, a
naked body and new media is going to be
purposefully and productively feminist.
At one point Toby also performs her own
artwork for our entertainment, stripping
naked at a ‘man camp’ (the name given to
temporary employee housing assigned to
oilfield workers) and streaming it live on
social media. The action goes viral, and
provides some good ammunition for the
plot as well as plenty of humour in the form
of Toby’s progressively luminous sunburn,
but as an artwork openly mining the rich
tradition of nudity and live performance
in feminist art history, it is depressingly
derivative.
As the backdrop to a television comedy
with a quirky aesthetic, the art-world
setting to which the story of I Love Dick
is transported onscreen works well. As a
‘calling of the ancestors’ it is less effective.
Far more powerful in this regard is the
central narrative exploring the relationship
between Dick and Chris and Sylvère. This
makes sense: what medium is better for
exploring romantic and sexual dynamics
JILL SOLOWAY
than television? Added to that, Soloway has
form when it comes to charting and raising
storms in these waters as writer/director
of the powerfully subversive Transparent
(2014–). Soloway’s I Love Dick is, like its
predecessor, a radically honest depiction of a
woman’s evolving subjectivity and sexuality.
Of all the ways in which this adaptation
deviates from its source, perhaps the most
significant takes place in the final episode.
In Kraus’s version, Chris and Dick have sex
just once, a little over halfway through the
book, an encounter immediately followed by
Chris’s realisation that he “never wanted to
have sex with me again.” It’s a moment both
devastating and fascinating in its insight into
the nature of sexual fantasy and intimacy.
But on screen, although they begin having
sex on two occasions, Chris and Dick never
finish what they begin. Then, in the show’s
final sequence, Chris begins to menstruate
during sex, which makes Dick panic and
rush to the bathroom to wash her blood
from his hands. This time, Dick’s ignorance,
his instinctive misogyny, do not make Chris
want him. She dons his cowboy hat and
strides off, blood trickling down her thigh.
This moment feels like a real call to arms, a
battlecry, an assertion that women are more
than capable of producing moments of art
as groundbreaking, powerful and imperfect
as any man.
by Gabrielle Schwarz
169
 ‘CERTAIN WOMEN AND OTHER ANIMALS: A KELLY REICHARDT
CERTAIN WOMEN AND OTHER ANIMALS SYMPOSIUM’, 5 MARCH, 2017, BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE

In the past year, I have watched various seasons on the films of Alaska. And this can be seen in Old Joy, which trails two old friends’ weekend of walking,
Kelly Reichardt. In March 2016, Close-Up Film Centre, London marked with the fits and starts of a reunion attempted after a time apart. Even Reichardt’s Image across
page from
revisited Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy (2008), and Meek’s Cutoff more conventional thriller, Night Moves (2013), in which three environmentalists conspire Wendy and
(2010); during summer 2016, MUBI streamed these three films to explode a dam, is quietly unpredictable. In Reichardt’s cinema, for both character and Lucy (2008);
Image below
alongside her debut, River of Grass (1994). As an independent spectator, the end is rarely in view. from Meek’s
institution that had long struggled to secure sufficient funding Questions of beauty arose in Martin’s presentation, which was accompanied by a series Cutoff (2010)

for the opening of its cinema screen, Close-Up worked well as a of stills from Reichardt’s six films. Though picturesque, for Martin, these stills – often
venue for Reichardt’s films which, in great measure, concern the featuring an indefatigable road – evidenced the hostile, inhospitable terrains that demarcate
various endeavours involved when living on the margins. I was Reichardt’s cinema. Here, even rare moments of tenderness (the hot springs in Old Joy,
fond, too, of watching some of Reichardt’s films via MUBI, on my laptop; my intermittent the comfort of hamburgers in Certain Women) are polluted with a human manipulation
tendency to drift in this mode of spectatorship mimicked, in a sense, the restlessness of the of nature. As Martin elucidated, the control of water is a significant motif in Reichardt’s
characters. films (at its most explicit in Night Moves). Martin’s focus on the American road – caught
In March 2017, to coincide with the UK release of Certain Women, Reichardt’s cinema in the in-betweens of urban and rural, interspersed with gas stations and diners – resulted
deservedly was afforded the reach and resources of a retrospective at the BFI. All six of the in somewhat productive comparisons to Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (2016). Martin
director’s feature films were included in this programme, and the BFI hosted Reichardt developed this parallel, and described Arnold as an extroverted version of an introverted
for a number of discussions. In addition, on the 5th of March, it brought together
an impressive set of academics for a symposium on Reichardt’s cinema. The papers
of Michael Lawrence (University of Sussex); Richard Martin (King’s College
London); Anat Pick (Queen Mary University of London), and So Mayer (of
Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema [I. B. Tauris, 2016]) were variably
optimistic about Reichardt’s depictions of certain others (women and animals, in
all their specificities, their differences); that Reichardt’s visions of America are
intensely ethical was, however, a stance shared by each of the speakers.
*
If anything, it is uncertainty that characterises Reichardt’s visions. While it is
now somewhat trite to state that something defies categorisation, Reichardt’s cinema
does waver in the murkiness of ‘not this, but that’. Answers of an ‘either black or
white’ nature are not written into these images; instead, spectators are asked to read
and respond to the images themselves. Such absence of direction is echoed within
the films. In several characters’ journeys (not of the pseudo-spiritual kind, but
literal, lived journeys), direction and destination often fades from sight, dwindling
and acquiescing to wandering, anew. This occurs in Wendy and Lucy, which depicts
an ever-extended interruption in the migration of a young woman and her dog to

CONFERENCE

CERTAIN WOMEN AND OTHER ANIMALS
Reichardt. And indeed, while I am ever wary of such an easy, symmetrical juxtaposition, Arnold’s
cinema does seem more assertive than Reichardt’s, which, for me, is distinctive for working in
terms of withdrawal. (Withdrawal, if not total negation – it isn’t that Certain Women isn’t a
melodrama, but that it isn’t quite; Meek’s Cutoff is a not-quite Western; Wendy and Lucy and Old
Joy allusively circle, yet never fully follow, dictates of the road and the buddy movie).
In this spirit of withdrawal, Mayer looked to the offscreen, to the invisible, in Reichardt’s
cinema, paying particular attention to the Native American other. In this shift from ocular-
centrism, Mayer detailed invitations to “listenfulness” woven into the fabric of the films. An
absence of subtitles for the words of the Cayuse person in Meek’s Cutoff, for instance, asks the
audience to lend an ear to the sounds, rather than the sentences, which make up dialogue: an
oral relation growing aural, material, sensorial. For any non-Cayuse spectator or character, a
lack of linguistic understanding functions to instil some form of deferential distance towards the
Native American other. While women within and without the film inhabit their own “axes of
exclusion” (to quote Mayer’s helpful phrase), these axes intersect little with those of the Cayuse.
With Reichardt, we accept that we cannot proclaim to know profoundly their exclusion, their
experiences.
Reichardt’s act of non-translation is, to borrow from Pick’s film-philosophies, an act of ‘letting
be’. Pick opened her paper by recalling a sequence from Certain Women in which a character
1. Donna falls asleep while driving, with no catastrophic consequences. The film is ‘letting be’: resisting
Haraway, The
the temptation of a lachrymose car crash. In Reichardt’s cinema generally, Pick noted, things
Companion
Species are allowed to reveal themselves (and, indeed, are allowed not to reveal themselves). Our gaze is
Manifesto:
Dogs, People
restrained, kept to quiet observation; it does not over-interpret, nor interrogate, nor does it impose
and Significant any narrative needlessly.
Otherness
(Chicago, IL: Pick then proceeded to consider Reichardt’s late companion and collaborator, an adorable
Prickly Paradigm golden Labrador retriever, Lucy. For Pick, animals in Reichardt’s cinema tend to introduce a
Press, 2003,) 5.
‘spontaneity of movement’ into what is otherwise carefully written, directed and edited by the
filmmaker. Lucy, defiantly, is not a performer. In films like Wendy and Lucy, her onscreen actions
are for herself, as much as for the spectator. And, to run with the aforementioned Arnold parallel,
unlike the horse in Fish Tank (2009) and increasingly tedious insect imagery in American Honey,
Lucy is not reduced to symbolism. In her emphasis on Lucy’s autonomy, Pick (and Lawrence,
after her), inevitably echoed Donna Haraway: “Dogs are not surrogates for theory; they are not
here just to think with. They are here to live with.”1
A need to attend phenomenologically – rather than theoretically – to animals troubled
Lawrence’s paper, which was delivered with a kind of wonderful, compulsive repetition. Seemingly
CONFERENCE
172
‘CERTAIN WOMEN AND OTHER ANIMALS: A KELLY REICHARDT
SYMPOSIUM’, 5 MARCH, 2017, BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE
unsatisfied with limitations of single words, under Lawrence’s reiterative sway, our responsiveness
came also to entail our responsibilities, and an animal’s abiding was also a bidding. Far more
ambiguous about the ethics of human-animal relations in Reichardt’s cinema (speaking of “the
problem of sentiment”, such as that associated with Lucy), Lawrence nonetheless stressed, like
Pick, the authenticity of animal intentionality in the films, which often works effectively to
unravel the lines that separate fiction from documentary.
*
In Mayer’s continued study of Certain Women (on Another Gaze and Twitter, in Sight &
2. On an episode
Sound and her TinyLetter, and at this symposium – Mayer is surely the most dedicated reader of of The Film
this film), she accentuated its “chains of association”, an idea that lingered with me, more than Programme
[20:25], Reichardt
others. In the triptych structure of Certain Women, the lives of women are associated, yet are never wishes for her
equated to one another entirely. Linked by chance encounters, and by a tireless tiredness, little most explicit
else is shared between the wife, the lawyer, the teacher and the rancher that could come close to
feminist
statement on
eclipsing their singularities. Though, in interviews, Reichardt is hesitant towards the label of film yet –
Laura Dern’s
‘feminism’,2 this relation (or not-relation, or not-quite-relation) between the individuals of the film sympathetic “that
is philosophically feminine, if not overtly feminist. I were I man…”
line in Certain
While Lawrence warned against the theoretical, the idea of “chains of association” evoked, for Women – to
me, philosophies of the feminine in the psychoanalytical work of Jacques Lacan (and of scholars ‘fade away’.
such as Jacqueline Rose, after him). Along lines of ‘not-relation’, one could state (after Lacan)
that, in Certain Women, “La femme n’existe pas”: Woman with a capital W does not exist,
Woman with a definite article (‘La’) does not exist. There is, in other words, no one Woman; as
indicated above, there are three, four – and one or two more. As many critics have commented,
the ‘certainness’ of ‘Certain Women’ is crucial, as indeed is the multiplicity marked by ‘women’.
For Reichardt does not deal in definitive statements (hence her reticence towards the label of
‘feminism’), and Certain Women – in which chains of association imply as many withdrawals as
connections – refuses anything like a broad-sweeping, universal statement on womanhood. In so
doing, it approaches something like Lacan’s infamous reading of the feminine; however, it alters
his negative (‘ne pas’) formulation, slightly.
And so, throughout Reichardt’s work, it would seem that La femme n’existe pas, yet certaines
femmes existent: Woman does not exist, yet certain women exist. In place of a universal statement
on what femininity is (or isn’t), her collection of short stories offers micro-statements: here, it is
this; there, it could be that; what if it becomes this, or that, or…? In attending to various women’s
experiences, and via an evasion of intrusive interpretation (on levels of form and narrative), Reichardt
takes her cinema to a more positive, if still ambivalent position on the status of women, of animals,
of certain others.
by Laura Staab
173
A BACKWARDS TRAJECTORY THROUGH
CAMILLE HENROT’S ‘DAYS ARE DOGS’
A pulsing flower, a botox injection, a watery baptism – through this collection of images,
Camille Henrot’s ‘Saturday’ (2017) draws us towards the tension between the unfolding
of biological life, and the human inventions (scientific, religious, mediatic) that frame and
regulate it. Loosely centered on the practices of Seventh-day Adventists, the film is Henrot’s
most significant work in moving image since 2013’s ‘Grosse Fatigue’. It opens the French-born
artist’s latest exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo: ‘Days are Dogs,’ articulating a tension that
runs through the exhibition’s overarching narrative. ‘Days are Dogs’, which ran from October
2017 to January 2018, was the third installment of Palais de Tokyo’s ‘carte blanche’ series,
which invites a single artist to take over the entire 13,000 square metre exhibition space. This
expansiveness was fitting: although Henrot studied animation at the École Nationale Supérieure
des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, her work now spans moving image, installation, painting, sculpture,
and drawing. Bringing together different modes of representation and their attendant ways of
knowing allows Henrot to interrogate the anthropological impulse within the context of our
digital age.
For ‘Days are Dogs’, the exhibition space was carved up into seven sections, each dedicated
to a day of the week. This temporal structure, Henrot reminds us, is both a regulatory construct
and a lived experience - a site of manifold contradictions. Beginning with Saturday, movement
through the exhibition was structured in chronological progression. As I travelled from Saturday
[Saturn, Chronos, god of time] through Friday, however, I became aware of other chronologies
– and cartographies – which lay dormant, palpable beneath the surface. ‘Days are Dogs’ maps
out a reverse progression of Henrot’s work in moving image: ‘Saturday’ (2017) >> ‘Grosse
Fatigue’ (2013) >> ‘Deep Inside’ (2005). The movement from 3D, to multi-window desktop
interface, to felt-tip marker on 35mm film stock reveals Henrot’s evolving concern with the
materiality of the screen image. Yet, as a backwards trajectory through ‘Days are Dogs’ suggests,
this materiality has less to do with the texture of the image and more with the manipulation of
its density.
On Friday, you enter a viewing room. Inside, red shapes shift and twist against a black screen,
pulsing and vibrating as they become faces or flames, ghosts or hands, letters spelling out a-m-
o-u-r. The shapes reveal slivers of a moving image: a man and woman having sex, their bodies
bathed in red candlelight, encountered in fragmented close-up. These animated shapes act as cut-
outs, windows onto the scene underneath. They graze across the surface of the screen, exposing
skin, a clenched hand, the thrust of penetration. Your focus oscillates between these two moving
surfaces - one animated, one pornographic. While the latter shows the meeting of two bodies,
EXHIBITION
174
CAMILLE HENROT’S ‘DAYS ARE DOGS’ OCTOBER 18,
2017 – JANUARY 7, 2018 PALAIS DE TOKYO,PARIS
the animated surface traces a continual movement between proximity and distance. You watch
as the shapes meld and dissolve into another, only to split apart, to become other.
‘Deep Inside’ is one of three short pieces, collectively entitled ‘Room Movies’, in which
Henrot used the technique of drawing on a film roll to refigure the narrative of an existing film.
For ‘Deep Inside’, Henrot used felt-tip marker on a 35mm pornographic film from the seventies,
creating the animated red shapes via negative space: the only areas of the frame not blacked-
out. This manipulation of the image creates a certain density, a layering of affect. The shapes
intensify a sense of voyeurism, focusing our look through their microscopic openings. At the
same time, the animated surface and haunting score filter this experience through the narrative
Jean-Luc Nancy,
they trace of unrequited love. Composed by Benjamin Morando and written/performed by ‘Icon of Fury:
Nicolas Ker, the ballad recalls that of Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day (2001), a film about Claire Denis’s
“Trouble Every
cannibalistic sexual desire similarly shot through with hues of black and red. I am reminded of Day”’, Film-
what Jean-Luc Nancy wrote after watching Trouble Every Day: “[the film] is about the kiss that
Philosophy 12,
no. 1 (2002): p2.
bites, but not a kiss unlike any other: the kiss in as much as it bites, the kiss as power of the
bite.”1 The way the shapes in ‘Deep Inside’ shift and transmogrify, as if in response to the other’s
contact, approximates this zone between desire and carnal destruction. The ballad dissolves into
single notes; a plaintive “my love” resonates in the space between them. The animated surface
transforms the performance of pleasure underneath: an open mouth begins to resemble a cry.
Thursday presents the Silver Lion award-winning ‘Grosse Fatigue’: a film that emerged out
of Henrot’s residency at the Smithsonian Institution and in response to the theme of the 2013
Venice Biennale, ‘The Encyclopedic Palace’. Shot in the collections of the Smithsonian, ‘Grosse
Fatigue’ takes us on thirteen-minute journey through the creation of the universe. The film
opens with the sound of an inhalation, onto a desktop screen: galaxy wallpaper dotted with files.
Two windows fly out. Percussive beats begin to intensify as we focus on the overlapping images:
hands flipping through books - one on modern art; one ethnographic. Cut to the institutional
corridor of the Smithsonian: a woman leans against the storage lockers writing notes; a Google
search window opens in the corner of the frame. The search box begins to fill (“history of the
universe”) as a low, rhythmic voice intones “in the beginning there was no earth, no water,
nothing”.
This spoken word voice-over, performed by Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh and infused with hip hop,
guides us through the subsequent accumulation of images, which comprise footage from the
Smithsonian (specimens, art objects, texts) as well as found images from the internet (Wikipedia,
the IKEA monkey, an ad for a Samsung Galaxy). Henrot presents these images through the
175
 manipulation of multiple
windows on a desktop
interface. They appear and
disappear, minimize and
overlap, moving to the
fluctuating beat of the voice-
over, which interweaves
various, often contradictory,
stories of creation. Yet, whether mythic, religious, or scientific, ‘Grosse Fatigue’’s strategy
of montage positions these stories on a lateral plane. The film’s climax, for example, arrives
with a breathless listing of scientific disciplines and the classification of sexual practices. The
accumulation of windows builds, framing an image of a woman masturbating, until the screen
becomes mere abstraction, noise: a rectangle composed of moving lines.
Through this density of the screen image, ‘Grosse Fatigue’ stages a confrontation between
the Smithsonian as a site of knowledge, and Google as a database of information. How do
technology and digital culture change our ways of knowing? Are they just other stories, new
inventions that we reach towards to make sense of the unknowable? ‘Saturday’ circles back to
this question through its framing of the Seventh-day Adventists (SDA), a denomination of
Protestant Christianity that observes the Sabbath and practices immersion baptism. Shot in
3D, the film begins with the directional energy of an unfolding flower, pulsing out and towards
us. The screen takes shape.
‘Saturday’ moves between scenes of SDA groups in the US and Polynesia, and clinical settings
of scientific laboratories and medical offices. Images of nature punctuate the film; a baptism
scene dissolves into oceanic waves. Our vantage point is continually defamiliarized. In worm’s
eye view, we watch as a baby and various animals move across a glass surface, encircled as if
on a microscope lens. The film’s most arresting shot confronts us with a close-up of a woman’s
brow and a 3D needle, administering a botox injection. In a call room for the Hope Channel, a
SDA television network, we watch as employees take prayer requests via telephone. As the film
progresses, television news tickers begin to multiply across the screen. The 3D image allows
bands of text to run across each other, overlapping around objects, at various levels of depth.
This density of information, while made possible by the medium’s technology, effectively renders
it unreadable. Whether through density of affect (‘Deep Inside’) or of knowledge/information
(‘Grosse Fatigue’ and ‘Saturday’), Henrot’s work points towards the potential of the screen
image – analog and digital – to embody multiple, often conflicting logics.

EXHIBITION by Hannah Paveck

 Carolee Schneemann
Alice Diop, Laura Mulvey
Lis Rhodes, Mania Akbari
Bette Gordon
Naomi Kawase, Chantal
Akerman, Kathleen Collins
Sally Potter, Ildikó Enyedi
Agnès Varda, Kelly Reichardt
Queering the Absence, The
Feminist Essay Film, Lady
Macbeth, Susan Sontag
Andrea Dunbar, Nan Goldin
Ousmane Sembène
Trans Bodies On Screen
Women Cinematographers
UK 8.5 / EU 10 / US + CAN 13