Tag: Documentary

Biopic and Documentary Week: Blast from the Past: Jonathan Kaplan’s Heart like a Wheel

Heart Like a Wheel (1983)

This is a guest post from Melissa Richard.

Coming from a family of amateur drag racers (and a family where women outnumber men), it’s no surprise that my super-duper #1 female idol as a kid was Shirley Muldowney. A three-time National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel champion, Muldowney has been a part of professional drag racing since the mid-1960s and faced innumerable obstacles gaining entry into the boy’s club of the NHRA. Although not the first woman to race, she was the first to be licensed as a professional competitor and ran cars for the better part of nearly four decades, retiring only due to lack of sponsorship in 2003. Naturally, at the height of her career in the 70s / early 80s, her gender made excellent material for a biopic of her life, Heart like a Wheel (1983). And, perhaps just as naturally, the film does a pretty disappointing job of capturing the complexity of a woman who struggled to break the gender barrier in professional drag racing. 
Shirley Muldowney behind the wheel

Directed by Jonathan Kaplan and written by Ken Friedman, Heart like a Wheel hits the high points of Muldowney’s rise to prominence in the racing world: her beginnings as an amateur drag racer (which she did for extra money as a young, newly married waitress); her desire and ability to race professionally with the help of her first husband, mechanic Jack Muldowney, and son John; her divorce from Jack and relationship with fellow racer / crew boss Connie Kalitta; the failure of that relationship and, of course, the movie’s climax in which Muldowney beats Kalitta to take the NHRA U.S. Nationals championship in 1982. Heart like a Wheel has a certain B-movie quality to it, but garnered a 1984 Golden Globe nomination Best Performance by an Actress for Bonnie Bedelia, who plays Muldowney in the film. While not tremendously popular at the box office, it received favorable critical acclaim at film festivals and, among racing aficionados at least, still holds significant underground popularity.

Like most “women breaking barriers” films, especially those involving sports, Heart like a Wheel has a sort of against-all-odds feel to it that makes you want to like it, even if you know hokey story lines like that tend to be amped up by filmmakers for the benefit of paying audiences. This is no surprise. What is surprising, however, is that viewers are privy only to a watered-down version of the significant odds that Muldowney really faced. There are the typical sexist lines that a female drag racer could’ve expected to hear in a male-dominated sport (like when an announcer decries Muldowney receiving a kiss from her husband prior qualifying for her competition license ) and scenes that illustrate the roles Muldowney had to play as an hyper-sexualized novelty in order to do something she loved and was good at (including taking on the exotic name conferred on her by Connie Kalitta, “Cha Cha,” which she later rejected as a racing moniker). 
The “Cha Cha” version of Muldowney, 1972

Instead of developing important moments, like those in which she has trouble getting sponsorship because of her gender or struggles to make ends in the furious balance between a burgeoning racing career and a family, the film aims most of its dramatic focus on Muldowney’s romantic relationship with Kalitta.  In all of the drama of her seven-year fling with her hot-headed, womanizing guy, the lines and scenes that purport to represent the barriers Muldowney broke down seem pale and artificial, like they’ve been inserted only for the sake of occasionally reminding the viewer that Muldowney had to put up with a lot of macho crap in order to race.  

In all fairness, Muldowney and Kalitta’s relationship did have a significant impact on her career. They were involved professionally as well as personally, and her decision to cut him from her crew once the romance died made her even more of an underdog that she already was in the NHRA (since she couldn’t make it in racing without a bigger name than her own, apparently—or a man). In life and in the film, Muldowney took advantage of Kalitta’s license suspension (for fighting) and asked if she could race his top-fuel dragster with him as her crew chief, which put her on the road (literally) to three NHRA top-fuel championships. In fact, Kaplan and Friedman’s decision to organize the movie’s plot around Muldowney’s relationships with men is not unwarranted and lends an interesting masculine frame to a movie about a woman who came from and broke into, well, a masculine-framed world. From the opening black-and-white scene in which we see a young Shirley sitting on her father’s lap as he drives “too fast” down a deserted road through to the end when she shakes her fist in victory alongside her son / mechanic, this is a movie about a woman who lives in a world of men, is influenced by men, is supported and abandoned by men.
However, the male relationships that fostered Muldowney’s confidence and faith in her abilities hardly go noticed—especially the encouragement of her father.  One of the more touching scenes occurs in the first 10 minutes of the film, when a young Shirley Roque and her then beau Jack Muldowney approach her burly father to ask for permission to marry.  Tex Roque, a rough-and-tumble Country and Western singer, does not necessarily object to the marriage based on Shirley’s age—she’s sixteen—nor does he object to her choice of husband—he says that Jack is a really nice kid. What he objects to instead is that Shirley’s decision to marry so young will thwart her development as a self-sufficient woman. He advises her that “there’s not a man anywhere who’s worth giving up your ability to take care of yourself.”  Tex died fairly early in his daughter’s racing career, so perhaps there just wasn’t enough of a presence there to make it a bigger part of the film, but his advice – that Shirley take care of herself – doesn’t necessarily serve as the story arc that it seems set up to be.  Muldowney certainly gets things some things done herself: soliciting sponsorship, getting those needed signatures of support for her license application, and generally making it known that she would “mouth off” when she needed to.  But the crucial lesson for Shirley behind Tex’s advice gets lost in the development of her relationship with Kalitta, who is important in telling the Muldowney story, but who is certainly not the whole of it. 
Connie Kalitta (played by Beau Bridges) in Heart Like a Wheel

The relationship with Kalitta, of course, sets up the film’s narrative climax: the 1982 U.S. Nationals race in which Muldowney beat Kalitta to claim her third national title. They’d separated before the ’82 race, and the romance – in the film, but also to NHRA fans at the time—injects the duel with a provocative rivalry in which the little lady who can drive fast beats not just a male competitor, but a cheating, lying bastard.  It’s one of those convenient moments from Muldowney’s life story that make for a good Hollywood story, but the real victory there is overlooked by the film.  In 1982, no one had won three national NHRA titles and suddenly, someone had.  And it happened to be a woman. This achievement, though, is lost behind the drama of Muldowney beating a former lover who treated her badly and, by the film’s end, you wonder if Heart like a Wheel was really about a woman breaking into the male-dominated world of racing to begin with.

Maybe Heart like a Wheel is just a love story with fast cars in it—something for the boys and the girls in the Hollywood mindset. But the real story here is one about a woman who loved to drive and compete, inaugurated the participation of women in a sport decidedly “for boys,” and dealt with a mountain of complexity in the process (the usual accusations of being a bitch that go along with being an ambitious woman, the failure of her first marriage because of her racing career, and the emasculating threat a woman with a great ability posed to her male competitors). As someone who watched this movie over and over as a kid, and who could still watch it over and over as an adult, I can’t help but love Heart like a Wheel because I love Shirley. But I don’t love what Heart like a Wheel says about a woman who had a tough row and has served as a significant influence to those who follow in her footsteps– and what it doesn’t say about the challenges of women in a world dominated by men.


Melissa Richard is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a part-time English instructor at High Point University in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina. She writes about nineteenth-century factory girls in British literature and culture, likes to take photographs of things and stuff, and thinks that dancing is really fun. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: ‘Gloria: In Her Own Words’

Gloria Steinem in HBO’s Gloria: In Her Own Words
If I were to ask you to name a famous feminist, who would you say? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that most of you would probably say Gloria Steinem. And with good reason. A pioneering feminist icon, she’s been the face of feminism for nearly 50 years. Many people have admired and judged her, putting their own perceptions on who she is. In the documentary Gloria: In Her Own Words, Steinem tells her own story.
Directed by Peter Kunhardt and produced by Kunhardt and Sheila Nevins, the HBO documentary which also aired at this year’s Athena Film Fest, “recounts her transformation from reporter to feminist icon.” It explores Steinem’s life through intimate interviews and impressive historical footage, focusing on the tumultuous 60s and 70s, the core of the Women’s Liberation Movement. It’s an intriguing and thought-provoking introduction to feminism and insight of a feminist activist.
Gloria: In Her Own Words covers Steinem’s childhood in a working-class neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio and her early career as a journalist. One of her assignments involved going undercover doing an expose on the Playboy Club. Through the unfolding of her history, she discusses gender disparity in wages and sexual harassment. In 1970, women earned half of what men earned. Women were told that they couldn’t handle responsibility or couldn’t maintain the same level of concentration as men. And of course, women were told their place was in the home. She said that if you were pretty, people assumed you got assignments based on your looks. Of course it couldn’t be due to a woman’s intelligence or work ethic. Silly me. Steinem also revealed that her boss sexually harassed her at the Sunday Times. She said:
“There was no word for sexual harassment. It was just called life. So you had to find your own individual way around it.” 
Steinem found that she wasn’t alone. Many, MANY other women faced this same barrage of sexism and misogyny. She said she “wasn’t crazy, it was the system that was crazy.” This echoes something badass feminist poet and activist Staceyann Chin said when I attended Feminist Winter Term in NYC last year. Some young women feel like they’re losing their minds, that they see something wrong with society but so many others don’t. I know this is how I felt for a long time. But there’s nothing wrong or weird or abnormal about wanting to be treated equitably. Steinem says:
“I began to understand that my experience was an almost universal female experience.” 
Is there a “universal female experience?” I disagree. Yes, many women face the same gendered oppressions and stigmas. But this ignores the intersectionality of sexism, racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. that play pivotal roles in women’s lives. But Steinem asserts:
“Women really do have a community of interest because we are relegated to menial and dehumanized positions simply because we’re women.”
While the film glosses over some parts some parts of Steinem’s life I was absolutely thrilled it showcased abortion and reproductive justice. Steinem revealed how she had an abortion when she was 22 which she kept secret. When she covered an abortion hearing in New York in 1969, she realized the importance of reproductive justice. And that was her “click” moment in becoming a feminist:
“Women were standing up and sharing their abortion experiences…I listened to these women testify about all that they had to go through, the injury, the danger, the infection, the sexual humiliation, you know to get an illegal abortion. And I suddenly realized why is it a secret, you know? If 1 in 3 women has needed an abortion in her lifetime in this country, why is it a secret and why is it criminal and why is it dangerous? 
“And that was the big click. It transformed me and I began to seek out everything I could find on what was then the burgeoning women’s movement.” 
It’s interesting that abortion can be a catalyzing force in declaring a feminist identity. But it makes sense. When the government tries to take away your reproductive rights, to make choices about your own body, you realize the importance your voice and standing up for your rights. And Steinem’s absolutely right; an abortion stigma of shame should not exist. There’s nothing shameful in making a choice about your reproductive health. With the passage of Roe v. Wade and the legalization of abortion in 1973, “reproductive freedom” was established “as a basic right like freedom of speech or freedom of assembly.” Sadly, it’s a war we’re still fighting to win.
For Steinem, becoming a feminist meant becoming part of a group, something she had never felt before. She also discussed the “demonization” of “the word ‘feminist:’”
“I think that being a feminist means that you see the world whole instead of half…It shouldn’t need a name. One day it won’t…
“Feminism starts out being very simple. It starts out being the instinct of a little child who says it’s not fair and you are not the boss of me…and it ends up being a worldview that questions hierarchy altogether.”
As she “realized there was nothing for women to read that was controlled by women,” Steinem recognized the crucial need for feminist media. This sparked the creation of Ms. Magazine, the first feminist publication in 1972, which Steinem co-founded and edited. She said that while they didn’t invent the term “Ms,” it was “the exact parallel to “Mr.” and it had a great, obvious political use.” Marital status doesn’t affect male identity, so why should it affect women’s? Men in the media predicted its rapid demise. Yet it sold out in a week. Thankfully, it’s still in print as it’s one of my fave magazines!
Gloria: In Her Own Words shows footage of Steinem in interviews, rallies, marches and conferences such as the 1977 National Women’s Conference and the 2005 March for Women’s Lives in DC. At a rally for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), Steinem declared:
“We’ve been much too law-abiding and docile for too long but I think that period is about over. So I only want to remind you and me tonight that what we are talking about is a revolution, and not a reform…
 “We are the women that our parents warned us about and we are proud.”
Throughout the film, Steinem talks about anger:
 “A woman who aspires to something is called a bitch…There’s such huge punishment in the culture for an angry woman…I learned to use anger constructively.”
Society tells us women are meant to be docile and agreeable, not righteous and angry. As an angry child who grew up to be an angry woman, it was refreshing to hear Steinem discuss this stigma. She also talks about the need to advocate and fight for your rights as “nobody hands you equality.”
Steinem frankly shares her triumphs and her pain. She discussed her friction with feminist Betty Friedan, her admiration for her friend U.S. Representative Bella Abzug, a feminist pioneer, and her alliance with activist Angela Davis. She talks about her regret at distancing herself from her mother and her choice not to have children saying “having children should not be such a deep part of a woman’s identity.” She discussed her marriage to husband David Bale, whom she called “an irresistible force” and who sometimes introduced himself as Mr. Steinem, much to her chagrin. She survived breast cancer, depression and faced her own lack of self-esteem.
While the documentary alludes to Steinem’s other social justice passions, one for me, is glaringly omitted: her passion for animal rights. As a feminist vegan, I often see the two movements bifurcated, despite some of the parallel struggles. So it would have been great to see that here.
Throughout the film, I get the sense that Steinem is intelligent, kind, witty and passionate. When asked if she feels just as strongly today as she did when she started out as an activist, Steinem says:
“Oh much more, god much more, much much more. And it’s a world view. Once you start looking at us all as human beings, you no longer are likely to accept economic differences and racial differences and ethnic differences. So you have to uproot racism and sexism at the same time otherwise it just doesn’t work.”
I love this holistic view of abolishing kyriarchy and multiple systems of oppression.
Feminist writer Amanda Marcotte critiqued the documentary as “fun” and “worthy” yet “incomplete” and “far too upbeat.” I see her point. Yes, some events, particularly the ERA, were glossed over and some viewers might not understand the full scope of the struggles and sacrifices made during the women’s rights movement. But I’m glad it was hopeful. This is a documentary about Gloria Steinem, her views and her experiences; not a documentary on the history of feminism.
Sheila Nevis, the president of HBO’s documentary film division, views Gloria: In Her Own Words not as a biography but rather “an inspirational film” for young people “who didn’t know who she was.” For seasoned feminists who feel distraught over the plethora of incessant struggles, it’s nice to be buoyed by optimism. And for those who don’t call themselves feminists or don’t know much about the women’s movement, this might pique their curiosity to explore feminism. Inspiration is a powerful and sometimes underrated thing.
When someone leads a life in the spotlight, many myths and misconceptions may swirl around their public persona. But Steinem lays out her life: her triumphs, accomplishments, woes and heartbreak. It’s time you got to know the person you might think you knew, the woman who helped catalyze feminism in the U.S. I didn’t think it was possible to be even more inspired by Steinem than I already was…but I am.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

This piece on Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, by Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 21, 2011.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010)
Most reviews of the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work begin by describing how the film opens–with a close-up shot of Rivers’ face, without make-up. This is, of course, a metaphor for the goal of the film (to get behind the facade) and an acknowledgment of what Rivers has come to be most famous for–her surgically-altered appearance. While her face is surely a piece of surgical work, the far more fascinating work is that of her long life in the spotlight, and her drive to keep going, keep performing, keep selling, when the culture tells her she should stop (or that she should have stopped long ago).
I went into this film feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, it’s a documentary about an extraordinary woman, made by two women–Ricki Sternand Anne Sundberg, who are known for their previous films The End of America, The Devil Came on Horseback, and the forthcoming Burma Soldier, among others. It’s about a mouthy broad (and I love mouthy broads, women who speak their minds and aren’t afraid to put themselves out there), who is funny, and who has been at it since 1966. On the other hand, it’s yet another film about a wealthy white woman (I just watched and reviewed The September Issue, about Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour) who lives like “Marie Antoinette, if she’d have had money.”

Biopic and Documentary Week: American Violet

This piece on American Violet, by Amber Leab, originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on April 5, 2010.

American Violet (2008)

American Violet tells the true story of an African-American mother of four girls arrested and falsely accused of selling crack cocaine. Set in a fictional Texas town with the 2000 presidential election as a fitting backdrop of confusion and corruption, we see Dee Roberts fight–with the help of ACLU lawyers–to clear her name and the names of other innocent people arrested in a broad sweep that day.
Newcomer Nicole Beharie gives a powerful performance as Dee, and the supporting cast, including Alfre Woodard as Dee’s mother, and Tim Blake Nelson and Malcolm Barrett as lawyers for the ACLU, do an equally good job. 

It’s impossible to not love Dee–a beautiful woman, a kind and patient mother, a hard worker, and a caring friend. Her temper gets the best of her once in the film, but she’s protecting her children from their alcoholic father and his accused child molester girlfriend, and can hardly be faulted for it. I’m inclined to think the movie tries too hard to make her character likable. In contrast, Dee’s friend and neighbor Gladys–who is not a conventionally attractive woman, and does not have four adorable children trailing her–is a compelling and empathetic character, but the film completely drops the ball, even failing to credit the actor who plays her. Gladys is Dee’s inspiration for continuing to fight the DA even after her charges are dropped (because Gladys took a plea deal, while Dee would not), but we don’t get to explore Gladys or her situation. I’m curious as to why she’s part of the story, but not really allowed to be a character in the film. While the movie is about Dee, I would’ve liked to get to know Gladys a bit.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Poster Girl

This piece on Poster Girl, by Stephanie Rogers and Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on February 17, 2011, as part of their coverage of the Athena Film Festival.

Poster Girl (2010)
Poster Girl was, without a doubt, my favorite film at the Athena Film Festival. It’s no surprise that the film is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary – Short Subject, even though this was a first effort at filmmaking from director Sara Nesson. 
[…]
Nesson also juxtaposes photos of Robynn prior to her Army experience–where she’s in a cheerleading uniform, smiling and having fun with friends–with the post-Army Robynn, a tattooed, pierced, PTSD victim who stares at the former photos as if they couldn’t possibly be her. And they aren’t anymore. The new Robynn is an activist who speaks out against war and gun violence, even while dealing with debilitating panic attacks.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Monster

Monster (2003)
This is a guest post from Charlie Shipley.

“Well, I’ve walked these streets / A virtual stage it seemed to me / Makeup on their faces / Actors took their places next to me”
-Natalie Merchant, “Carnival”

We know the mass-culturally-sanctioned narrative about Patty Jenkins’ directorial debut, Monster: Charlize Theron got “ugly” and delivered a tour de force turn as serial killer Aileen Wuornos that was hailed by Roger Ebert in an effective, rare use of Travers-esque hyperbole as “one of the greatest performances in the history of the cinema.” That quote made it to countless one-sheets and adorns the DVD cover of the film, and perhaps rightly so; Theron’s performance (or “embodiment,” as Ebert puts it) so overwhelms the mise-en-scène and soundscape of the film that Christina Ricci’s stern gaze on the DVD packaging seems little more than a futile attempt to market the film visually as a buddy film gone terribly wrong. Thelma & Louise, this is not.
As is so often the case with art films that reach a wide audience, these cultural metanarratives surrounding the film as a consumer object threaten to overwhelm our consideration of the film itself. For that reason, I’m less concerned with the well-documented “bravery” of Theron’s transformation than I am with the question of whether this film does justice to Wuornos, or if that’s even possible.
It’s not difficult to argue against that possibility. Anytime there are agents in positions of relative privilege attempting to dramatize the life of a person at society’s margins, it’s so easy to colonize and reimagine those lives without regard to their complexity. Even with that enormous caveat, though, Jenkins does a remarkable job here of letting Wuornos the character speak for herself using canny structural and sonic devices to centralize her experiences; we can interpret her opening voiceover – “I always wanted to be in the movies” – as both a wish we know will be fulfilled and a bitterly ironic reminder of the aphorism “be careful what you wish for.” This and other voiceovers serve as a latticework within Monster, lending structure and even beauty to the narrative while allowing us to get a glimpse of Wuornos’s inner life.
This distinction between voiceover monologues and spoken dialogue is crucially important because Wuornos speaks in a desultory, often self-contradictory way that conceals a labyrinthine underlying psychology driven by the opportunism of someone in a literal and emotional fugitive state. In a powerful scene late in the film when Selby (Ricci) finds out the extent of Wuornos’s crimes and tries to plead ignorance, Wuornos makes the seemingly contradictory claims within the span of a few minutes that “you don’t know my life” and “you know me.” The first quote is Wuornos’s attempt to claim that her killings were justified, the second an appeal to Selby to trust her. In this dramatic context and in the context of the biopic genre generally, this distinction (knowing the events of a life vs. knowing a person’s “essential self”) is a subtle but important one. In the world of this film, when spoken dialogue resists clear meanings as in this scene, voiceover serves not to explain away the ambiguity but provide the emotional context for it. 
Charlize Theron and Patty Jenkins both gave interviews implicitly confirming that both of these modes of narrative – factual reportage and emotionally honest characterization – were of paramount importance in telling this story about Wuornos. In a way, the titular epithet, “monster,” bridges this gap by taking a label that many undoubtedly applied to Wuornos and giving her the agency within the film to choose the identification for herself in the voiceover at the Fun World carnival. 
Just as voiceover provides a fantastical cinematic refuge for Wuornos to articulate her feelings and meanings without worrying about the judgment of others, so too does pop music provide a visual and temporal escape hatch into the realm of fantasy. There is an instrumental score for the film that is used in a somewhat traditional way to heighten dramatic, dialogue-driven scenes, but these music cues are used more often in the latter part of the film. By contrast, the film’s opening and the first meetings between Aileen and Selby are characterized by a deep sense of naïve wonder, culminating in their first kiss at a roller skating rink set to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”
Selby (Ricci) and Wuornos (Theron) at the roller rink
This scene subverts the traditional biopic form by supplementing documented events in Wuornos’s life with a scene that would just as easily fit into a more traditionally feminine-identified genre, romance. It’s placed in the narrative before Wuornos has killed anyone, so the dream of class mobility and migration away from small-town life is especially bittersweet in light of what the viewer knows is to come. This is a theme of Aileen’s pledges to Selby throughout the movie; the promises-turned-fantasies of a better life “far, far away” echo the escapism promised by “a midnight train going anywhere.” There are elements that stretch the bounds of plausible reality as well. To give one example, women participating in a couples’ dance in 1980s Florida and openly kissing in an iconically “family-oriented” space such as a skating rink would presumably not be met with the same level of indifference as it is here. Furthermore, while the songs before “Don’t Stop Believing” are 100% diegetic – that is, coming from within the world of the film – “Don’t Stop Believing” begins as a song being played in the skating rink but continues as the film cuts to Selby and Aileen passionately kissing against the outer wall of the building. Just like Wuornos’s voiceovers provide relief from the naturalistic tension of the more narratively straightforward scenes, the pop music that plays here widens the bounds of what is possible. 
These liberties – voiceover and pop music – are often derided as lazy narrative fillers by film critics and screenplay-writing guides alike, but in the case of Monster, they give Wuornos’s character a space within the otherwise relentless film to express herself clearly and put words to her desires. 
A powerful intertext to Monster is the song “Carnival” by Natalie Merchant, which is used to great effect in the documentary Aileen: Portrait Of a Serial Killer and which Wuornos requested to be played at her funeral. (It also, if only by association, brought to my mind Bakhtin’s concept of the “carnivalesque,” which one can find in Monster’s elements of interclass contact and vernacular speech but not in its tone.) Merchant’s lines “Makeup on their faces / actors took their places next to me” eerily and concisely summarize the dilemma we face when asking whether a film like Monster can do justice to its subject. I think it can, and I think it does, for while Charlize Theron has indeed “taken her place” next to Aileen Wuornos in the collective consciousness, her commitment along with that of Patty Jenkins to giving center stage to Wuornos and channeling a conscientiously rendered version of her truth leaves us with a complex characterization – deeply flawed, and deeply human.

Charlie Shipley has a B.A. in English with a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies from the College of Charleston. He blogs about mental health, fat acceptance, feminism, and all the things at A Mind Unquiet. 

Biopic and Documentary Week: The September Issue

This review of The September Issue, by Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 7, 2011.

Anna Wintour has Power. She jokes that her siblings find what she does for a living “peculiar,” because maybe editing a fashion magazine doesn’t affect world politics, or cure diseases, or save the world. But high fashion is art, and art is peculiar. Amid the ads for cosmetics (which probably contain ingredients that no one should be putting on her or his skin) and accessories few of us can afford, there are stunning photographs of beautiful clothes. Most of the clothes aren’t really meant to be worn in Real Life, but they are pieces of art, and the people who make this wearable art fall all over themselves hoping that Wintour will notice them. They cater to her every whim, her every pointed critique.
Perhaps Wintour finds her position a bit peculiar, as well. There’s a drive viewers can see in her, and it seems as if she’s blindly plowing ahead, following success after success with little reflection about the why of it all. Her daughter appears to have no interest in the fashion industry, even though there’s a simple, ready-made path for her there. Like her mother, she doesn’t elaborate on her opinions, but knows that the industry isn’t for her. Wintour herself doesn’t really have much to say about what she’s achieved; she’s not the type to wax philosophically. Instead she states–and shows viewers–very plainly that she works hard and that the magazine has earned her a lot of money.
Grace Coddington and Anna Wintour
Fortunately, the movie also features Wintour’s team at Vogue, one of whom emerges to become the real star of The September Issue.
Grace Coddington is a former model and the creative director at Vogue. She even started working there on the same day as Wintour. She is intelligent, reflective, and an artist to Wintour’s manager persona. Coddington isn’t afraid to stand up to Wintour (whose lack of empathy was famously fictionalized by Meryl Streep in 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada) either, and flawlessly uses her every resource, including the documentary film crew, to her advantage. Viewers may see her as being cutthroat, but she’s an artist fighting for her vision, her work, and she’s earned it. She’s 68 and has spent her whole life in this industry, working for British Vogue and Calvin Klein before joining Wintour.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Undesired

This is a guest post from Martyna Przybysz.
It was a simple coincidence that led me to discovering this short film that you are about to watch. I was looking for a powerful story about women, in which their success or status would not be defined by their womanhood or the men in their lives. Instead, I have found exactly that, but in the worst possible scenario – a real life story of how India’s women are facing a slow extermination of the entire sex. Because in some families – especially the ones that cannot afford to pay the old-fashioned, dowry – women’s husbands, and their respective families are driven by the belief that the sole purpose of being a woman is to bring a son into the world. From the moment they are capable of bearing a child, those females are under threat of extreme violence and death if their duty is not fulfilled.

Undesired, with interviews and images shot by Walter Astrada, whom I believe to be a very courageous photojournalist, brings to light this painful and current social issue still faced by many. According to Reuters, modern day India is the fourth most dangerous place in the world for women to live, but it seems like it is also one of the most difficult ones for a female life to even begin. Gender inequality and the desire to rectify it, let alone feminism, seem like completely foreign concepts for certain classes. There is also a seeming contradiction in this entire predicament – if a woman is to be perceived as the bearer of life, how can she be made to bring about this life’s actual end? 
Read more about the issue and Astrada’s project. Watch it, share it, spread the awareness. 

In India, all women must confront the cultural pressure to bear a son. The consequences of this preference is a disregard for the lives of women and girls. From birth until death they face a constant threat of violence. See the project at http://mediastorm.com/publication/undesired

Martyna Przybysz is a Pole who resides in London, UK. She works in film production. This is her blog: http://martynaprzybysz.tumblr.com.

Biopic and Documentary Week: The Fat Body (In)Visible

This piece on The Fat Body (In)Visible, by Stephanie Rogers, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on December 21, 2010.

I was thrilled to run across a fat-positive documentary by Margitte Kristjansson called The Fat Body (In)Visible, in which she interviews Jessica and Keena about the experience of being a fat woman in a society that doesn’t value—and even openly discriminates against—fat women. 
Quotes from the documentary:

Jessica, on Fat Acceptance:  Fat acceptance is just the radical idea that every body is a good body and that regardless of your shape or your size that you deserve just as much respect as the next person.

Keena, on Fat Acceptance:  Fat acceptance is just accepting your body where it is at.  Whether you’re bigger or you’re smaller. Just accepting what it is, your arms, your double chin, your thighs, and just not worrying about how other people may view you.

Click here to read the full piece and to watch The Fat Body (In)Visible. 

Happy International Women’s Day: 11 Films that Celebrate Inspiring & Trailblazing Women

You can’t be what you can’t see. That’s just one of the reasons we need more women filmmakers and more diverse portrayals of complex women on-screen. At this year’s Oscars, actor Gabby Sidibe astutely declared:
“The way I watch movies, I’m really searching for myself because I don’t get to see enough of myself and I don’t, I kind of don’t get to like myself enough. But if I can see myself on-screen then I know I exist.”

We need to see a greater representation of women, especially women of color, queer women and trans women. Women’s history doesn’t exist separately. Yet media often writes women out of history.
Today marks International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate women’s achievements economically, politically and socially as well as to reflect on what still needs to improve. Too often, women and their stories are somehow seen as lesser than men’s: less important, less noble, less substantial. We must stop undermining their experiences and lives. So today, let’s celebrate all of the wonderful accomplishments women have achieved. Let’s embrace the stories and experiences of women…of our mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmothers, friends…and ourselves.
Later this month, Bitch Flicks is publishing a series on Women in Biopics and Documentaries. So here are just a few films honoring the many women who inspire and blaze trails:
1. Pray the Devil Back to Hell – Last month, three women won the Nobel Peace Prize, including activist and social worker Leymah Gbowee and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (along with Tawakkul Karman in Yemen) who fought for women’s rights and helped achieve peace in war-torn Liberia. Director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail E. Disney, chronicles their battle for peace in their Tribeca Film Fesitval-winning documentary. Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the powerful and uplifting story of the Liberian women who joined together and peacefully protested, helping end the civil war ravaging their country. Their activism should inspire us all to realize we can each create change.
2. Iron Jawed Angels – One of my absolute fave films, Iron Jawed Angels tells the powerful true story of indomitable activists Alice Paul (played spectacularly by Hillary Swank) and Lucy Burns (Frances O’Connor) and the fight for women’s suffrage. Director Katja von Garnier showcases their tireless struggle, from protesting in the freezing cold outside the White House to arrest and force feedings in prison. My only complaint? While Ida B. Wells is in the film, it only touches upon how many white women didn’t want African-American women to participate as well as diminishing the role African American women played. An amazing film about the women who refused to give up until they won equality and “revolutionized the American feminist movement.”
3. Miss Representation – Challenging sexist stereotypes, warped beauty standards and misogynistic imagery, the documentary “explores how the media’s misrepresentation of women has led to the underrepresentation of women in positions of power and influence.” An eye-opening look at the power of the media and the toxic messages it too often sends to women and girls. A labor of love written, directed and produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Miss Representation will forever change the way you view films, TV shows, advertisements and the news.
4. Chisholm ‘72: Unbought and Unbossed – Feminist icon Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress in 1968, serving from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first black woman to run for president and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. A dynamic powerhouse, she tirelessly advocated for inner city residents, children and healthcare. Directed and produced by Shola Lynch, Chisholm ‘72: Unbought and Unbossed chronicles Congresswoman Chisholm’s passionate and trailblazing campaign. She may not have won the presidency but she continues to inspire generations of women.  
5. Off the Rez – This documentary tells the story of Shoni Schimmel, a high school basketball phenom living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation. When Shoni’s mother Ceci, a strong and powerful woman, gets a job coaching a basketball team in Portland, Oregon, Ceci and her 7 children move. Exhilarating to watch, Shoni’s basketball skills transcend athletics, becoming art. Balancing her goals and her familial ties, it’s inspiring to see this young Native American woman represent her community both on and off the court.
6. The Whistleblower – Starring Rachel Weisz as Kathryn Bolkovac, a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia, “this gripping expose” reveals the harrowing plight one woman risking her life to combat human trafficking. Directed by Larysa Kondracki, the film depicts Bolkovac’s struggle to save women trafficked and uncover the truth amidst widespread corruption. Powerful and disturbing, The Whistleblower will haunt you long after it ends.
7. My Mic Sounds Nice: A True Story of Women and Hip Hop – A BET documentary, director Ava DuVernay “explores the demise of the female MC in today’s music.” Consisting of interviews with Missy Elliott, Trina, Eve and Salt-n-Pepa, the interesting and thought-provoking film celebrates and gives voice to black female musicians navigating the terrain of male-dominated hip-hop.
8. War Redefined – The 5th and final installment in Women, War & Peace (WWP), War Redefined is the capstone of the groundbreaking series featuring politicians, military personnel, scholars and activists discussing how women play a vital role in war and peace-keeping. Narrated by actor Geena Davis, a phenomenal gender media activist, this powerful film threads stories told in the other parts of the series: Bosnian women surviving rape camps, Liberian women protesting peace, Afghan women demanding their rights in negotiations and Afro-Colombian women contending with internal displacement. War Redefined, and the entire WWP series, challenges the assumption that war and peace belong to men’s domain.
9. !Women Art Revolution – A stunning and visionary documentary 40 years in the making, !Women Art Revolution, chronicles the convergence of feminism and art, fueled by anti-war and civil rights protests and the inception of the Feminist Art Movement in the 60s. Director Lynn Hershman Leeson, a performance artist and filmmaker, combines “intimate” interviews along with visceral visual images of paintings, performance art, installation art, murals and photography. The documentary depicts how women activists have fought to express their vision and have their voices heard in the art scene.
10. Gloria: In Her Own Words – Feminist icon Gloria Steinem lays her life out in this documentary:  her triumphs, accomplishments, woes and heartbreak. She speaks candidly about fighting for reproductive justice, her own abortion, her journalism career, facing sexual harassment, rallying for equality and the feminist movement. I didn’t think it was possible to be even more inspired by Steinem than I already was…but I am.
11. Pariah – My pick for the best 2011 film, Pariah won the Independent Spirit Award for the John Cassavetes Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Independent Film. Written and directed by Dee Rees and produced by Nekisa Cooper, tells the story of Alike (Adepero Oduye), a young black lesbian in Brooklyn. An exquisitely beautiful coming-of-age film about a woman discovering her sexuality and asserting her identity. We so rarely see positive portrayals of black women and queer women on-screen. Pariah broke my heart with its beauty and uplifted my soul. Yeah, it’s seriously that amazing.
What films inspire you??

Call for Writers: Biopics/Documentaries About Women

March is Women’s History Month. In honor of that, we’ve decided to feature reviews of biopics and documentaries about women. Many biopics about women tend to focus on their relationships and love lives exclusively, in a way that biopics about men usually don’t. So, we’d love to read reviews that praise these films, but feel free to write about biopics and documentaries that seriously fail the women being depicted. (Check out Gabriella Acipella’s analysis of the Margaret Thatcher and Marilyn Monroe films for an example of this.) There are currently TWO Linda Lovelace biopics in the works, yet we rarely see biopics or documentaries about women who changed lives (and cultures) … and there are plenty of women who did.

Here’s a very, very brief list of biopics–many of which are terrible, ha, and include lots of singers and entertainers–to think about, but please propose your own ideas for film reviews–including reviews of documentaries about women, too.

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen

Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie & Julia

Angela Bassett as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich

Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose

Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line

Diana Ross as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues

Angelina Jolie as Gia Carangi in Gia

Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde

Jennifer Lopez as Selena in Selena

Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner’s Daughter

Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in Monster

Halle Berry as Dorothy Dandridge in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge

———-

Here are a few basic guidelines for guest writers on our site:

–We like most of our pieces to be 1,000 – 2,000 words, preferably with some images and links.
–Please send your piece in the text of an email, including links to all images, no later than Friday, March 23rd.
–Include a 2-3 sentence bio for placement at the end of your piece.

Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts.

Best Documentary Oscar Nominee: Pina

Pina: Feminism in Motion
This is a guest post from Ren Jender.
When I’m at the movies all the usual filters come down: I cry in response to the most manipulative scenes—and even more embarrassingly at coming attractions for films I would never dream of seeing. Fellow moviegoers hear my loud laugh even when the filmmaker doesn’t seem to be in on the joke. I rarely talk back to films (except to the really terrible ones), but near the beginning of Pina, Wim Wenders’ great, 3-D exploration of the late choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch’s work, a long line of dancers trudged toward the camera enacting in unison a series of gestures a woman had explained were a tribute to the changing of the seasons. The dancers slowly made their way along a sheer curtain that bisected the screen and ended somewhere in the audience’s lap. As the dancers stepped forward, trance-like, they seemed to enter the room: the empty seats in front of the stage in the film blended into the empty seats in the first few rows of the movie theater. I couldn’t help myself: I said to the screen, “Cool!”
The rest of Pina never quite equals the wonder of that moment, but it does capture, in original and striking ways, the beauty and mystery of Bausch’s work by bringing us right inside of it. Fred Astaire probably wouldn’t have approved but watching this company of dancers captured separately and up close, with their arms held out to us beseechingly, is nearly as different from watching dance onstage—or dancers filmed as it they were onstage, from a respectful distance, as trying to ice-skate is different from watching figure skaters on TV.
In “The Rite of Spring,” traces of the fresh dirt we see raked onto the stage before the piece begins become visible on the women’s thin, light-colored slip dresses and anguished faces as they offer themselves one-by-one to the group of shirtless male dancers—before running away at the last minute. The last woman dancer to offer herself doesn’t run, but the terror in her eyes and her quaking body—that seems to anticipate the male dancer will soon literally drag her through the dirt—reminded me of the unabashed purity of emotion found in silent films.
Pina isn’t silent, but long stretches pass without words. Intermittent scenes feature members of the company sharing a few memories of Pina herself. Wenders has captured each dancer alone in close-up silently looking at the camera while he or she, in voice over, talks in his or her native language—Korean, Portuguese, Croatian, Russian, Spanish and French as well as German. “You’re just going to have to get crazier,” one woman recalls Pina counseling her, but the film offers no more deep, detailed explanation and analysis of the work, no behind-the-scenes peek or even dances presented in their entirety. Pina is less like a traditional, chatty, dance documentary (of which Frederick Wiseman’s 2010 La Danse is one example) than it is like Koyaanisqatsi, which, with its time-lapsed segments set to a score by Philip Glass, also set a mood where words were superfluous.
Bausch started her company in the early 70s and the sexual politics in her work is unmistakable, not just in “The Rite of Spring,” but in most of the dances shown in the film. A group of younger men put their hands on a withdrawn middle-aged woman. They grab not just at her breasts but also at her hand—to kiss it—and take turns stroking her nose and chin as if she were a very young child. In “Dance Hall” the men in the company reach to grope the women while the women cringe, try to escape and bat errant hands away, a familiar scenario, even though the men are seated and the women stand against the opposite wall.

A man in “Café Müller” tries to force a couple into a Hollywood-style, romantic embrace, repositioning their bodies each time the woman falls to the floor from her partner’s hands, even though their pose has a progressively shorter duration each time the man tries to re-orchestrate it.
But the dances have their light moments as well: a woman in a short, red dress runs across a row of chairs, giving a sweet cry of relief, “Oooooh” as she knocks each one down. She brings to life the idea an older dancer expresses: that being in Bausch’s company is a chance to play as children play—for the rest of one’s life.
In another sequence, slender Azusa Seyama (“extremely thin” like “young” is not, we see, the given for dancers in Bausch’s company as it would be in most of the rest of the dance world) poses and grimaces alongside an impressive set of muscular arms only to pull away and reveal the male dancer flexing behind her. He then puts her arm over his shoulder and launches her into the air, whirling her around and around, an amusement park ride most of us will never get the chance to board.

We see women dancers repeatedly climb seated, male dancers as if lightly dancing up steps. The women end by poking the men’s chests with their toes—and the men smile at them throughout. In this era when so many people make grim trips to the gym part of their weekly routine, seeing beautiful bodies that are toned and sculpted to perform feats of wonder instead of just to look good is a revelation.
Although Bausch’s life’s work and her company of dancers are the focus of the film, Wim Wenders’ inventive yet unobtrusive direction and the work of his team of cinematographers, Alain Derobe, Helene Louvart and Jorg Widmer, provides the gilt frame around the portrait: sweeping crane shots, gorgeous colors and lighting effects that I hadn’t thought possible in 3-D. Color is particularly important in Bausch’s work: the bright pink of the dress first worn by an adolescent girl, then a grown woman then an elderly woman (each standing still in the middle of a line of her peers) in “Dance Hall” stuck with me long after I had left the theater, like seeing the shadow of the sun when one closes one’s eyes to a clear sky. Much of Pina has stayed with me in the same way. In a year when the Oscars have shown so little respect for women, barely nominating them outside of gender-specific categories, Pina—which is nominated for “Best Documentary Feature”—is a film well worth rooting for. 
Trailer:


Ren Jender is a writer/performer/producer based in Boston who occasionally projects “radical” phrases on the sides of buildings.