Tag: Female Filmmakers

‘Pray the Devil Back to Hell’ Portrays How the Women of Liberia, United in Peace, Changed a Nation

 

Written by Megan Kearns.

Men often dominate the debate of war, negotiation and even peace. Only one woman had ever won the Nobel Peace Prize. Until now. Last month, three women won the prize, including 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.

We often think we can’t make a difference in the world. We’re just one person. How can anything we do matter? But the activism of the women of Liberia should inspire us all to realize that we can impact change.

In the 2nd installment of the Women, War & Peace series, director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail E. Disney, and WWP series executive producers and co-creators, create a Tribeca Film Festival-winning documentary. Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the powerful and uplifting story of the Liberian women, including activist and social worker Leymah Gbowee, who joined together and peacefully protested, helping end the civil war ravaging their country.

For almost 15 years, beginning on Christmas Eve in 1989, two civil wars plagued Liberia. Warlord and former president Charles Taylor resided at the center of both. He overthrew the regime during the first civil war and committed war crimes and human rights atrocities while president during the second civil war. Taylor recruited soldiers as young as 9-15 years old. With his private army, the dictator controlled the finances and terrorized the country.

“Life was bad. People…couldn’t even afford a cup of rice.”

Everyone in Liberia lived in a perpetual state of fear. Gbowee told how she trekked to her parents’ house, walking for 7 hours, while 5 months pregnant with her two young children. Her 3-year-old lamenting that he just wanted a piece of donut to eat. She said:

“Liberia had been at war so long that my children had been hungry and afraid their entire lives.”

Many pundits and journalists claimed ethnic conflicts spurred the civil war. But Gbowee elaborates:

“Some say war was about the gap between rich and poor. Some also say it was about the hatred between the different ethnic groups. Others say the war was to control natural resources. Power, money, ethnicity, greed…but there is nothing in my mind that should make people do what they did to the children of Liberia.”

Gbowee shares the inception for her radically simple idea for peace:

“I had a dream and it was like a crazy dream. Like someone was actually telling me to get the women of the church together and pray for peace.”

She rallied women from the surrounding Christian churches. Comprised of “ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters,” Gbowee and other women started the Christian Women’s Peace Initiative.

Asatu Bah Kenneth, Assistant Director of the Liberian National Police, attended a meeting of the Initiative, the only Muslim woman in the church. Inspired by their work, she reached out to other Muslim women, encouraging them to get involved. Kenneth formed the Liberian Muslim Women’s Organization to work towards peace. Kenneth said:

“When I sold the idea to them, they were more than excited.”

Initially divided by faith, the Christian and Muslim women soon came together. The two peace groups united to form the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. Vaiba Flomo shared:

“But the message we took on was: Can a bullet pick and choose? Does the bullet know Christian from Muslim?”

While the women were organizing, Taylor’s opponents prepared to go to war. The warlords wreaked havoc on the country, giving boys guns and intimidating civilians. Just as in Bosnia (and often happens in war), rape remained a constant threat for the women of Liberia. Journalist Janet Bryant-Johnson said:

“They can rape you in front of your children, they could rape you in front of your husband…And they just do anything because they had guns.”

People were forced to enter displacement camps. Not only did they live in “abject poverty,” people, especially children, died each day. The Liberian women went to the camps to see how people were faring. Their hope amidst tragedy inspired Gbowee:

“These women had seen the worst of the wars something that I had not seen but they still had that vibrancy for life. And just being able to help them, to sit and hold their hands, and to hug their kids and looking at people who had lost everything and still having hope, I think that was where I got baptized into the women’s movement.”

As the war progressed, the women wanted to take more drastic measures. Inspired by their faith, the women donned white garb to declare to people they stood for peace. Thousands of women protested at the fish market each and every day, a strategic location visible to Taylor. Carrying a huge banner stating, “The women of Liberia want peace now.” It was the first time in Liberia’s history where Christian & Muslim women came together.

While all of the women worked together, Gbowee’s indomitable will buoyed the women’s spirits. “Desperate for peace,” the women decided to engage in a sex strike from their husbands. As they protested, the women knew they had to be brave. Flomo declared:

“We were not afraid. My mother was like, “They will beat you people, and they will kill you.” And we said, “Well if I should get killed, just remember me, that I was fighting for peace.”

Kenneth became the women’s “spy,” keeping them abreast of developments. An international call for peace talks “emboldened the women.” Taylor initially refused to negotiate. But the women created a decree “demanding…not appealing” the Liberian government participate in the peace talks. Taylor finally decided to stop ignoring the women and meet with them, “the moment Gbowee had lived for.” The women marched to Taylor’s mansion to present their document. As they walked onward and chanted, groups of women joined them. When they reached Taylor’s mansion, Gbowee read their statement aloud:

“With this message that the women of Liberia…We are tired of war. We are tired of running. We are tired of begging for bulgur wheat. We are tired of our children being raped. We are now taking this stand to secure the future. Because we believe as custodians of society tomorrow our children will ask us, “Mama, what was your role during the crisis?”

Taylor succumbed to the women’s demands and attended the peace talks in Ghana. Some women traveled to Ghana to protest. Gbowee said:

“We are their conscience, sitting out here. We are calling to their conscience to do the right thing. And the right thing now is to give the Liberian women and their children the peace that they so desperately need.”

As violence erupted in Monrovia, Liberia, some of the women remained in Ghana at the peace talks. Despite missiles and stray bullets, the other Liberian women risked their lives, continuing to protest each day at the fish market, singing and praying.

After 6 weeks, peace talks went nowhere. For the warlords, sleeping in lush accommodations and removed from the fighting, it was “like they were on vacation.” Frustrated, the women sat in the hall where the peace talks were held. “Seizing the hall,” the women locked arms and wouldn’t leave until a peace agreement was signed. Gbowee, accused of obstructing justice, passionately declared to the media at the conference:

“What we’ve done here today is to send up a signal to the world that we the Liberian women in Ghana, we are fed up with the war. We are tired of fighting, the killing of our people. We can do it again if we want to. And next time, we’ll be more than a thousand…We can do it and we’ll do it again.”

Two weeks later, they finally reach an agreement, including Taylor’s exile to Nigeria and the implementation of a transitional government until democratic elections held. As the women returned home, they were met with hugs and children chanting, “We want peace, no more war.” They knew their work wasn’t over as “peace is a process; it’s not an event.”

The women believed they couldn’t achieve peace until they attained democracy. So they campaigned for presidential candidate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. With the “Iron Lady’s” election, President Johnson Sirleaf (who has helped erase the national debt, built schools, improved roads and increased access to healthcare) became the first elected female president in Africa. She acknowledged the Liberian women’s brave accomplishment:

“It is the women who labored and advocated for peace throughout our region.”

Despite the horrific subject matter of war, the uplifting documentary exudes optimism. The women achieved something “unimaginable.” The beauty of the documentary lies in director Reticker showcasing the Liberian women. With no narrator, she lets their voices speak for themselves.

The Liberian women’s unity brought about peace. Community activist Etweda “Sugars” Cooper admits:

“If we had not had different women from different walks of life, banding together, we may not have been able to solve the problem.”

Gbowee believes the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell has lasting impact and can inspire women to realize their power and mobilize:

” … This documentary is like a landmark or something that tells other women, ‘People did it before we came, we’ve done it, and they can also do it,'” she said. “So it’s not a fluke. It can happen. People just need to rise up and rise above the politics that so deeply divide us as women.”

The women’s tenacity, resilience and unity will amaze and inspire you. Social injustices plague the world; the staggering number of problems can overwhelm. But one person can make a difference; a powerful reminder that we each matter. We need to put aside our differences to combat injustice and reclaim peace. One voice can inspire others, triggering disparate voices to harmoniously come together; a symphony of voices can change the world.

Watch the full episode of Pray the Devil Back to Hell online or on PBS.

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. She blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Fem2pt0, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Kids Are All Right (for 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), Man Men (for Mad Men Week), Game of Thrones and The Killing (for Emmy Week 2011), Alien/Aliens (for Women in Horror Week 2011), and I Came to Testify in the  Women, War & Peace series. She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.

Question of the Day: Favorite Female Filmmaker?

One of my favorite kinds of posts to write–although we haven’t posted very many of them yet, and very few people ever comment on them–is the Director Spotlight. (If you haven’t already, check out spotlights on Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Tanya Hamilton, Nicole Holofcener, Deepa Mehta and Agnes Varda.) While the posts themselves are fairly cut-and-dry, I always enjoy focusing on a woman who makes (or who made) movies and learning about her filmography.
Though most of the women we’ve profiled are already fairly successful, I also believe these posts do a service: more female filmmakers should be household names (think for a moment about all the male filmmakers who are), and by calling attention to them, maybe a few more people will know them as such.
We can all agree that if more women make films, and if these women get more attention, depictions of women in all forms of media has a chance of improving over time. So, in the spirit of celebrating women who make movies comes today’s question:

Who are your favorite female filmmakers?

Here’s the part where we ask for your help.

Running a blog is difficult and time-consuming work. It’s also often thankless: you don’t make any money, you have to fend off trolls and commenters only interested in personal attacks, and you worry that no one reads that post you spent hours writing. 
 
But it’s also very rewarding: you meet people online who share your interests and concerns, you explore ideas that other people help you more fully understand, and you have a venue for fighting back against systems that seem untouchable in everyday life. We’re grateful for all of you who read our pieces, comment on them, link to them and cross post them on your own sites. We’re especially grateful for those of you who have contributed pieces to our site, and expanded the discussion.
Bitch Flicks is free from obnoxious ads, which means there has been zero revenue to pay for site hosting, guest writers, upgrades, and the like. There are two ways you can help:
  1. Donate via PayPal. Notice the “Donate” tab at the top right of the page. If you’re a reader who supports what we do, consider donating to the cause. Any amount, however small, is a greatly appreciated gesture of support and will help pay for our expenses.  
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If you can’t afford a financial contribution, there are a number of things you can do to help.

–Amber & Stephanie

Preview: ‘Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth’

You can help Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth by donating to its Indie GoGo campaign.

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” 

–Alice Walker.

I’m excited to learn about a new documentary in the works about Alice Walker, the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature (for The Color Purple), from Kali Films. Information about the film and its preview have been making their way around the blogosphere, but we hope you’ll learn more if you’re not already familiar.
The filmmakers have an Indie GoGo campaign to fund the completion of the film; they are 85% through, but need to raise a total of $50,000 more (they have currently raised over $15,000 of their goal).
Here’s more about the film from the fundraising site:
ALICE WALKER: BEAUTY IN TRUTH has been 4 years in the making. During this time we have most definitely rolled up our sleeves, put our heads down and dedicated ourselves to getting this film out in the world by any means necessary. On this ever eventful journey, we have been joined by some truly committed and amazing people who share our vision to tell this inspiring story of hope. We have got this far with the help of generous donations from individuals, grants and awards, major extensions on our personal credit cards and most recently filmmaker support from ITVS. We have now completed 85% of the filming and are working towards the completion of a rough cut.

The filmmaking team is award-winning filmmaker Pratibha Parmar and producer Shaheen Haq. 

[…]

Alice Walker’s dramatic life has been lived in a spirit of resistance and grace. Born in 1944, in a paper-thin shack on a cotton plantation, the eighth child of sharecroppers in rural Georgia, her early life unfolded in the midst of violent racism and poverty in the segregated South. Her poor, black, Southern upbringing and her activism in the civil rights movement in Mississippi in the 1960’s greatly influenced her consciousness and shaped her writing. Being forced to ride at the back of the bus, and watching her parents being brutalised by racist segregation, instilled in her a life long commitment to justice and equality. In 2010, Walker was awarded the LennonOno Peace Award for her humanitarian work by Yoko Ono, another visionary and a risk-taker.

Watch the trailer:

Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth – Trailer from Kali Films on Vimeo.

If you can afford to, we encourage you to donate to this important project. If not, please help them by spreading the word about the film.

Director Spotlight: Deepa Mehta

Deepa Mehta

Indian-born and Canadian-based writer and director Deepa Mehta has gained international acclaim and numerous awards and nominations for her films. She is probably most famous for her Elements Trilogy, which includes the films Water, Earth, and Fire. Her latest project is an adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, which she is directing and adapting with the author.
I’m currently working my way through the trilogy, with plans to write a piece about the films in the not-too-distant future. Her work tends to deal with the experience of Indian women, both in their home country and as immigrants. If you’re not familiar with Mehta’s work, I strongly recommend checking her out. Here is a selection of her feature-length films.

Heaven on Earth (2008)
Heaven on Earth is Mehta’s most recent film. It won awards from the Chicago International Film Festival and the Dubai International Film Festival, along with several other nominations, including two from the Director’s Guild of Canada. I haven’t yet seen it, but here is the description from the film’s official website:
When Chand (played by Bollywood superstar Preity Zinta) arrives in Brampton, Ontario to meet her new husband, she leaves behind a loving family and supportive community. Now, in a new country, she finds herself living in a modest suburban home with seven other people and two part-time tenants. Inside the home, she is at the mercy of her husband’s temper, and her mother-in-law’s controlling behaviour.

After a magic root fails to transform her husband into a kind and loving man, Chand takes refuge in a familiar Indian folk tale featuring a King Cobra.

Watch the trailer:

Water (2005)
Although the final film in her Elements Trilogy, Water was the first one I saw. In addition to being a beautiful film, I learned something about Indian culture in the time of the rise of Mahatma Ghandi, and a practice that segregates widows from society that continues even today. There was a good bit of controversy in the making of the film, which took Mehta some seven years to complete–due, in part, to moving the filming to a different country and recasting its leads (be sure to check out the Director’s Statement for more on the story). Water was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, won numerous other awards, and garnered even more nominations. Here’s the description from IMDb:
In 1938, Gandhi’s party is making inroads in women’s rights. Chuyia, a child already married but living with her parents, becomes a widow. By tradition, she is unceremoniously left at a bare and impoverished widows’ ashram, beside the Ganges during monsoon season. The ashram’s leader pimps out Kalyani, a young and beautiful widow, for household funds. Narayan, a follower of Gandhi, falls in love with her. Can she break with tradition and religious teaching to marry him? The ashram’s moral center is Shakuntala, deeply religious but conflicted about her fate. Can she protect Kalyani or Chuyia? Amid all this water, is rebirth possible or does tradition drown all?

Watch the trailer:

Bollywood/Hollywood (2002)
Somewhat lighter fare, Bollywood/Hollywood is a comedy of marriage, tradition, and identity. Here is the description, again from IMDb, as I couldn’t find an official film site for this one. (If anyone knows of the site, please leave it in the comments and I’ll update the post!)
After Rahul’s white pop-star fiancée dies in a bizarre levitation accident his mother insists he find another girl as soon as possible, preferably a Hindi one. As she backs this up by postponing his sister’s wedding until he does so, he feels forced to act, the more so as he knows his sister is pregnant. But it’s a pretty tall order for an Indian living in Ontario, so when he meets striking escort Sunita who can ‘be whatever you want me to be’ he hatches a scheme to pass her off as his new betrothed. Things get complicated when his family start to take to her and he realises his own feelings are becoming rather stronger than that.

Watch the trailer:

Earth (1998)

Earth is the second film in Mehta’s Elements Trilogy. The film seems to have won only a single award, and is based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel, Cracking India. Released in India as 1947: Earth, the film chronicles the division of India and Pakistan. From a plot summary on IMDb:

This story revolves around a few families of diverse religious backgrounds, namely, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Parsi, located in Lahore, British India. While the Parsi family, a known minority in present day India, are prosperous, the rest of the families are shown as struggling to make a livelihood. Things change for the worse during 1947, the time the British decide to grant independence to India, and that’s when law and order break down, and chaos, anarchy, and destruction take over, resulting in millions of deaths, and millions more rendered homeless and destitute. In this particular instance, Shanta is a Hindu maid with the Sethna (Parsi) family, who is in love with Hassan, a Muslim, while Dil Navaz loves Shanta, and wants her to be his wife, she prefers Hassan over him. This decision will have disastrous effects on everyone concerned, including the ones involved in smuggling Hindus across the border into India.

Watch the trailer:

Fire (1996)
Fire, the first film in the Elements Trilogy, is the one set in most recent times. It won numerous awards, including Audience Choice at various film festivals. The film was banned in Pakistan, and later in India for “religious insensitivity” and the depiction of a lesbian relationship. 
Here is a brief description from Amazon (but for a more in-depth take read Burning Love from the Bright Lights Film Journal):
Fire is the first film to confront lesbianism in a culture adamantly denying such a love could ever exist. Shabana Azmi shines as Radha Kapur in this taboo-breaking portrayal of contemporary India and the hidden desires that threaten to defy traditional expectations. In a barren, arranged marriage to an amateur swami who seeks enlightenment through celibacy. Radha’s life takes an irresistible turn when her beautiful young sister-in-law seeks to free herself from the confines of her own loveless marriage and into the supple embrace of Radha.

Watch the trailer:

Mehta’s films not mentioned here include Sam & Me, Camilla, The Republic of Love, and more.

You can read previous Director Spotlights on Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Tanya Hamilton, Nicole Holofcener, and Agnes Varda, and a Quote of the Day on Dorothy Arzner.

It’s Ada Lovelace Day!

portrait of Ada Lovelace

In honor of the day, I watched the only movie I could find about her (or featuring her): Conceiving Ada.
Before I talk about the movie, first some basic information on Ada Lovelace Day, founded to celebrate Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace (AKA Ada Lovelace).
Who is Ada Lovelace?
She is often called the “World’s First Computer Programmer,” although she lived nearly 100 years before the first computer was built. Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia page about her:

In 1842 Charles Babbage was invited to give a seminar at the University of Turin about his analytical engine. Luigi Menabrea, a young Italian engineer, and future prime minister of Italy, wrote up Babbage’s lecture in French, and this transcript was subsequently published in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève in October 1842.

Babbage asked the Countess of Lovelace to translate Menabrea’s paper into English, subsequently requesting that she augment the notes she had added to the translation. Lady Lovelace spent most of a year doing this. These notes, which are more extensive than Menabrea’s paper, were then published in The Ladies’ Diary and Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs under the initialism “AAL”.

In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Lady Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and Lady Lovelace’s notes as a description of a computer and software.[27]

Her notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, the Countess describes an algorithm for the analytical engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered the first algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and for this reason she is often cited in to be the first computer programmer.[28] However the engine was never actually constructed to completion during Lovelace’s lifetime.

The computer language Ada, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defense, was named after Lovelace. The reference manual for the language was approved on 10 December 1980, and the Department of Defense Military Standard for the language, “MIL-STD-1815”, was given the number of the year of her birth. Since 1998, the British Computer Society has awarded a medal in her name[29] and in 2008 initiated an annual competition for women students of computer science.[30]

Ada Lovelace Day has been founded to commemorate her historic place in computing history, and to celebrate women in mathematics, science, engineering, and technology. You can learn more about Ada Lovelace and the project Ada Lovelace Day at the website Finding Ada.

Now, on to the movie!

Conceiving Ada (1997)
I debated even watching Conceiving Ada last night after reading reviews, some of which included the words “ridiculous” and “loony.” But, I figure so many woman-centered, woman-directed, and woman-written movies encounter much harsher criticism (especially an overtly feminist movie such as this), and the movie deserved a chance. Plus, it stars Tilda Swinton, for whom I have a borderline-unhealthy obsession, and was written and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson, whose most recent film was !Women Art Revolution (which I just mentioned in a post yesterday, oddly enough).
The basic premise of the movie is that a genius DNA researcher Emmy Coer is developing a computer program that will allow her to travel back in time (not physically–just through the computer) to meet and communicate with her muse, 19th century math whiz Ada Byron King. There are troubles along the way to reaching her goal, and consequences to making contact that I don’t entirely understand. And, for some reason, there’s a lot of sex. A lot. Even Victorian-era sex.
I’ll just put the criticisms I have out front, and then get into why the movie is ultimately worth watching. Some of the acting is cringe-worthy, particularly that of main character Emmy’s (Francesca Faridany) boyfriend, and her OB-GYN. There are real moments in the movie that deserve the MST3K treatment, and one can’t help but joke that the movie’s vision of time travel via computer seems a whole lot like watching a movie (until the women actually communicate with one another). I’ll even admit to a fleeting comparison to The Room at a particularly awkward moment.
That said, this isn’t one of those “it’s so bad don’t even bother” movies. It’s actually a really interesting one that explores the bonds that did–and do–define female sexuality (even if we do see some unnecessary nudity), in Lovelace’s time and today. It explores motherhood, and the ways that having children both can empower and inhibit women. Finally, it’s a look at women in the field of technological science, and how maybe not a lot has changed since the 19th century.
Of course, the technology portrayed in the movie seems primitive after about 15 years, and the ability to time travel online to talk with long-dead historical figures is a fantasy. The movie was very carefully filmed, and Leeson claims that “Every scene was structured and shot using a DNA image as a model for actors’ placement andcamera movement.” The movie itself sits firmly in the science fiction/fantasy genre, and if you accept this and focus on what the movie is actually trying to say about memory, women in technology, and DNA, I think you’ll find it quite fascinating and challenging. I did.
Watch the trailer:

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

What if women were piloting the scripts rather than just starring in them? A review of Pan Am from Professor, What If …

I Watched the Fall Premieres So You Don’t Have To from Feminist Frequency

“Law and Order: Mutilated Women Unit” ep cleverly appeals to multiple niche fetishes at once from I Blame the Patriarchy

No, Kirsten Dunst does not like the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” from A. V. Club

The Highest Paid Women in Entertainment — 2011 from Women and Hollywood

Sigourney Weaver’s preference for ‘pure’ parts from Canada.com

Brooklyn Readies for the 14th Annual Reel Sisters Film Festival from FortGreenPatch

Lynne Ramsay: ‘Just talk to me straight’ from The Guardian


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Quote(s) of the Day: Geena Davis and Abigail Disney

At the Social Good Summit a couple of weeks ago, a panel was held called, “Women and Girls Lead: Where Storytelling, Gaming, and Public Media Converge,” and the entire thing rocked my world. It’s moderated by Aaron Sherinian, Vice President of Communications and Public Relations of the United Nations Foundation, and the members of the panel include Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media; Paula Kerger, President and CEO of PBS; Abigail Disney, Executive Producer of the film Women, War & Peace; and Asi Burak, Co-President of Games for Change.
I want to include two quotes from the panel, the first from Geena Davis—regarding gender representations in media, particularly programming for children—and the second from Abigail Disney, in which she discusses women and rape, and how men need to become more involved in its prevention. (I’ll post the video as well, but it’s always difficult to know if and when it’ll be taken down. That said, if you’re able to watch it, please watch it. And pass it on!)
Geena Davis, on changing society’s perceptions of women and girls
I think the problem is very broad, that in media in general, all that we’ve seen from when we were little kids, and all that’s shown now, are very, very imbalanced fictional worlds where there are far more male characters than female characters, and the female characters don’t really get to do a lot. So kids take this in, they internalize it, and they end up not being able to picture women doing interesting and unusual things because they’ve never seen it before. You can only accept it and take it in as a reality if you’ve seen it. So what we need to do is, first of all, add a lot more female characters because we really do take up half the planet, and we’re not like a rare subgroup like we’re shown in movies and television. And also, to show a breadth of occupations and aspirations and interests in these characters, so that boys and girls get used to seeing girls doing interesting and challenging things.   

Abigail Disney, on men becoming more involved in rape prevention
[responding to how members of the audience can get involved with the Women and Girls Lead project—an upcoming documentary series from PBS that deals with issues affecting girls and women]
Well, I guess I’ll divide the audience into women and men, and I’ll say to the women: Come! Help me. Be my sisters, and help me do this because this is really important. And for the men: Don’t be afraid. We love you; we like you; we want you. We asked Matt Damon to narrate the Bosnia episode, and the Bosnia episode is a lot about sexual violence. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but here’s why we did it: I’ve spent my adult life working on these issues, and I’ve heard a lot of women, and the sound of what it is when they’re indignant about a woman being raped. And I don’t hear that from men. I would like to hear a man’s voice in indignation around the rape of women. If you think about social movements through history, you know, nothing has ever really shifted until people have involved themselves in movements that they had nothing to gain by succeeding—white people in the North going to the South to help in the civil rights movements; yuppies in California protesting for the end of apartheid. We need you guys. You are really important. Because the fact is that women are still being raped in the United States and sexually harassed in the United States in the same numbers they were being raped in the 1960s and 70s. Until you guys come with us, the world just won’t shift.

Kickstarter Helps Young Filmmakers Bypass Studio System

We received the following press release in our e-mail inbox. Please consider supporting Michek’s film. Fundraising officially ends Saturday, August 6, 2011.
 
Independent filmmaker Alyssa Michek uses kickstarter.com to fund It’s All In My Head, a short film about breaking-up told from the woman’s perspective.

Silver Spring, MD — Independent filmmaker Alyssa Michek must raise $5000 online to fund her short film “It’s All In My Head” in 30 days or less. The 25-year-old filmmaker is directing and producing her first professional short film. With experience directing student films, “It’s All In My Head” is her most ambitious yet, spanning five locations, shot on 16mm color film, with a professional cast and crew. Without a website like kickstarter.com Michek’s film would most likely never be made.

Kickstarter is a new way of funding creative projects “powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.” Instead of pitching to a studio, creators pitch to the kickstarter community, then use their network of supporters and self-promote in order to fund creative projects. In the first week Michek raised almost $1,500 and with 15 days left to go she is almost halfway there.

To promote “It’s All In My Head,” Michek, a DC native, is offering DC area residents access to special events. For a pledge of $150 spend a day on set. For $200 be an extra in the film with an open bar. With a pledge of $250 the backer and a guest will be VIPs at the film premiere.

“I’m a feminist,” says Michek, “and I think female perspectives are often under-represented in mainstream films.” Her film will center a woman’s story and encourage male viewers to identify with her, as the only fully realized character. “I wanted to come at this with a female perspective, but also have it be universal.”

“It’s All In My Head” is a 20-minute short film exploring the break-up script and how our culture shapes our concept of love. The film follows Alex and Michelle through their break-up showing the highlights of their relationship in flashbacks with voice-over from Michelle commenting on the relationship. Michelle criticizes the typical break-up speech and its excuses. She imagines herself in classic films that have shaped her concept of love and dreams a happy ending interspersed with contemporary film references. When she comes back to reality she finds that life is not like the movies.

“I do think our expectations and our concept of relationships are very much shaped by pop culture” says Michek “and most movies create unreal expectations.” With her film she hopes to combat and comment on these expectations and the culture that creates them.

Fundraising for “It’s All In My Head” ends August 6, 2011. If Michek does not meet her goal, she gets nothing. If all goes as planned, the film will shoot at the end of August and beginning of September and should be finished by the end of the year. Those interested in supporting the project should visit http://kck.st/nEZV4W to learn more.

For more information about this project or to schedule an interview with Alyssa Michek, contact her at alyssamichek@gmail.com or at itsallinmyheadfilm@gmail.com.

Kickstarter site: http://kck.st/nEZV4W

Quote of the Day: Judith Mayne

Directed by Dorothy Arzner by Judith Mayne
 
We have yet to talk about Dorothy Arzner at Bitch Flicks. But her work demands attention in any discussions of feminist film theory. While I haven’t seen all the films she directed, I can say with confidence that most, if not all of them, pass the Bechdel Test. (Which has become somewhat of a feat these days, with the misogynistic drivel churned out and sponsored by The Never Ending Hollywood Backlash From Hell.)
To give myself a reprieve from summer blockbuster depression, I’ve been rereading Judith Mayne’s book, Directed by Dorothy Arzner, and I’m especially captivated by her take on Dance, Girl, Dance. Of course, that famous speech in the film always gives me chills. But first, a little background: 
In the early to mid-1970s, when Arzner’s work was brought to the attention of feminists, her films were deemed particularly important for their criticism of Hollywood films “from within.” Pam Cook and Claire Johnston described how the universe of the male was “made strange” in Arzner’s films, how women’s “rewriting” of male discourse subverted the established conventions of Hollywood. At the time Cook and Johnston’s essays were published, film theory was very much preoccupied with the notion of “making strange,” with the possibilities of a Hollywood film that critiqued itself and its own assumptions. Cook and Johnston brought a strong theoretical approach to Arzner’s work, while other critics of the era were simply delighted to find a woman director among all of the men in Hollywood film history.

Mayne points out that Dance, Girl, Dance is probably Arzner’s most well-known film and is a staple in feminist film theory. She summarizes the plot as follows:
The plot of Dance, Girl, Dance concerns the differing paths to success for Bubbles (Lucille Ball) and Judy (Maureen O’Hara), both members of a dance troupe led by Madame Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya). The dance troupe performs vaudeville-style numbers in bars and nightclubs, much to the chagrin of Basilova (who bemoans her status as a “flesh peddler”). Bubbles has “oomph,” a kind of dancer’s version of “it,” and eventually she leaves the troupe and enthusiastically pursues a career as “Tiger Lily White.” Judy, in contrast, is a serious student of ballet, and the protegee of Basilova. However, it is Bubbles who gets the jobs, and she arranges for Judy to be hired as her “stooge,” i.e., as a classical dancer who performs in the middle of Bubble’s act, and thus primes the audience to demand more of Bubbles.

Toward the end of the film, Judy stands on stage and refuses her role as stooge. She defiantly crosses her arms and moves closer to the audience, and she gives the spectators a piece of her mind: 

Go ahead and stare. I’m not ashamed. Go on. Laugh! Get your money’s worth. Nobody’s going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so’s you can look your fifty cents worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here–with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of? And we know it’s the thing of the moment for the dress suits to come and laugh at us too. We’d laugh right back at the lot of you, only we’re paid to let you sit there and roll your eyes and make your screamingly clever remarks. What’s it for? So’s you can go home when the show’s over and strut before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see through you just like we do. 

I love that moment. I love it because she critiques the men who look at women as sexual objects, and the women who do so as well. I love it because Dorothy Arzner directed this film in 1940. It’s now 2011. And I can’t even imagine a speech like this existing in a current Hollywood film. (If you can think of any that make such astute observations about sexual politics, please, clue me in.)
Mayne further complicates this famous scene in her analysis of it, so I’ll leave you with that, and the always impossible-to-answer questions surrounding self-objectification as either a form of empowerment for women, or as nothing more than internalized patriarchal exploitation. Or neither. Or both. Hmmmm:

I see Judy’s confrontation less as a challenge to the very notion of woman as object of spectacle than as the creation of another kind of performance. Oftentimes the scene is discussed as if the audience were exclusively male, which it is not, even though Judy addresses men in her speech. When the camera pans the reactions of the audience to Judy’s speech, the responses of women are quite clearly visible. Women squirm uncomfortably in their seats just as surely as men do, and when release occurs in the form of applause, it is a woman–Steven Adams’s trusty secretary–who initiates it. Arzner’s view of performance and her view of the relationship between subject and object were never absolute; women may be objectified through performance, but they are also empowered; men may consume women through the look, but women also watch and take pleasure in the spectacle of other women’s performance.

Thoughts?

Documentary Review: !Women Art Revolution

So why don’t we know more women in art? It’s a case of omission, of erasing women and their contributions out of history. A stunning film 40 years in the making, “!Women Art Revolution” seeks to fill that gap by combining “intimate” interviews along with visceral visual images of paintings, performance art, installation art, murals and photography.

Let’s play a game.  Name three artists…go on.  Now who comes to mind?  Picasso?  Monet?  Michelangelo?  Now what if I asked you to name three female artists.  You probably would think of Frida Kahlo or Georgia O’Keefe.  But what about other women like Judy Chicago, Kathe Kollwitz, Ana Mendieta or Miranda July?  This very query of naming a mere three female artists, opens the compelling documentary !Women Art Revolution.  Sadly, the people questioned, visitors exiting museums in NYC and San Francisco, could only think of Frida Kahlo.  If you had asked those same people to name male artists, or just stated “artists” without indicating gender, I’m sure they would have rattled off a lengthy list…of men.
So why don’t we know more women in art?  It’s a case of omission, of erasing women and their contributions out of history.  A stunning film 40 years in the making, !Women Art Revolution seeks to fill that gap by combining “intimate” interviews along with visceral visual images of paintings, performance art, installation art, murals and photography. Director Lynn Hershman Leeson, a performance artist and filmmaker, began interviewing people, friends and colleagues who visited her apartment in the 1970s, continuing to interview artists, curators, historians, critics and professors for the next 4 decades.  She narrates the film, becoming its conscience, observer and participant.  Chronicling 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, the documentary depicts how women activists have fought to express their vision and have their voices heard in the art scene.
Difficult to synopsize, the film encompasses a vast breadth of work and activism.  In the 70s, female artists created their own spaces and galleries such as WomanHouse, a feminist installation founded by installation artist Judy Chicago and abstract painter Miriam Schapiro at CalArts in Los Angeles, and A.I.R., an all-female gallery in NYC.  Some of the pieces that stand out for me include Yoko Ono’s performance art “Cut Piece,” which consisted of her kneeling while spectators came up to her and snipped pieces of her clothing off with scissors; Faith Ringgold’s quilts depicting African American narratives; and Martha Rosler’s video “Semiotics of the Kitchen” displaying her performance of domestic chores and questioning gender roles.
One of the artists in the film says, “Women have always been looked upon, so we looked back.”  This quote struck me.  Women have been the muses and the models, but as artists and activists, they examine those gender roles and expectations.  Feminist artists challenged norms.  They questioned the dominant narrative of gender roles that women belonged as docile wives slaving over a hot stove and that women had to conform to societal beauty standards in a heteronormative world.  Interestingly, many artists revealed their marriages suffered and dissolved as a result of their burgeoning outspokenness and activism.
Throughout the film, Hershman Leeson continually questions gender and power structures.  Ana Mendieta, a sculptor, painter, performance and video artist, created images of women in trees, mud and grass using twigs and blood.  At the age of 36, she was allegedly killed by her husband, artist Carl Andre.  Because he was such a powerful figure in the minimalist movement, no one would speak out against him.  As a result, he was acquitted.

!Women Art Revolution showcases the controversy swirling around The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago’s infamous exhibit.  A powerful feminist installation piece, it consists of a massive triangular-shaped banquet table with 39 place settings.  Each plate, utensils, chalice and placemat decorated with colors and iconography unique for the intended guests: various famous women throughout history and myth.  Chicago created a groundbreaking piece that puts women front and center, something often lacking in the media.  Apparently, The Dinner Party caused the government unease and even outrage.  Accused of being pornographic due to the butterfly and floral plates symbolizing the vulva, the U.S.House debated on whether or not it should be displayed.  Yes, because vaginas are soooo scary.  Some Representatives, all male, said it wasn’t art.  Um, who are they to determine that?!  One Congressman, a former Black Panther, defended the piece saying it was art and protected as free speech.  Sadly, the House passed a bill banning it from being exhibited (Oh that’s right, because Congress has nothing better to do! Sigh).  Luckily, when it went to the Senate, a small group of wealthy and influential women urged their Senators to drop the legislation, causing it to be dismissed.

The film covers and interviews the Guerilla Girls, an anonymous watchdog group of gorilla mask-wearing feminist activists combating sexism in the international art world.  Formed in 1985, an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art that showcased an international collection of recent artists in painting and sculpture spurred their creation.  The exhibit featured 169 artists, only 3 of whom were women.  They also looked at the collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1989 and found that only 3% of the artists in the modern wing were women and 83% of nude subjects were women.  This prompted their famous poster tagline, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”  The Guerilla Girls protest and continue to speak out, publishing report cards on gender and racial gaps in other museums, galleries and exhibits.  They force the art world to face the reality of its own discrimination.

But gender discrimination didn’t just happen to artists. Museum curators also faced disparities. Marcia Tucker, Founding Director at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, shared her personal story of wage inequity when she was a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the first woman to hold that position there. After she found out she made less than her male counterpart, she confronted the museum’s president who gave her the feeble excuse, “The budget, the budget, the budget.” To which she replied, “The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post.” While things have certainly improved, there’s still a long way to go in reducing wage gaps as women still earn far less than men today.

!Women Art Revolution easily could have become dull with dry facts or depressing due to the obstacles the female artists struggled against. Yet it pulses and throbs with fervent energy. Like a little feminist sponge, I soaked up all of the passion, activism and information.  With images of women, hearing women’s voices and a score composed by Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney guitarist and Portlandia actor, the film feels like a safe haven for feminists.  In our male-dominated media, it was inspiring to see a riveting documentary created by women and featuring women.  My only complaint of the film is that it doesn’t really follow a chronological or thematic order, making it feel a bit chaotic.  Yet it also makes it feel raw and personal.  Interestingly, Hershman Leeson, almost prophetically anticipating this, admits as much in her own chronology, comprised of various pieces knitted together “like a patchwork quilt.”  I found it refreshing that Hershman Leeson’s introspection as a documentary filmmaker leads her to question whether or not she should feature her own art in the film.  She comes to the rightful conclusion that she should as women have been omitted from art history for too long.

Hershman Leeson said she didn’t know how the film would end; she’d been waiting to see how events would unfold.  Without any more threats from douchebag legislators, The Dinner Party now permanently resides at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, founded in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum, for future generations to behold.  In 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) featured “Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” a groundbreaking exhibit showcasing feminist art from 1965 to 1980, the first exhibit of its kind.  The documentary also features young feminist artists like Alexandra Chowaniec.  One young artist recalled how her instructor asked if she had ever heard of Ana Mendieta and other artists from the 70s, as her work mirrored that of feminists 40 years earlier.  As she hadn’t, she visited the library to learn about them.  When she could find no books on women in the Feminist Art Movement, her instructor gave the young artist copies of her own books.  The artist admits that she and her generation benefit from the gains women who came before her struggled to achieve, a sentiment that too often leads many women of my generation and younger to deem feminism useless and outdated.  But nothing could be further from the truth.
In an interview with Sophia Savage, Hershman Leeson talks about the “meaning of feminism today:”

“Of course I think it has positive connotations for intelligent women and men.  But there is still an existing fear of the word itself, as well as miscommunicated baggage of what it represents.  This needs revision.  Feminism is about cultural values and equality.  The young women I am in contact with are grateful to learn about this history.  They devour the information.  It is, after all, their legacy.”

It is this legacy to future generations that means so much to Hershman Leeson.  Arising from the documentary, she started the RAW/WAR project, a virtual community allowing people to submit images of drawings, paintings, performances, dance and music, opening up the dialogue of art and gender to a global community.  Also, all of the interview transcripts and many of the videos are available online.  As to the message of the film, Hershman Leeson declares:

“As Marcia Tucker reminds us, “humor is the single most important weapon we have!” I think audiences will be inspired by the courage, sense of humor and tenaciousness of the artists who courageously and constantly reinvented themselves and in doing so dynamically revised existing exclusionary policies of their culture.”

Art questions, challenges and inspires.  While it can be beautiful and serene, it can also be disturbing and uncomfortable, unnerving the viewer, forcing the audience to look at the world around them.  The art in this documentary reveals the media’s incessant agenda of writing women out of history.  Society views women’s art, their experiences and stories, as lesser than men’s: less important, less noble, less substantial.  When I took Art History in college, I remember we only studied a handful of female artists.  The Feminist Art Movement is a chapter ripped out of history, a period most people just don’t know.  Whether you’re an art aficionado or not, you simply must see and experience this revolutionary and visionary film for yourself.  !Women Art Revolution reclaims women’s narratives and manifests a vocal group of dissenters rattling the cages of constriction and conformity, refusing to be silenced.

Trailer:
Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World.  In addition to Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly and A Safe World for Women. Megan earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She currently lives in Boston with her diva cat. She previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Bitch Flicks.