“You Are Who You Eat”: Digging in to Antonia Bird’s ‘Ravenous’

In ‘Ravenous,’ the primary meat and potatoes of the terror the audience feels isn’t provided by novel sights on the screen. While the visuals are gorgeous, its true potency comes from its sense of self-confidence. … Director Antonia Bird is unafraid of long silences; she trusts her skills to communicate plot and character visually without the need for exposition. … It makes for a moody, evocative, distinctive, and extremely memorable personal style.

Ravenous

This guest post written by Lochlan Sudarshan appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors, Part 2.


In cinema, the further back you go, the more restrictive the rules regarding what you’re allowed to show on-screen (until you hit Pre-Code Hollywood films that is). This is especially true involving subjects considered taboo, such as LGBTQ characters and graphic violence. One of the items seldom depicted in the films of the era was the ultimate taboo: cannibalism.

With two women-directed horror films released this year that feature characters who are cannibals, Raw and The Bad Batch, not to mention Hannibal which ran for a full (albeit too brief) three seasons on prime-time network television, it’s easy not to think of the subject as shocking. This wasn’t always the case.

In Ravenous, the primary meat and potatoes of the terror the audience feels isn’t provided by novel sights on the screen. While the visuals are gorgeous, its true potency comes from its sense of self-confidence.

From the very beginning, director Antonia Bird puts us right into the head of protagonist Boyd (Guy Pearce) as he sits at a table being served steak with the rest of his platoon. He appears nervous, ill-at-ease, and sick. Immediately, the film’s persistent attention to detail is on display. The flag displayed during the dinner has 28 stars on it, the correct amount given that the story takes place during the Mexican-American war. It’s a small facet, but it’s such an easy one to get wrong; noticing it makes the viewer immediately feel like the other small details of everyday life for a soldier of the period will be attended to in similar detail. For example, it was often difficult to maintain fresh meat on the battlefield, so Boyd’s apprehension at what is likely the first steak dinner he’s seen in some time already piques the audience’s interest.

He looks so uncomfortable that even a dyed-in-the-wool carnivore will find themselves feeling queasy after the lingering close-up of bloody steak overlaid with Boyd’s heavy breathing.

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We soon learn through quick, wordless cuts that Boyd survived a skirmish by feigning death on the battlefield and was transported by Mexican troops to a mass grave of his fellow soldiers. While in the pile of corpses, the blood of his commanding officer runs down into his mouth. Without a word of exposition or dialogue spoken, we understand why Boyd is so ill-at-ease. This is one of the forms the film’s primary strength of confidence takes: Bird is unafraid of long silences; she trusts her skills to communicate plot and character visually without the need for exposition.

Boyd’s commander, General Slauson (John Spencer) finds himself unable to discharge Boyd since while behind enemy lines, he snuck out of the grave and took control of an enemy command point. Despite this, Slauson is disgusted by Boyd’s cowardice on the field and assigns him to a remote fort out in the Sierra Nevadas. Throughout their conversation, again through the use of quick cuts to the flashback of Boyd on the battlefield, we see him stagger from the pile of corpses and break an enemy soldier’s neck without exerting any real force. This surreal moment keeps us on our toes for later in the film.

At the fort, Boyd is introduced to his new commanding officer, Colonel Hart (Jeffrey Jones, yes, the principal from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). Hart paints a bleak picture of the sort of life Boyd can expect here, and seems resigned to it himself. This decompression of the narrative allows the audience to settle in and get a good idea of what routine is like at the camp. Hart tells Boyd that Knox (Stephen Spinella), their doctor, used to be a vet and cautions him “don’t get sick.” Cleaves (David Arquette), the cook, is characterized as similarly incompetent, but Hart acknowledges that he can’t exactly tell Boyd not to eat. The two of them share a drink together, and once more, there isn’t anything more that needs to be said in dialogue. Their uncomfortable, long silence expresses clearly that Fort Spencer is a dumping ground for the army’s undesirables.

It isn’t long before a stranger stumbles through the snow to Fort Spencer. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle) collapses outside and the soldiers quickly take him in and warm him up in a bath. Here, Bird’s eye stands out. The scene focuses on Colqhoun and his peril of freezing to death rather than how this unexpected situation makes Boyd feel.

Ravenous

Manpain” is a topic that’s well understood in feminist spheres. When something terrible happens to the male hero’s girlfriend or wife, the narrative will often focus on how it makes him feel rather than her, the actual victim. Gender aside, part of the reason this is so prevalent is the way main characters tower above everyone else thematically in the story, even if within the actual situation, people’s attention would be elsewhere. For this reason, something like “manpain,” or call it “mainpain,” can be on display even when both characters are of the same gender: think of any movie where the main character’s police partner or superhero sidekick is injured by the antagonist; the emphasis is seldom on the victim. Like their narrative role as a whole, their suffering really only exists as a platform for us to learn about the protagonist, so the camera usually puts our eye there, even if they aren’t the one speaking.

Bird’s avoidance of this is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it allows us to immerse ourselves in the scene she sets and to find ourselves in the same headspace as the rest of the soldiers: who is Colqhoun? How did he get here? Where did he come from? Additionally, it illuminates another facet of “manpain” (or “mainpain” in this instance). Aside from it being a lazy trope to avoid giving the spotlight to women (or secondary characters), it’s got another hidden function that’s often used unconsciously by creators.

Men in film are seldom allowed to cry or feel fear for their own welfare. A man can be afraid kidnappers will harm his family or cry for a wounded or dead loved one, but when was the last time you saw an action hero get shot and then cry for his own sake because it hurt? For example, in the 1996 action movie Eraser, when Arnold Schwarzenegger pulls an I-beam out of his thigh, he grimaces in pain, but he’s not upset on his own behalf, nor is he fearful he will be outgunned by the bad guys. His sole goal is to protect Vanessa Williams’ character. Colqhoun shows this rare vulnerability during the scene where he tells the soldiers how he came to the fort. He is a survivor from a doomed expedition that set to cut through the Rockies on their journey west. Under the command of the incompetent Colonel Ives, they had to take refuge in a cave when a blizzard trapped them. As time wore on, the party resorted to cannibalism until Colqhoun fled for fear that he would be eaten next. He admits this nakedly and is forthcoming about how he felt afraid. He cries out of shame for his shameful behavior and fear of the fate he narrowly avoided. If Colqhoun’s story sounds familiar, it’s because it is based on real historical figures. Screenwriter Ted Griffin was inspired by the Donner Party and their ill-fated attempts to go west as well as Alferd Packer who went to prison for cannibalism.

Bird’s perspective as a woman has, I think, something important to do with this scene. When Colqhoun is upset about the terrible things that happened to him and cries, we’re not supposed to think he’s effeminate or unmasculine, as these acts are often coded. He’s allowed to express this vulnerability and draw our own conclusions and feel bad for him.

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When Colqhoun awakens and tells everyone how he got here, he briefly rises from the tub nude and is seen in a full shot from behind. Unlike one of Carlyle’s prior films, there isn’t any jeering from the characters in the scene and the camera itself doesn’t ask the audience to find Carlyle’s nudity inherently funny because he’s male. Unusually for film, he’s even briefly embarrassed and after he gains his bearings, he quickly dresses and moves on. Being a woman director allows Bird to sidestep the Male Gaze, nearly ubiquitous in film. Most movies operate under the unspoken assertion that the camera operates like a heterosexual man, so scenes of female nudity are coded as desirable and alluring, while male nudity is either played for laughs, like with mooning, or the audience is expected to be repulsed. The scene doesn’t read either of these ways, and sex is the furthest thing from any character’s mind during it. Due to Bird’s balanced and unbiased camera work, the audience’s focus is on Colqhoun’s story rather than his body as well.

After hearing his story, the soldiers decide to look in the cave for any more survivors.  Before heading out, however, George (Joseph Running Fox), an Ojibwe member of the fort’s staff, tells Boyd when a person consumes human flesh and blood, they turn into a Wendigo, gaining preternatural strength and healing powers. Boyd finally has a name for what happened to him on the battlefield, but like with the other scenes, he keeps his emotions to himself in order to avoid giving himself away.

Despite being the lead, Pearce has very few lines in a film that’s already light on dialogue. A great deal of his character’s reactions to the situation around him are conveyed by his uncomfortable silences and attempts to mask his reactions. Bird’s steady close-ups of Pearce do a great deal to help us understand Boyd that may have been lost if the camera work were more traditional and used a lot of medium or wide shots of an ensemble cast.

Boyd investigates the cave to look for survivors with Reich (Neal McDonough) who gives a comfortably unhinged performance. The score is incredible; the bells and gongs keep the audience feeling off-balance. When Reich goes into the cave, just like with Boyd’s distaste for steak after his traumatic experience, we feel the creeping terror with him. While the film is sometimes classified as a satire or black comedy, and Bird herself has discussed the humor in the film, I don’t personally use either style descriptor. There is a great deal of humor in the movie, but it’s organic to the situation. It’s not gallows humor for its own sake, so the label doesn’t quite fit. If forced to categorize it, I would say it’s a survival horror film.

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As with the earlier scene where Boyd talks to Slauson and we see scenes of Boyd in battle, this agonizing exploration of the cave is intercut with Colqhoun’s menacing behavior outside the cave. He has slipped his bonds and begins tutting at the men outside. Reich and Boyd discover Colqhoun has lied and has killed everyone in his wagon train himself.

They are forced to give chase after. Outside, Colqhoun has killed the rest of their group. Again, the music is very unusual for a scene like this, feeling almost whimsical. The dissonance created between playful music and gruesome imagery has the opposite of the usual effect of pairing a score to complement a scene. This makes the viewer think about each component separately, like the infamous bawdy song “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” from Game of Thrones and its accompanying scene of brutality.

This dissonance reinforces what’s going on in the scene thematically, even though it seemingly clashes with it visually. While the soldiers are frightened as Colqhoun picks them off, he’s gleeful and even silly as he chases them through the woods. Characters in the same scene can experience it two different ways, and that’s one of the takeaways in this sequence. Running over the rugged terrain, none of them look graceful or heroic, something that the film is judicious about. During the acts of violence, the camera lingers on how awkward the movements are, which gives them a great deal more dramatic heft.

Ravenous

Instead of sword fighting Colqhoun at the edge of a mountaintop or engaging in a prolonged fist fight with him in the riverbed, he surprises the soldiers with his attack. They had thought of him as a victim and for him to switch gears so abruptly causes them to falter for a moment, which is unfortunately all Colqhoun needs thanks to his Wendigo puissance. More importantly, the scene itself is not glamorous narratively: Colqhoun is killing these men who stopped him from freezing to death, so that’s how the violence is depicted as well to reinforce this theme. The same way Colqhoun was allowed to be depicted as fearful for his own safety earlier on (even if he was just acting), so too are the soldiers as he kills them. This realism does a great deal to ground the scene and the film as a whole.

On that note, the effects for peoples’ wounds in the film are all done practically, which makes a great deal of difference when it comes to visceral horror. Instead of stylized gore or special effects added in post-production, practical effects help the wounds look more like actual meat, an important motif in the story. Being forced to get up close and personal to the blood as an audience helps to immerse ourselves in the situation like the characters.

They ultimately catch up with Calqhoun, but he forces Reich off a cliff. Boyd wounds him in the shoulder, but also falls off the cliff, breaking his leg. While he struggles with his decision, ultimately, he is forced to eat Reich’s flesh in order to recuperate in time before Calqhoun finds him. The passage of this time is denoted by the changing phases of the moon and the gradual decomposition of Reich’s corpse. Once more, the scene is largely allowing the silence to highlight an uncomfortable, tense moment, letting the audience draw their own conclusions.

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Boyd gets back to Fort Spencer and attempts to explain the situation to Slauson, who does not believe him. Colqhoun himself, revealed to be Colonel Ives, is there waiting for him. Boyd tries to explain that he is in fact Colqhoun and demands Ives remove his shirt to display his wound. Ives acquiesces. But his shoulders are bare due to his recuperative powers. Again, the film is comfortable with Carlyle’s nudity and the purpose of the scene, to build tension, is never lost as he disrobes. The characters are on edge because of Boyd’s seemingly deteriorating mental state, but not because Ives is undressing in front of them.

Later, there is an unbearably tense scene where all the remaining players sit in the log cabin at the fort as a blizzard rages outside reading, playing chess, or in Boyd’s case, keeping an eye on Ives. Watching this scene, it feels like a definite tonal and thematic touchstone for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. Beyond the superficial similarities of set dressing and costume (though Tim Roth’s character in the film bears a striking resemblance to Carlyle as Colqhoun here) this scene also deals with simmering tensions and characters not being who they say they are, all having secrets to keep. Ives shutting his book causes Boyd to pounce toward him, and for Martha and Cleaves to lunge toward Boyd. With tensions running high, Ives suggests they go to bed and excuses himself outside for a cigarette. The camera lingers on Ives as he goes outside with nothing to immediately draw the eye around him as he does this. It lets the tension surrounding Boyd’s inevitable attack build.

Ives explains he, too, is aware of the legend of the Wendigo and has taken advantage of its powers. He reveals how it cured his tuberculosis and depression. He plans to take over the fort to pick off travelers once the spring thaw sets in, and would like Boyd as a fellow Wendigo to join him.

Ravenous

This scene and the surrounding themes are why I classify this as a vampire film when discussing it and recommending it to people. Though the powers possessed by the main characters don’t exactly line up, the themes dealt with and the choices Boyd has to make, whether he will kill for his own sake, are the same as the ones faced in other films like Interview with the Vampire. More than coincidence, this connection seems deliberate on Bird’s part. During the scene where Ives propositions Boyd, his coat is turned up and the light frames him so he resembles classic depictions of vampires, such as Bela Lugosi’s Dracula.

The ultimate contrast between the two Wendigos is their attitude toward their condition. Ives views it as an opportunity for what he views as the survival of the fittest; it’s an opportunity for him to use his strength to gain supremacy over others. Boyd views it as a shameful quirk of fate that he keeps being forced to use to save his own life. Though he is reluctant to murder to preserve his own life, every time up until now when he has been forced to choose between eating and dying, he has always chosen eating.

The final sequence of Ravenous is heavily predicated on things it’s far better to see firsthand, but as with the film throughout, Bird’s comfort with allowing the visuals and music to do much of the heavy lifting in scenes is clearly on display. It makes for a moody, evocative, distinctive, and extremely memorable personal style. For all the bloodstains in this movie, the one that stands out the most in the end is certainly Bird’s thumbprint.


Lochlan Sudarshan is a writer, teacher, and tabletop roleplaying enthusiast who excels at knowing the name of that one actor and talks about books, movies, and TV on Twitter. You can follow him on Twitter @Lochlan_S and on his blog.


Amy Heckerling: A Retrospective on Her Filmmaking Career and Her Perspectives on Women in Hollywood

It’s easy to accept that Heckerling’s lack of recognition is typical of the treatment of female directors, and her challenges have included obstacles unknown to many male directors, such as taking time off for children and caring for elderly parents. However, her work in less prestigious mid-budget comedies and teen films, and therefore with new and lesser known actors, has often been by choice. Her great accomplishments as a feminist director come not from breaking into the prestigious and male-dominated genres, but in how she has presented female characters and female sexuality in her films.

Clueless

This guest post written by Tim Covell appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors, Part 2.


Amy Heckerling is the director of the hit films Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Look Who’s Talking (1989), and Clueless (1995). One of the most financially successful women directors, her films have made more money than the films of acclaimed male directors like Spike Lee and John Hughes, [1] but despite financial and critical acclaim, she has received minimal recognition. Her more recent efforts, such as Vamps (2012), have been independent films. It’s easy to accept that Heckerling’s lack of recognition is typical of the treatment of women directors, and her challenges have included obstacles unknown to many male directors, such as taking time off for children and caring for elderly parents. However, her work in less prestigious mid-budget comedies and teen films, and therefore with new and lesser known actors, has often been by choice. Her great accomplishments as a feminist director come not from breaking into the prestigious and male-dominated genres, but in how she has presented female characters and female sexuality in her films.

A native New Yorker, Heckerling loved old movies as a child, especially gangster films, musicals, and comedies. She watched them on TV, and by the age of fourteen, she watched classic movies on weekends at the Museum of Modern Art (Jarecki). When a classmate declared his career goal to become a director, Heckerling realized that could be a career goal for her too, and that she was better suited to the job than he was (Jarecki).

She pursued her dream by attending New York University Film School, where she was the only student in her class making musicals (Jarecki 144). She attempted to combine 1930s comedy with mid-1970s politics, resulting in films that she describes as weird, but good enough to get her into the American Film Institute (AFI), in Los Angeles. For a New Yorker, who did not know how to drive a car, the move meant significant culture shock, but AFI treated filmmaking as a business to a much greater extent than film school, and made breaking into the industry easier. According to Heckerling, the goal of the AFI program was to produce a serious short film that would prove ability to direct serious, mature content. She rejected that approach in favor of fun films for a younger audience, and made Getting It Over With, a comic short about a woman wanting to lose her virginity before midnight on her twentieth birthday.

Heckerling graduated and ran out of money before finishing the film, and worked as an assistant editor to make enough in order to complete it (Jarecki 145-6). Next, she needed an agent, but none attended her otherwise successful screening (Jarecki 145-6). Of this and other career events, Heckerling expresses mixed feelings about Hollywood. On the one hand, she has praised the marketing ability and power of the studios: “You know, I liked that machine. It worked.” On the other hand, she called the lack of agents at her screening “Hollywood Bullshit” (Jarecki 146). In these pre-video days, she could only afford one print of the film to show potential agents, so finding an agent was a slow process. One night, while driving home from a Mean Streets / Clockwork Orange double feature, she was hit by a drunk driver and seriously injured. She lost her assistant editing job. In a scene fit for a Hollywood movie, she was worrying in her apartment, broke and carless, when the president of Universal Pictures called and asked her to make a feature film for the studio (Jarecki 147).

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Heckerling wanted to write and make a film she called a female version of Carnal Knowledge (1971), which traces the hetero relationships of two male friends, from the late 1940s through 1970. A studio executive rejected the idea of a film centered on a pair of female characters, noting that women would not be friends the way the men were (Jarecki 148-9). Heckerling reviewed scripts on hand at Universal, and eventually read a script for Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She loved it, but after reading the original book, she wanted to add some of the depth of the book to the movie adaptation (Jarecki 149). By taking active roles in writing, editing, and scoring, Heckerling established herself as an auteur director with her first film. As observed by lecturer Lesley Speed, “the most memorable” moments in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (and Clueless) are those that were not present in the source material, but added by Heckerling. Speed, Kerri VanderHoff, and other scholars have compared Fast Times at Ridgemont High to similar films, analyzed scenes such as Stacy’s first sexual experiences and Brad’s masturbation fantasy on a shot-by-shot basis, and concluded that Heckerling made great strides incorporating female perspectives into a genre dominated by male perspectives.

Heckerling’s music preferences brought her info conflict with the studio, and with this and other films, she also faced challenges with what she considered unfair treatment by censors. The editing of Fast Times at Ridgemont High was complicated by fights with her first husband; she removed the phone from the editing room, which led to him dropping by to yell at her (Jarecki).

The studio was unsure how to market the film and initially gave it a limited release. A wider release followed but with no significant marketing. Film critic Pauline Kael gave it a positive review, noting, for example, “the friendship of the two girls . . . has a lovely matter-of-factness” (Kael). Critic Roger Ebert, however, completely missed the film’s light approach to frank realism, calling it sexist and wondering “whatever happened to upbeat sex?” (Ebert). Heckerling enjoyed a brief period of what she called being a “flavor-of-the-month” director (Jarecki 153), but was pigeon-holed as a director of films about girls losing their virginity. Fast Times at Ridgemont High was briefly made into a TV series, with Heckerling writing, producing, and directing.

Her next film was Johnny Dangerously (1984), a comic spoof of gangster films. Heckerling told Slant Magazine that she chose the project because she “wanted to do something not female” and “one of the genres I’ve always loved was gangster movies.” It did not perform well in test screenings (or on release), and she jumped into the mainstream with National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985) to stave off career failure. She didn’t enjoy the work, but it was a solid commercial hit. In an interview with A.V. Club, Heckerling said, “And then I had a kid, and that was a priority.”

Look Who's Talking

A few years later, Heckerling wrote and directed Look Who’s Talking (1989), and at the time claimed her new role as a mother was the inspiration. She was involved to varying degrees with the two sequels and TV series that followed, although the sequel was requested by the studio in exchange for defending Heckerling in a plagiarism lawsuit. For Look Who’s Talking, she worked with an established actor, John Travolta, but his career was then in a slump. Just as Heckerling’s teen films were a springboard for many young actors, the high-grossing Look Who’s Talking and its sequels in 1990 and 1993 revived Travolta’s career, though later his comeback was credited to his appearance in Pulp Fiction (1994). [2]

Heckerling returned to teen comedies with Clueless (1995), based on Jane Austen’s novel Emma. It was completed under budget (a modest $12-$13 million) and just six days behind its 47-day schedule (Chaney 70). The film was a financial and critical success, and again, Heckerling received praise for her honest portrayals of female friendships and teen sexuality.

Again, the film advanced careers, particularly for actress Alicia Silverstone. A three-season TV series followed, with Heckerling doing most of the writing, and directing some episodes. A Broadway musical is currently in development. In addition to its cult following, Clueless‘ broader cultural impact included a revival of teen comedies, particularly updates of classic texts, and influences on fashion and slang.

Clueless is the only film that has led to awards for Heckerling. Her screenplay won the National Society of Film Critics Award, and placed second for the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. She was nominated for Best Screenplay for the Writers Guild of America awards. Nominations like these are typically followed by Academy Award nominations, but the Academy decided her screenplay was an adaptation, not an original work, which put it up against “serious” literary films. She also received the Franklin J. Schaffner award from AFI in 1998, and the Crystal Award from Women in Film in 1999.

Heckerling has noted that having success in Hollywood doesn’t mean making the next film is any easier. Another teen comedy, her film Loser (2000) was not a critical or financial success, and that hurt her career. In an interview, she told The Ringer, “‘A guy gets chances,” she says. But a female director? ‘It’s like, you fuck up [once] and that’s it, goodbye.'”

I Could Never Be Your Woman

I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007) is a comic take on Heckerling’s experiences in the film industry, particularly making the TV series Clueless. The film features a divorced mother producing a fading teen comedy TV series, while dealing with her daughter and their mutual attraction to the show’s youthful new star. Heckerling had difficulty getting funding, in part because of the older female lead character, played by Michelle Pfeiffer. Financial problems caused many production delays and distribution rights were sold without Heckerling’s knowledge, resulting in a straight to DVD release and obscurity. At the time, she was preoccupied looking after her parents, as her father was ill and her mother had cancer.

Her next film, Vamps (2012), opened on just one screen before going to DVD, but judging by media coverage and online reviews, it is better known than I Could Never Be Your Woman. Although Bitch Flicks‘ review of Vamps, written by Stephanie Rogers, has a pull-quote on the DVD release. This film finally allowed her to work with a friendship between adult women, as she wanted to do for her first feature. In recent years, Heckerling has directed episodes of several TV series, including Red Oaks, a streaming series for Amazon. Red Oaks is familiar territory for Heckerling: a coming-of-age comedy set in the 1980s.

Vamps

Heckerling is often asked about the challenges of being a woman director, and her responses show resignation. “You can get bitter and then you can get angry. And anger isn’t good for your work” (Chaney 262). When asked if she thinks of herself as a top female director, she notes in an interview with Charlie Rose that it’s just a job, and you find yourself wondering, ”How am I going to get up so early and live through this?” She also rejects the notion of herself as an artist, claiming it’s not applicable to her work, despite her creative output as a writer, director, editor, and producer, and the cult-like appreciation of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless. When advising newcomers to filmmaking, she largely ignores gender issues, and instead emphasizes the importance of getting your material out there, standing out, and networking in the industry.

When asked about the toxicity of “the beauty industry in Hollywood,” she reminds prospective directors that “Hollywood is the dream factory,” (and, for better or worse, you need to supply those dreams) but she doesn’t agree with how those dreams treat women, noting that “no one dreams about older women.” When asked about her thoughts on the lack of women-directed films in an interview with Women and Hollywood, Heckerling said:

“It’s a disgusting industry. I don’t know what else to say. Especially now. I can’t stomach most of the movies about women. I just saw a movie last night. I don’t want to say the name — but again with the fucking wedding and the only time women say anything is about men.”

But she’s also pragmatic. “I’m the world’s biggest Mean Streets fan, but because I did Look Who’s Talking I have this house and my daughters go to a good school” (Jarecki 155). And when asked in 2008, by a male interviewer, if she wished she had made more movies, her response has the sharp wittiness and realism so often seen in her films:

“There were missed opportunities, and there are things I wish I’d never gotten up to do. I can’t think about it, because I’m stuck inside of me. Nobody can tell the future, or how things would’ve happened. There’s no point to that. As far as, like, wishing I did a shitload more — I mean, do you wish you fucked more beautiful women? What are you gonna do?”


See also at Bitch Flicks:

Fast Times at Ridgemont High: The Confidence and Wisdom of Linda Barrett

Historical vs. Modern Abortion Narratives in Dirty Dancing and Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Clueless: Way Existential

How Vamps Showcases the Importance of Women Friendships


Sources / Recommended Reading:

Chaney, Jen. As If! The Oral History of Clueless, As told by Amy Heckerling, The Cast, and the Crew. New York: Touchstone, 2015.

Ebert, Roger. “Clueless.” Roger Ebert’s Video Companion. Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews and McMeel: 1995.

Jarecki, Nicholas. Breaking In: How 20 Film Directors Got Their Start. New York: Broadway Books, 2001.

Kael, Pauline. “Clueless.” 5001 Nights At The Movies. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1991.

Murray, Noel. “Amy Heckerling.” A. V. Club. March 20, 2008.

Nakhnikian, Elise. “Interview: Amy Heckerling on Career and Gender Politics.” Slant Magazine. May 14, 2016.

Nastasi, Alison. ““I Never Felt Embarrassed”: Amy Heckerling on Making Movies About Teens and the Future of ‘Clueless’.’’ Flavorwire. October 19, 2015.

Rose, Charlie. Amy Heckerling (video and interview transcript). November 13, 1996.

Silverstein, Melissa. “Interview with Vamps Director Amy Heckerling.” Indiewire. April 9, 2012.

Speed, Lesley. “A World Ruled by Hilarity: Gender and Low Comedy in the Films of Amy Heckerling.” Senses of Cinema. October 2002.

VanderHoff, Kerri. “Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Porky’s: Gender Perspective in the Teen Comedy.” McNair Scholars Journal 9, no. 1 (2005).

Zoladz, Lindsay. “True Confessions of a Female Director.” The Ringer. February 16, 2017.


Notes and References:

[1] According to Box Office Mojo’s List of Directors by Gross Earnings (not adjusted for inflation), in April of 2017 Heckerling ranked 179, out of 866, behind Penny Marshall and Mel Brooks, but ahead of Spike Lee and John Hughes. Among top-grossing female directors, she is in the top ten.

[2] For example, compare these comments on Travolta. From a NY Times review of Look Who’s Talking: “Mr. Travolta . . . is especially winning in a role that barely exists. He’s still an accomplished comic actor.” From a later NY Times article: “[Travolta] established himself as a genuine movie star with Saturday Night Fever in 1977, but soon went into a long artistic tailspin that took him through all those talking-baby movies (the Look Who’s Talking series), only to return with Pulp Fiction, a stunning reminder that he could act.”


Tim Covell has degrees in English Literature, Film Studies, and Canadian Studies. He studies film censorship and classification systems, which are largely about managing representations of sexuality. More at www.covell.ca.

Genres “for Men” Directed by Women

It’s pretty uncommon in Hollywood to see a movie directed by a woman as only 3.4% of all film directors are women. It’s even more uncommon to see women directing films in genres intended for a largely male audience. Granted, all movies of any genre can be and are watched and enjoyed by people of any gender. However, Hollywood tends to market certain genres towards men, and for that reason, it’s even more difficult for women directors to get in on the market.

 

This guest post written by Chelsy Ranard appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors, Part 2.


It’s pretty uncommon in Hollywood to see a movie directed by a woman as only 3.4% of all film directors are women. It’s even more uncommon to see women directing films in genres intended for a largely male audience. Granted, all movies of any genre can be and are watched and enjoyed by people of any gender. However, Hollywood tends to market certain genres towards men, and for that reason, it’s even more difficult for women directors to get in on the market. However, there is a female presence directing movies in each genre – even genres that are stereotypically considered for male audiences. Some may be surprised just how many popular movies are directed by women and marketed towards a male audience. Many female directors have created amazing, entertaining, and thought-provoking movies in the romantic comedy, independent, and drama genres through the years. But they’ve also created hugely popular movies in the sports, action, science fiction, horror, and western genres as well.

Love and Basketball smaller

Sports

Sports, in general, is a predominantly male field in many ways. From playing sports to reporting, coaching, reffing, commentating, or marketing within sports, it’s dominated by men. Many women are interested in sports but have a hard time maneuvering the industry as a woman due to sexism. Not only that, but similar to STEM industries, sports opportunities aren’t as available to young women as they are for young men. As a result, few women find themselves in this field. The sports film genre is no different as most sports movies are directed by men. However, some amazing films in the sports genre are directed by women:

  • Love & Basketball – Gina Prince-Bythewood
  • Lords of Dogtown – Catherine Hardwicke
  • Bend it like Beckham – Gurinder Chadha
  • A League of their Own – Penny Marshall

Love & Basketball may also be a love story, and Bend it like Beckham and A League of their Own may also be about women, but they are sports movies nonetheless. Films about women for women are not as unusual, but sports movies highlighting women in sports are really important to the evolution of women’s sports as well, not to mention representing women’s sports in film. Both the film industry and the sports industry have issues with gender inequality regarding representation as well as pay. All of these directors have done something really uncommon in the film industry in that they are creating films about a topic that features a huge gender gap.

Wonder Woman movie 2

Action

Explosions, chase scenes, guns, fight sequences, combat, and fast-paced conflict is what action movies are all about. There’s an existing gender trope in the film world that romance films are for women, and movies with action are for men. This trope affects how films are made, who they are marketed to, who’s cast in them, and who directs them. Women are already hired for fewer directing jobs than men, but when they are hired, it’s usually for films perceived as being feminine, i.e. romantic comedies. Action movies may be stereotypically male in how they are marketed and perceived, but these amazing action films are directed by women:

  • The Hurt Locker – Kathryn Bigelow
  • Wonder Woman — Patty Jenkins
  • Point Break — Kathryn Bigelow
  • Punisher: War Zone – Lexi Alexander

Kathyrn Bigelow has become a pretty popular name among female directors – and action directors in general. Her film The Hurt Locker won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Picture and the BAFTA Award for Best Film, and was nominated for the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Drama. She’s the first (and currently the only) woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award for Outstanding Directing, the BAFTA Award for Best Direction, and the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Director. Lexi Alexander is one of the few women of color directing action films; Gina Prince-Bythewood will be “the first Black woman to direct a superhero film” with the upcoming Silver and Black. Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, is “the highest-grossing live-action film to be directed by a woman” and “the highest-grossing film in the DC Extended Universe.” Jenkins became the highest paid woman director in history when she signed on to direct Wonder Woman 2. Bigelow, Alexander, Jenkins, and others like them making movies in this genre are breaking stereotypes and creating films filled with action for their predominantly male audiences.

Advantageous film

Sci-Fi

Science fiction films are all about far-reaching, speculative science that tends to lean futuristic. Think aliens, time travel, space, and robots. Many women are just as interested as men are in this monster of a genre. However, since gender stereotypes regarding movie genres run rampant in Hollywood, women lose out on many sci-fi directing opportunities. This is unfortunate because there are many female directors that can bring out even more beautiful, outlandish, and futuristic imagery into the sci-fi films that people of all genders love. These are a few sci-fi films directed by women:

  • The Matrix – Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski
  • Advantageous — Jennifer Phang
  • Underworld: Blood Wars – Anna Foerster
  • Deep Impact – Mimi Leder

Not only are Lana and Lilly Wachowski the directors of The Matrix movies, which are some of the most prominent sci-fi films in recent history, they are also transgender women representing an even smaller group of directors in the film industry. Sci-fi has been one of the top-grossing genres in recent years with huge blockbusters like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World raking in millions of dollars in revenue. Women, who miss opportunities to direct these films due to men being hired over them, are missing out on a huge portion of the money made in films as a result. With her upcoming adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, Ava DuVernay is the first Black woman filmmaker to direct a film with a $100 million budget. For the women making sci-fi films, they are paving the way for others to have a foot in a lucrative market predominantly made for men by men despite audiences being largely female as well.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night 5

Horror

Unlike some of the other genres mentioned, the horror genre has made a lot of headway in terms of women directing horror films. Murder, serial killers, blood, gore, suspense, terror, and mystery are not gender specific and many women love to dive into the terrifying world of horror as much, or more, than some of their male counterparts. Some popular names include:

  • Jennifer’s Body — Karyn Kusama
  • American Psycho – Mary Harron
  • The Babadook – Jennifer Kent
  • A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night – Ana Lily Amirpour

Not only are women directing more horror films, but more women are watching them as well. Some of the most well-known horror films have women directing them: Pet Semetary, Near Dark, Slumber Party MassacreCarrie (2013). With so many more options for women in this genre, it gives hope for women working towards directing movies in other male-dominated genres. The horror genre is a great example of female directors and female audiences defying their stereotypes and showing the true demographics of their chosen genre. Blood and guts don’t come with a gender qualifier.

Meeks Cutoff

Western

Cowboys, the old West, horses, and gunslingers fill the Western genre of films from Big Jake to Django Unchained. Unfortunately, women are hugely underrepresented in this genre. One of the issues with Western films is that they were more popular in the 1970s, when female directors had abysmal numbers. Interestingly, film critic Carrie Rickey points out, “The late 1960s and 1970s were a pivotal era for women directors whose films looked askance at society, social arrangements, and men.” Now that we are beginning to see more modern portrayals of Westerns, it’s still a somewhat small genre of films that women haven’t often been represented in yet. However, a few women have created films within this small and largely male genre:

  • The Ballad of Little Jo – Maggie Greenwald
  • Meek’s Cutoff – Kelly Reichardt
  • ’49-’17 – Ruth Ann Baldwin
  • Something New – Nell Shipman

None of these films are very recent. In fact, the most recent is Meek’s Cutoff from 2010 and the oldest ’49-’17 from 1917 – which is one of the first narrative-length Westerns ever directed by a woman. Regardless, these women have created films in a genre with almost no female representation at all — on-screen and off. It only takes one pioneer to take the steps needed to pave the way for others, so these women directing films in the Western genre have made it possible for other women to make Westerns in the future.


The idea of any genre being specific to one gender or another doesn’t have a ton of statistical backing, and neither does one gender’s ability to direct a movie for another gender. Both ideas lack logic, so there’s no reason for women to be denied directing roles because of a film’s perceived audience. What makes a film feminine or masculine? That question is even harder to answer when you realize that, overall, movie ticket sales are predominantly by women (52% of moviegoers in 2016). The notion that films are meant for one gender, or that films that aren’t traditionally “feminine” can’t be directed by women is widening an already problematic gender divide within directors in Hollywood.

There are many amazing women directing film and television, but not nearly enough. Luckily, the women paving the way for other female directors are fearlessly fighting their way to direct movies outside of the perceived stereotypical female genre despite it being even more competitive. Female directors are no strangers to blockbusters or huge film success. It’s just a matter of making it easier for other women to work within all genres by hiring women directors. Sports movies, action blockbusters, sci-fi, horror, and nostalgic Westerns may have perceived male audiences, but do they in reality? Women can be engineers, women can be welders, women can run businesses, women can enjoy horror, and women can direct action films. Gender tropes don’t belong in our world, and they don’t belong in our film in any capacity, either.


Chelsy Ranard is a writer from Montana who graduated with her journalism degree from the University of Montana in 2012. She is a passionate feminist, she enjoys talk radio, and is usually listening to out of date rock music. Follow her on Twitter @Chelsy5.


Vintage Viewing: Marion E. Wong, Energetic Entrepreneur

What is certain is that, while ultimately upholding the value of family and of traditional culture, ‘The Curse of Quon Gwon’ gives vivid expression to the frustrations of women within those rigid norms, doing so with a cinematic language of the female gaze that centers female perspectives.

Marion_Evelyn_Wong

Written by Brigit McCone, this post is part of Vintage Viewing, our series exploring the work of women filmmaking pioneers. It also appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors, Part 2.


When considering the ethnographic films of Zora Neale Hurston, as one of the few surviving remnants of early cinema to be directed by a woman of color, I discussed the doubly distorted image of themselves that such women confronted, in a culture without their authorship. At the same time, the article surveyed the significant numbers who were recorded as making films that have not survived, with the intersection of racism and sexism placing obstacles in their path at every stage from financing to distribution to preservation. One of the most energetic women to struggle to fully author her own uncompromising vision, the first Chinese American director, as well as among the earliest female directors, was Marion E. Wong.

Wong founded the Mandarin Film Company (the first Chinese American film company) with ambitious plans to create non-stereotypical images of Chinese Americans, assuming, perhaps naively, that the American appetite for exoticized images of East Asia would make them even more eager to see authentic content. She shared with the Oakland Tribune that she wanted to “introduce to the world Chinese motion pictures with ‘some of the customs and manners of China.’” Mandarin Film Company was practically a one-woman show, with Wong serving as screenwriter, director, supporting actress, and costume designer on their only feature film, 1916’s The Curse of Quon Gwon: Where the Far East Mingles with the West. It’s “the earliest known Chinese American feature” film and “the first and only film made by an all-Chinese cast and an all-Chinese company.” 1917’s Oakland Tribune describes Wong as “energy personified,” with “imagination, executive ability, wit and beauty.” An article in Moving Picture World indicates that Wong traveled as far as New York and China in search of distributors for her film, but none were forthcoming. The film would have likely been as lost as the 1922 film, A Woman’s Error, by pioneering African American filmmaker Tressie Souders, had not two reels of it been unearthed in a basement in 2005. Watching Wong’s film now, we can catch a glimpse of what early cinema might have been, if the viewpoints represented had been more diverse.


Curse of Quon Gwon

The Curse of Quon Gwon: Where the Far East Mingles with the West – 1916

Opening with a statue to the household god Quon Gwon (Guan Gong or “Lord Guan,” a deity based on Guan Yu, a historical general immortalized in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature). Worshiped in Chinese folk religion, popular Confucianism, Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism, Guan Gong represents the principles of loyalty and righteousness. Though the recovered reels of The Curse of Quon Gwon were lacking intertitles, they have been added to this version to enhance the viewing experience, with Guan Gong speaking the words of the Three Brothers’ Oath in the Peach Tree Garden, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in translation by Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor. We are then shown the heroine’s formal introduction to the family of her groom. Wong stretched her budget by filming with an amateur cast: the heroine was played by Wong’s sister-in-law, Violet Wong, the villainess by herself, the mother-in-law by her own mother, Chin See, and the child by her niece. However, her sets are lavish and her camera moves gently back and forth to prevent the scene from being static. In general, Wong’s shot composition and editing compare very well with the industry standard of 1916.

Mixing Western and Chinese costume, Wong raises the cultural tensions and transnational identity of Chinese Americans at the time, resisting the tendency of mainstream cinema to portray “Oriental” characters as static stereotypes, instead imagining them in a state of fluid cultural transformation. As the heroine resists her maid’s efforts to transform her hair into a traditional Chinese style, her aspirations toward Western fashion are clear. An over-the-shoulder shot of her face in the mirror encourages the audience to identify with the heroine’s gaze, one of several moments by which the film establishes an aesthetic of female gaze and subjectivity.

One of the film’s central showpieces is its depiction of a traditional Chinese wedding ceremony, complete with regalia and gifts, reflecting Wong’s desire to showcase Chinese culture to her imagined Western audience. The beauty of these scenes make it difficult to imagine that a lack of quality was the reason for her film being rejected by distributors. Perhaps its centering of a Chinese American woman’s experience was judged unrelatable to viewers, though the struggle of a restless woman to accommodate herself to the strict rules of her culture is a universal theme. The heroine struggles to walk in her high shoes and laugh with her groom at his regalia, showing their unserious attitude toward Chinese traditions, even as Wong’s film celebrates them. After the wedding, Wong utilizes dissolves to show her heroine hallucinating that she is shackled with chains, anticipating Germaine Dulac’s dramatizing of the interior perceptions of women.

When comparing with Dulac, it is worth remembering that Dulac’s revolutionary impressionist and surrealist aesthetics evolved over the course of many films, from a beginning making conventional narrative cinema. Considering how impressive the cinematic imagination of her debut is, if Marion Wong had received support and distribution, there is no telling how experimental she might have become.

Curse-of-Quon-Gwon-scene-1.5mb

After her husband’s departure, the heroine finds herself rejected and driven from the family home, following a false accusation by the villainess, played by Wong herself. She seeks to take her child with her but is prevented, despite pleading for her child to be returned. Stripped of jewelry, she seizes a knife and contemplates committing suicide to purge her dishonor, before throwing it aside and resolving to live on without shelter, friends, or support. Her befriending a lamb may represent her innocence, or the contrast between compassionate nature and cruel culture.

As the heroine wanders off, grief-stricken, across a windswept wilderness, I was reminded of chapter 28 of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, in which Jane strikes out alone and spends the night on the moors, confronting her place in the universe and testing her endurance. In depicting the heroine’s confrontation with nature, her right to be seen as a self-sufficient being and independent of her bonds with others, is affirmed. It occurred to me that I had never seen an Asian woman in an American film in this way, a different form of empowerment from martial arts (kung fu, wuxia, etc.) heroics – the right to be self-sufficient and to seek existential meaning. Zhang Ziyi’s leap from the mountain at the conclusion of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the only other example that springs to mind. In 100 years, depiction of Asian women in Hollywood has not matured in its nuance to the level that Marion Wong achieved in 1916. To celebrate the connection of Wong’s heroine with Jane Eyre’s psychological journey as rebellious woman in restrictive society, and acknowledge the Western leanings of Wong’s heroine, extracts from Jane Eyre have been used as intertitles to illustrate the heroine’s thoughts throughout the film.

As a guilt-stricken maid resolves to confess to the heroine’s husband, who has returned and is heartbroken to discover his wife banished, the villainess attempts to choke the maid into silence. Instead, the husband bursts in on them and learns the whole truth (without the original intertitles, it is impossible to determine exactly what the false accusation was, though it possibly involved the heroine’s adorable child). As her husband sets out to find her, the heroine stumbles home, weary from her wanderings. The triumphant reunion of the family, and the despairing suicide of the villainess, conclude the film.

As the heroine adopts Chinese dress, dabs her eyes sorrowfully then gazes on the idol of Guan Gong, bowing solemnly to it, before flashing forward to a scene of the happy family with an older child, the final message of the film is ambiguous. Was the heroine justly punished for her Westernized disrespect of tradition, repenting and learning better by embracing her duty to family? What is the curse of Guan Gong? In the Three Brothers’ Oath, Guan Yu vows, “If we turn aside from righteousness and forget kindliness, may Heaven and Human smite us!” Did the curse then apply to the villainess, who turned aside from righteousness by making the false accusation? Or was it the heroine who was cursed for her rebellious impulses and disrespect of tradition, but redeemed by divine mercy? Are we, finally, to see her Western attitude as transgression or simply as individuality? What is certain is that, while ultimately upholding the value of family and of traditional culture, The Curse of Quon Gwon gives vivid expression to the frustrations of women within those rigid norms, doing so with a cinematic language of the female gaze that centers female perspectives.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ5dbcFjXhQ”]


Photo of Marion E. Wong via Wikipedia in the public domain in the U.S.


 

Brigit McCone keeps trying to learn Chinese but can’t tell the tones apart, though she is happy the ‘Ireland’ is apparently written as ‘love you orchid’. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and writing posts like this one.


International Women-Directed Films at the 2017 London Feminist Film Festival

The London Feminist Film Festival is all about “celebrating international feminist films past and present.” It “will provide a safe space to explore, celebrate, organise, and inspire.” Now in its fifth year, the festival will run from August 17-20.

The London Feminist Film Festival is all about “celebrating international feminist films past and present.” It “will provide a safe space to explore, celebrate, organise, and inspire.” Now in its fifth year, the festival will run from August 17-20. Below is the schedule and the films and panels featured.

Here is the 2017 London Feminist Film Festival’s trailer:

 


THURSDAY, 17 AUGUST | 6:00 pm

Talk Back Out Loud + panel discussion with Kaori Sakagami (director), Rhodessa Jones (protagonist of the film and acclaimed theatre director & performer), and Naima Sakande (Programme Lead, Young Women’s Work, Leap Confronting Conflict). Chaired by Marianna Tortell (CEO, Domestic Violence Intervention Project).

 

Talk Back Out Loud

Talk Back Out Loud EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Director: Kaori Sakagami / 2014 / USA & Japan / Rating: U / 119 mins

“The Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women, an all-women theatre group originating in San Francisco, produces work by and for women who are HIV-positive and/or have experiences of being incarcerated in the US prison system. The women in the theatre group are often marginalised and silenced by and within the prison system, health services and the art world; through the Medea Project led by Rhodessa Jones, they claim and celebrate their own identities, space and survival. This film challenges the othering of women who have been diagnosed as HIV-positive and/or criminalised by white patriarchal institutions and communities.”


FRIDAY, 18 AUGUST | 6:00 pm

INDIAN WOMEN CLAIMING SPACES + panel discussion with Geetha J (director, Akam), Vaishnavi Sundar (director, Aage Jake Left), Manuela Bastian (director, Where to, Miss?), and Viji Rajagopalan (Domestic Violence Intervention Project).

 

Akam short film

Akam (Inside) UK PREMIERE
Director: Geetha J / 2007 / India / Rating: U / 12 mins / English and Malayalam with subtitles

“A visual poem, an intergenerational portrait of three women. The focus is on the akam – the inside or the domestic space.”

 

Go Ahead and Take Left

Aage Jake Left (Go Ahead and Take Left)
Director: Vaishnavi Sundar / 2017 / India / Rating: U / 5 mins / Hindi with subtitles

“Anju is a traffic constable in the north-eastern state of Sikkim, where women have more freedoms than those in many parts of India.”

 

Where To Miss

Where to, Miss?
Director: Manuela Bastian / 2015 / Germany / Rating: 12 / 83 mins / Hindi with subtitles

“Devki’s biggest wish is to become a taxi driver – she wants to ensure other women can travel around Delhi in safety, and would like to be financially independent. While striving for her goal, she must contend with opposition from the men in her life and the deeply-rooted traditions of society. Where to, Miss? follows the story of this courageous young woman over a period of three years, as she navigates the roles traditionally assigned to women whilst trying to maintain a sense of her own identity.”


SATURDAY, 19 AUGUST | 1:30 pm

FEMINISM AND THE ARCHIVE + panel discussion with Althea Greenan (Curator at the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths University), Samia Malik (from theWomen of Color Index reading group that explores the Women’s Art Library catalogue at Goldsmiths to visibilize WoC artists’ work) and Julia Wieger (co-director of Hauntings in the Archive! and co-founder of the Secretariat for Ghosts, Archival Politics and Gaps (SKGAL), at the VBKÖ).

“We will screen the European premiere of feature documentary Hauntings in the Archive! This will be followed by a short talk by Selina Robertson on her research with the Rio Cinema’s 1980s–1990s feminist film curation archive.”

 

Hauntings in the Archive

Spuken im Archiv (Hauntings in the Archive!)  EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Directors: Nina Hoechtl and Julia Wieger / 2017 / Austria / Rating: 12 / 72 mins / English and German with subtitles

Hauntings in the Archive! reflects on and exposes the his/herstory/ies of the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ) through its century-old archive of letters, photos, catalogues and thousands of other documents. The Secretariat for Ghosts, Archive Politics and Gaps curates the material to conjure up the spectres of the multiple lives of the VBKÖ that meet and share the scene in the film: ghosts of national socialism encounter colonial fantasies and old and new feminist agencies.”


SATURDAY 19 AUGUST 3.30 pm

VISIBILITY + panel discussion with Clare Unsworth (Director of Shhh!), Leah Thorn (Spoken Word Poet whose poem is featured in Shhh!), Victoria Bridges (Program Director – Global Girl Media), Monique Washington (co-director of Brexit Unveiled), Aisha Clarke (co-director of Brexit Unveiled), Holly Bourdillon (co-director of 1 in 5) and Hannah McMeeking (co-director of 1 in 5). Chaired by Jacquelyn Guderley (Founder of Salomé and co-founder of Stemmettes).

“This session of short films explores ways of navigating (in)visibility.”

 

One in Five

One in Five
Directors: Holly Bourdillon and Hannah McMeeking / 2007 / UK / Rating: PG / 12 mins

“Two feminist film students research the lack of women in the film industry to find out what is stopping women from succeeding.”

 

Brexit Unveiled
Directors: Aliyah Bensouda, Aisha Clarke, Ruth Egagha, Violet Marcenkova, Jorja Oladiran, Poppy Sharples, Lily Barnett, and Monique Washington / 2016 / UK / Rating: PG / 4 mins

“Examining the increased levels of violence that Muslim women have faced since the Brexit vote.”

 

Shhh

Shhh!
Director: Clare Unsworth / 2016 / UK / Rating: PG / 4 mins

“A lyrical, physical expression of a powerful poem by Leah Thorn about the systematic silencing of women – and about resistance to that silencing.”

 

Cycologic

Cycologic UK PREMIERE
Directors: Emilia Stålhammar, Veronica Pålsson, and Elsa Löwdin / 2016 / Sweden / Rating: U / 15 mins

“The traffic in Kampala, Uganda can be chaotic and dangerous. This multi-award-winning short follows urban planner Amanda Ngabirano’s campaign for a cycling lane in her city, plus other women cyclists who negotiate the restrictions imposed on women by society.”

 

Mrs Somerville Monument

Mrs Somerville’s Monument
Directors: Rebecca Hurwitz and Liz Liste / 2017 / UK / Rating: PG / 7 mins

“This animated short asks why so few women have been awarded a science Nobel Prize.”

 

Women Speak Out Mena

Women Speak Out! Mena
Director: Women’s Resource Centre / 2016 / UK / Rating: PG / 5 mins

“Mena speaks about her experiences of racism.”

 

More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters

More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters
Director: Kelly Gallagher / 2016 / USA / Rating: U / 6 mins

“A shimmering, poetic ode to the activist Lucy Parsons. Animation illuminates Lucy’s fierce battles against injustice, from her birth on a Texas plantation, to Chicago and beyond.”


SATURDAY, 19 AUGUST | 8.30 pm | @ BFI Southbank

40th ANNIVERSARY SCREENING FEMINIST CLASSIC: The Sealed Soil + Skype Q&A with director Marva Nabili, hosted by BAFTA-nominated film producer Elhum Shakerifar.

Sealed Soil

Khake Sar Beh Morh (The Sealed Soil)

Director: Marva Nabili / 1977 / Iran / Rating: PG / 90 mins / Persian with subtitles

“Eighteen-year-old Rooy-Bekheir rejects suitor after suitor as she struggles for independence and identity in her southern Iranian village. The Sealed Soil, the first independent feature by an Iranian woman director, was shot clandestinely before being smuggled out of pre-revolution Iran for post-production. It achieved international success, including winning Most Outstanding Film of the Year at the 1977 London Film Festival, but has never been shown in Iran. The beautifully shot film has been compared stylistically to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman. This is a rare chance to see a feminist classic on the director’s own 16mm print.”


SUNDAY 20 AUGUST | 1:30 pm 

VAWG: RESISTANCE & SURVIVAL + panel discussion with Katja Berls (director, Outside Peace, Inside War), Dorett Jones (director, Nothing About Us Without Us), & others tbc, chaired by Camille Kumar (Women & Girls Network).

“This session will explore and celebrate women’s global resistance to violence against women and girls (VAWG) through 3 films that challenge the notions that there is one right way to respond to VAWG and that there is one kind of survivor.”

 

Women of Freedom

Nesaa Alhoria (Women of Freedom) EUROPEAN PREMIERE
Director: Abeer Zeibak Haddad / 2017 / Palestine and Israel / Rating: 15 / 58 mins / Arabic and Hebrew with subtitles

“This film tells the stories of women murdered in the name of ‘honour’ within Arab and Palestinian communities in Palestine and Israel, focusing on the social and political contexts in which the women were killed. The director travels through Palestine and Israel collecting testimonies from survivors and perpetrators, and giving voice to murdered women, while drawing on her own experiences. Women of Freedom encourages discussion, reflection and action on an issue that is not limited to one community, religion or country.”

[Trigger warning: images of violence.]

 

aussen-frieden-innen-krieg1

Außen Frieden, Innen Krieg (Outside Peace, Inside War) WORLD PREMIERE
Director: Katja Berls / 2017 / Germany / Rating: 15 / 29 mins / German with subtitles

“More than 70 years after the end of WW2, Hilde and her surviving sister speak about their experiences of sexual and physical violence perpetrated against them and their sisters by soldiers during the war. This film speaks about and to the violence and trauma perpetrated against women and girls in war and crisis zones around the world, both past and present, and its impact on women’s lives.”

[Trigger warning: discussions of violence.]

 

nothing-about-us-without-us

Nothing About Us Without Us
Director: Dorett Jones / 2016 / UK / Rating: PG / 12 mins / English and Urdu with subtitles

“This short film captures black women’s resistance to government cuts that threaten vital VAWG services for and by black and minoritised women. It follows women from Apna Haq, a black women’s organisation from Rotherham, who travel to London to march with other women and hand in a petition to Downing Street to protest against the continued closure of black women’s organisations, which threatens women’s lives.”


SUNDAY 20 AUGUST | 4:00 pm

ASPIRE / INSPIRE + panel discussion with Terry Wragg (Leeds Animation Workshop), Chi Onwurah MP (Women’s Engineering Society), & others tbc.

“Inspirational women forging a way in male-dominated professions.”

 

Did I Say Hairdressing? I Meant Astrophysics
Director: Leeds Animation Workshop (a women’s collective) / 1998 / UK / Rating: U / 14 mins

“A modernised fairytale animation, investigating why women are under-represented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). The film uses humour to counter the subtle and not-so-subtle gender typecasting that often prevails, from babyhood right up to professional level.”

 

Ouaga Girls

Ouaga Girls
Director: Theresa Traore Dahlberg / 2017 / Sweden, France, Burkina Faso and Qatar / Rating: 12 / 83 mins / French and Moré with subtitles

“We follow a group of young women who are training to be car mechanics in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, in this highly enjoyable film about life choices, sisterhood and the endeavour to find your own way. The young women are at a crucial point in life when their hopes, dreams and courage are confronted against society’s expectations of what a woman should be. Dahlberg’s short Taxi Sister was a big hit at LFFF2012, and it’s great to welcome her back to LFFF with her debut feature film. This is a coming-of-age story with much warmth, laughs, heartbreak and depth.”


To purchase tickets and for more information, please visit London Feminist Film Festival’s website. All screenings are at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, except for LFFF’s Feminist Classic screening of The Sealed Soil, which is at BFI Southbank on 19 August. All film and panel descriptions are courtesy of London Feminist Film Festival. 


‘Busted on Brigham Lane’: A Woman-Directed Short Film about a Young Woman’s Reconciliation with Her Father

“When Momo spots her estranged father on the subway, she’s determined to reconcile their relationship in time for her 18th birthday party, despite her sister’s misgivings. Will the family be able to reconnect, or will Pop let Momo down once again?”

Busted on Brigham Lane

“When Momo spots her estranged father on the subway, she’s determined to reconcile their relationship in time for her 18th birthday party, despite her sister’s misgivings. Will the family be able to reconnect, or will Pop let Momo down once again?”

Busted on Brigham Lane is a short film directed by Talibah Newman, which she made at Columbia University. The principal cast includes Susan Heyward (Vinyl, Powers), Rob Morgan (Daredevil, Stranger Things), and Pernell Walker (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt).



“Born in Dallas, Talibah Newman first came to New York City as a freshman attending Columbia University. After receiving her bachelor’s in Film and Creative Writing, Talibah braved New York City and landed several internships and production jobs in her field with companies such as Ted Hope’s This is That Production Company, Jonathan Demme’s Clinica Estetico, and Malcolm Lee’s Blackmaled Productions. As an M.F.A. student, Talibah sought to tell stories of familial relationships, precocious children, single character journeys into recreating identity, obstructing prejudice, and the complicated mosaic of spirituality and faith.

“Talibah is the 2012 Directors Guild of America winner in the African American Category for her film Busted on Brigham Lane, which was licensed to HBO for exhibition in 2012. HBO also licensed Talibah’s Sweet Honey Chile’, which also won the Martha’s Vineyard Short Film Award Competition and was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival, the American Black Film Festival, and the Cannes Film Festival, among others. She’s also produced two short webseries, Famous Farrah and First Dates. Talibah is currently securing financing for her debut feature film and working on an original television pilot.”

You can follow Talibah Newman on Twitter @TalibahLNewman. Filmmaker bio and film description courtesy of Film School Shorts.


ABOUT FILM SCHOOL SHORTS AND KQED

Film School Shorts is a national half-hour weekly series that showcases short student films from across the country. Each week, viewers can watch well-crafted films with high production values, strong dialogue and riveting drama. Grouped together around a central theme or topic, and featuring production values that rival their indie film counterparts, KQED is proud to present award winning entertainment to a national audience. Featured are the best short films from major institutions like NYU, Columbia University, UCLA, USC and University of Texas that have wowed audiences at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Telluride and SXSW.

KQED serves the people of Northern California with a public-supported alternative to commercial media. An NPR and PBS affiliate based in San Francisco, KQED is home to one of the most listened-to public radio stations in the nation, one of the highest-rated public television services and an award-winning education program helping students and educators thrive in 21st-century classrooms. A trusted news source and leader and innovator in interactive technology, KQED takes people of all ages on journeys of exploration — exposing them to new people, places and ideas.


‘The First Date’: A Woman-Directed Short Film about LGBTQ Dating

“Amanda recently went on a blind date with Kelly, the perfect woman. Unfortunately, their romantic encounter didn’t go so well. Amanda retreats to her work bathroom to vent to her friend Jill, but both are in for a shock when they find out there’s someone else there hanging onto their every word.”

The First Date

“Amanda recently went on a blind date with Kelly, the perfect woman. Unfortunately, their romantic encounter didn’t go so well. Amanda retreats to her work bathroom to vent to her friend Jill, but both are in for a shock when they find out there’s someone else there hanging onto their every word.”

The First Date is a short film directed by Janella Lacson as part of the OutSet Film Mentoring Program with Outfest. The principal cast features Sonal Shah, Natalie Dreyfuss, and Kate Miller.


https://youtu.be/vRhQmvM_8WA


Janella Honorio Lacson always had a growing passion for cinema and the art of filmmaking, leading her to participate in art and theater-related classes. Having several self-published novels, screenplays, and short-films under her belt well before her 19th birthday, Janella’s strongest desire was to be a screenwriter and director. Her first short film The First Date, was produced in March 2012 with the help of LifeWorks and Outfest Film Festival while Janella was a student at California State University, Northridge. The First Date first screened at Fusion Film Festival (Los Angeles), OutFest Film Festival (Los Angeles), and NewFest Film Fesival (New York).

“Janella recently completed her BFA at Tisch School of Arts at New York University.”

You can follow Janella Lacson on Twitter @RELACSONME. Filmmaker bio and film description courtesy of Film School Shorts.


ABOUT FILM SCHOOL SHORTS AND KQED

Film School Shorts is a national half-hour weekly series that showcases short student films from across the country. Each week, viewers can watch well-crafted films with high production values, strong dialogue and riveting drama. Grouped together around a central theme or topic, and featuring production values that rival their indie film counterparts, KQED is proud to present award winning entertainment to a national audience. Featured are the best short films from major institutions like NYU, Columbia University, UCLA, USC and University of Texas that have wowed audiences at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Telluride and SXSW.

KQED serves the people of Northern California with a public-supported alternative to commercial media. An NPR and PBS affiliate based in San Francisco, KQED is home to one of the most listened-to public radio stations in the nation, one of the highest-rated public television services and an award-winning education program helping students and educators thrive in 21st-century classrooms. A trusted news source and leader and innovator in interactive technology, KQED takes people of all ages on journeys of exploration — exposing them to new people, places and ideas.


‘The Girl Down Loch Änzi’ and Our Slippery Relationship with Ghosts

‘The Girl Down Loch Änzi,’ which had its North American premiere at the 2017 Hot Docs film festival, is a ghost story. Laura lives on a Swiss farm that borders the fabled Änziloch – a deep ravine that, legend has it, is home to the ghost of a woman cast out from the village several centuries before, and either left to die or imprisoned below. …An unusually stylish documentary, with beautifully-composed shots and scenes that play out with a feature film’s attention to blocking…

loch anzi 2

Written by Katherine Murray.


The Girl Down Loch Änzi, which had its North American premiere at the 2017 Hot Docs film festival, is a ghost story. The film’s central character, Laura, lives on a Swiss farm that borders the fabled Änziloch – a deep ravine that, legend has it, is home to the ghost of a woman cast out from the village several centuries before, and either left to die or imprisoned below. As the film goes on though, there is a gathering sense that its real subject is the women who disappear, or leave, or are cast out in general for reasons that can’t be spoken.

Most of the film’s action focuses on a summer that Laura spends on the farm and one week in particular that she spends with a village boy, Thom. Their conversation often turns to the ghost of the Änziloch; they speculate about what this woman did to deserve being trapped in the ravine. In the version of the legend Laura is familiar with, the woman got into a fight with her father and accidentally killed him, at which point she either jumped, or was thrown by a storm or by God, into the ravine. Some of the neighbors speculate that the woman was pregnant as well but, as Laura says, everyone has their own version of the story, and it’s hard to say what is the truth.

The farm itself is a site of conflicting narratives, some of which are unsettling. The buildings have fallen into disrepair and the animals live in what used to be Laura’s family home, meaning that, when she takes Thom on a tour, they walk down a hallway and open what looks like a bedroom door to a room full of birds who are viciously trying to mate with each other. The flapping and screeching that follows is either funny or disquieting or, maybe more accurately, both. Similarly, there’s a very long sequence near the start of the film – gruesome enough that Hot Docs posted a warning for incoming viewers – where one of the rabbits that lives on the farm, whom Laura was petting a few minutes before, is killed and butchered in front of her. Her request to keep the rabbit’s fur begins a very conflicted subplot about the small pleasures she’s able to find and protect for herself.

That’s not to say that Laura seems unhappy on the farm – just that the overall depiction of farm-life isn’t especially light-hearted. There is a darkness to the lens writer/director Alice Schmid turns on this story that often hovers around the edges, unspoken and just out of sight.

The same oblique sense of darkness came out in the Q&A after the screening I attended, in which Schmid explained that another character in the film, an elderly nun who was rumored to have gone into the Änziloch before joining the convent, wouldn’t say on camera why she’d left. In a similar vein, Schmid, who left Switzerland as a young woman and didn’t return until she was an accomplished filmmaker in her 60s, described her homecoming by saying, “I was surprised. Everyone was glad to see me. No one asked why I left. You don’t talk about these things.”

There is a persistent sense in The Girl Down Loch Änzi that the ghost of the Änziloch is made of these very same things.

The Girl Down Loch Anzi

The other interesting tension in the film, which also came up during the Q&A, is its complex relationship with factuality. Every documentary has to make some kind of peace with the idea that it isn’t possible to show the world exactly as it is. By filming a thing, by observing it, by cutting the footage together to tell a story, you’re always imposing a perspective on the events and, usually, you influence what happens. The filmmakers working on The Girl Down Loch Änzi influenced events a lot.

One of the most important details is that Thom, the boy who comes to work on the farm for a week, has come mostly in response to a casting call. As Schmid – who readily and openly describes the film as partly fiction – explained during the Q&A, she was looking for a character who could serve as a surrogate for the audience, as an outsider, and also offer up a worldview that was different from Laura’s, so that Laura would have someone interesting to talk to. Although there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that approach, it’s worth noting that the film, by itself, makes it appear that Thom is there just by coincidence. It also develops a narrative that’s slightly unflattering to Thom, in which he and Laura have a budding romance that he then abandons. It’s hard to know whether he or Laura would have been interested in each other at all if they weren’t making a movie.

Similarly, it’s hard to know whether Laura’s parents would have let her trek into the Änziloch alone – which she eventually does – if she hadn’t had a film crew watching over her.

The Girl Down Loch Änzi is an unusually stylish documentary, with beautifully-composed shots and scenes that play out with a feature film’s attention to blocking and, as soon as you start to reverse-engineer how it was made, you realize that it involves a lot of staging. That’s not good or bad, but it does mean that, on the spectrum between objective observation and straight-up fiction that all documentaries occupy, the film occupies a space close to reality TV shows. It’s not fake, and there’s certainly some element of truth that gives us insight into human behavior – but it’s also not a reflection of how the characters would have behaved if there wasn’t a camera crew following them.

It might be best to view the film as a collaboration between Schmid and Laura – who became friends after filming a previous documentary together – in which they craft a story that’s meaningful to both of them, but isn’t what literally happened. Kind of like the legend of the ghost.


Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.


 

‘The Fits’ and the Complicated Choreography of Adolescence

Director Anna Rose Holmer… described her film as portraying “adolescence as choreography.” I personally cannot think of a more apt way to describe the delicate movements one takes throughout the teenage years. One yearns to step into the spotlight and embrace one’s individuality while also fearing the consequences of doing so. It’s a delicate balancing act, wanting to be your own person while also wanting to fit in with everyone else.

The Fits

This guest post written by Lee Jutton originally appeared at Medium and appears here as part of our theme week on Women Directors. It is cross-posted with permission.


I saw The Fits at a screening at the Museum of Modern Art that was followed by a Q&A with director Anna Rose Holmer, who described her film as portraying “adolescence as choreography.” I personally cannot think of a more apt way to describe the delicate movements one takes throughout the teenage years. One yearns to step into the spotlight and embrace one’s individuality while also fearing the consequences of doing so. It’s a delicate balancing act, wanting to be your own person while also wanting to fit in with everyone else. Just one misstep can ripple throughout one’s adolescence, leading to bullying and ostracizing. Once you’re an adult, you can look back and almost laugh at these things, many of which, in hindsight, seem so little as to barely be memorable; but at the time, these decisions are so massive that they can occupy your entire mind.

The Fits chronicles one girl’s journey to find herself both as an individual and as a part of a group. It’s a unique take on a timeless story, infusing the usual coming-of-age drama with a hearty splash of magical realism. Here, the choreography of adolescence is both figurative and literal. Eleven-year-old Toni, played by newcomer Royalty Hightower, is a quintessential tomboy who spends most of her time at a Cincinnati community center training as a boxer alongside her supportive older brother, Jermaine. One day, Toni finds herself drawn to the award-winning drill dance team that practices in the same building. The team, known as the Lionesses, are a tight-knit clique who barely notice Toni lugging her gym bag as they stream by her in the hall, giggling and glittering. After Jermaine catches Toni dancing around on her own, he encourages her to try out for the team, and despite a hilariously awkward first attempt at the team’s signature clap back call choreography, Toni is accepted as one of the newest Lionesses. However, it becomes clear it will take more than memorizing a few steps for Toni to fit in.

The Fits 2

At one of her first rehearsals, Toni witnesses one of the Lionesses’ captains collapse with what appears to be a bout of seizures. Not too long afterward, a similar attack strikes down the team’s other captain. Soon, these episodes of hysteria, dubbed “the fits,” take the girls by storm. They start with the older, more experienced girls, but they gradually make their way down the hierarchy to the youngest and newest recruits. The community’s inability to explain why the episodes keep happening, compounded with the unpredictable way they occur, builds tension in the way of the best horror movies; after all, how can one not be terrified when it appears one doesn’t have control over one’s own body? Yet eventually the fits start to be seen less like a scary sickness and more like a desirable way to mark one’s progression into womanhood. Once one has had the fits, one has something to relate to the rest of the girls about; one truly feels like part of the team.

Having the fits bears a striking similarity to how so many girls feel about starting to menstruate; you’re afraid of it happening, this mysterious and morbid signifier of womanhood, but once it starts happening to everyone else, you can’t help but wonder when it will be your turn. (And, when it still doesn’t happen, if there’s something wrong with you.) At first, Toni is grateful to be spared from the fits, finding them frightening, but eventually, she starts to grow anxious about not having experienced this strange rite of passage. Already a girl of few words, Toni silently listens to her newfound friends gossip together about their own unique experiences with the fits  —  each attack different and yet somehow the same  —  while she is deemed unworthy of inclusion in the conversation. As one friend snaps at Toni, “You don’t know anything about it.” Toni grows increasingly distant from her old world of the boxing gym as she devotes more and more hours to perfecting the Lionesses’ choreography, yet because she has not experienced the fits, she remains on the outside of her new world looking in, a face peeking out from behind the backstage curtain. She’s stuck in the middle, with no clear place to belong.

The Fits

In the absence of the fits, Toni tries to fit in in other ways, incorporating more feminine details into her appearance. However, in the end these are all uncomfortably rejected by her. When a friend applies a temporary tattoo to Toni’s arm, she peels it off; when her nails are painted with gold glitter polish, she picks away at it until the flecks litter the floor of the boxing gym. She even goes as far as to pierce her own ears in the community center bathroom, but eventually removes the sparkling studs, citing infection. In these small ways, Toni maintains some small part of her individuality in a world that values the team over the individual; she’s trying to fit in, but her willingness to do so will only go so far.

Hightower carries The Fits on her remarkably muscular shoulders. Reliant almost entirely on movement and expression, as opposed to dialogue, her performance is remarkably natural and her struggle to fit in relatable. When one learns that Hightower is in fact an experienced dancer who has been a member of the team portraying the Lionesses since she was small, as Holmer told us during the Q&A session, one is even more in awe of the evolution she manages to portray onscreen. I was someone who was incapable of sticking to the choreography growing up, both in my childhood dances classes and in my actual life. In some ways, I was proud of my ability to march to my own oddball tune, but in many others, I longed to know what it was like to be just one of the smiling girls in the line, never missing a beat. Watching Toni walk this tightrope in The Fits hit home for me in a way that very few movies about girlhood ever do.


Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. She previously reviewed new DVD and theatrical releases as a staff writer for Just Press Play and currently reviews television shows as a staff writer for TV Fanatic. You can follow her on Medium for more film reviews and on Twitter for an excessive amount of opinions on German soccer.

Women-Directed Films at the Asian American Showcase

The lineup included The Tiger Hunter, (directed by Lena Khan)… Light (directed by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki), and Finding Kukan (directed by Robin Lung). … Depictions of stories that are absent from an experience that is generally thought to be collective is definitely the point of film festivals like the Asian American Showcase. The film offerings this year illuminated the immigrant experience as an American one. At the same time, the breadth of the experiences represented, while hardly a cohesive or even complete picture, offered nuanced views of stories never heard in textbook discussions…

Finding Kukan

This guest post written by Josephine Maria Yanasak-Leszczynski appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.


The Asian American Showcase is a series of films by Asian Americans or about the Asian American experience alongside an art exhibition. It features a wide variety of films from many viewpoints. Sponsored by the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media (FAAIM), this year’s Showcase, which took place March 31st to April 12th in Chicago, featured mostly women-directed films, plus the Sundance Film Festival audience favorite, Gookand the timely documentary on Japanese internment camps in the U.S., Resistance at Tule Lake. The lineup included The Tiger Hunter, (directed by Lena Khan), Motherland (directed by Ramona S. Diaz), Wexford Plaza (directed by Joyce Wong), Light (directed by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki), and Finding Kukan (directed by Robin Lung).

Light film

Light is an artistic interpretation of the beginning of immigrant Bessie M. Lee’s life in America. It melds dance interpretations, poetry, re-enactments, and historical documentation against the backdrop of Aoki’s innovative sound and musical design. While laboring under her master’s oppressive demands, Bessie is told girls like her are a “dime a dozen.” It was an insult that rang true; something too many women have been told, especially while labor was being extorted from them. In this case, an immigrant seemingly without connections in a new country, Bessie, like so many women before her, was working hard while being told she was worthless, as if she should be grateful for her abusive circumstances.

Lenora Lee has created several works about Chinese migrant women and their lives after coming to the United States. In other films, she uses choreography, filmography, and setting to explore the stories of women who were trafficked from China and other women’s lives. Through a combination of projection, fully produced cinema, and live dance performance that references Tai Chi, she expresses narrative emotions as well as historical occurrences. Ultimately, her work elevates and personalizes stories that in a textbook may be a footnote meant to represent the experience of a larger population of people.

Depictions of stories that are absent from an experience that is generally thought to be collective is definitely the point of film festivals like the Asian American Showcase. The film offerings this year illuminated the immigrant experience as an American one. At the same time, the breadth of the experiences represented, while hardly a cohesive or even complete picture, offered nuanced views of stories never heard in textbook discussions of the American experience.

Finding Kukan

Robin Lung chases in the footsteps of erased Hollywood innovator Li Ling-Ai in Finding Kukan. In 1941, during a war that still in many ways defines the U.S. today, a film produced and funded by an Asian American woman won an Academy Award. Li never received credit for the documentary Kukan, but Lung attempts to discover a copy of the missing story and the full extent of her involvement with the film. Along the way, Lung also attempts to revive interest in the film after a heavily damaged copy is discovered in a basement.

There are several road bumps along the way, and some brick walls. Lung expresses discontent at being unable to prove her theories throughout the documentary. The film becomes as much about her perceptions of what makes a woman a hero, as what made Li a hero. To Lung, she wants to bring to life an active, fearless woman who traveled to China during a war to bravely capture what no one else was showing. At one point, Lung expresses her desire to see Li doing the work alongside the men as an “American” perspective. Yet the film Li has produced shows the women in China supporting the country alongside the men in the way Lung longed for. Adversely, Li lives a cosmopolitan life in New York, tirelessly supporting the film at social events and garnering connections and possible supporters in any way that she can. By the end of the film, Li has taken on the role of a more traditional American producer giving life to a project more meaningful than most in Hollywood could hope for.

Lung is ultimately unsuccessful in garnering American interest in a recovered Kukan. However, after discovering a letter of frustration Li authored to one of her best friends about what would become her book on the lives of her parents, she is reinvigorated and tries a new tact. Traveling to China, Lung brings a videotape of Kukan for a special viewing to a group of historians.

This American film that once inspired interest in a horrifying conflict across the world from the U.S., takes on new importance in the People’s Republic of China. While it depicts a Nationalist China, the film contains views of attacks made by Japan from the ground, something these historians had never before seen. Ultimately, while it seems it will be years before Li receives her full due in American cinematic history, her work has taken on new importance in an unexpected way.

The Tiger Hunter

Stories told about the general perception of the American Dream all include some tie to our collective immigrant past (aside from Indigenous peoples). Rarely does a film tell that story while holding onto that past as part of the protagonist’s future. While it struggles with straddling at least two comedic audiences, The Tiger Hunter successfully presents a story about coming to the U.S. without distancing itself from its characters’ cultural background.

After years of chasing the fantasy of his father’s hyper-masculinized role in the lives of his village, Sami (Danny Pudi) attempts to impress the father of Ruby (Karen David), his childhood sweetheart. The intimidating General Iqbal (Iqbal Theba) has decided he will only arrange his daughter in marriage to someone who has become successful in the U.S. Director/co-writer Lena Khan presents a classic romantic comedy with Indian American and Indian Canadian leads. It is a hilarious look at the lengths a man will go to marry the woman of his dreams.

While the film focuses on earning the right to marry a woman, she is conspicuously absent from most of the film. At first this appears to be an oversight, or playing into so many classically male-centered heterosexual romance narratives. Pleasingly, Khan eventually turns this on its head.

After forming farcical friendships with other outcasts who fail at being “professional Americans,” Sami sets up a fake home in his boss’ abode to impress Iqbal, and by extension his daughter, who travels with him. It is when the truth comes to light (due to Sami’s inability to keep up the lie for moral reasons) that the object of his desire hits the audience with the element they may or may not have noticed was missing. “It is me you have to marry,” Ruby points out, in light of the many lies he has told to impress her father. While her father has final say, ultimately Sami and Ruby have to share a marital trust that would last them a lifetime. In the end, it is her opinion that truly matters.

The film leaves a lot of questions about the arrangement unanswered, and while the end of the film is endearing, its ambiguity leaves a lot to be desired as far as clear moral heading. Yet it is undeniable that the final confrontation between Sami and Ruby becomes a twist for the role of women in this particular narrative, whether intentional by its creators or not.

There are many more tales to be told and heard by audiences that are sorely in need of them, whether they’re aware of it or not. This year’s Asian American Showcase offered many impressive narratives told and directed by women.


Josephine Maria Yanasak-Leszczynski is a museum educator by day (and often night), and a freelance writer every other time she manages to make a deadline. She can be found on Twitter @JMYaLes.

The Fellowship of the Fling: How our Romance Film Team Came To Be

‘I’m Having an Affair With My Wife!’ is the first U.S. romantic comedy in 17 years to star a Black woman and an Asian-American man as the romantic leads. … Just let go of the fear you have of diversity, and let art move you, because the spirit of art, taken to its logical conclusion, reflects the beauty and variety of reality. Support diverse movies, listen to diverse stories, and start telling a few of your own.

Im Having an Affair with My Wife

This guest post written by Jen Finelli appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.


I know you’re lying.

But let’s back up a bit, before we get to your lies, and start at the beginning: at that boring, quiet alone place, where fingers hit keyboard and you — and I — have to decide what characters to write about in our films.

I’m Having an Affair With My Wife! is the first U.S. romantic comedy in 17 years to star a Black woman and an Asian-American man as the romantic leads. Lashonda and Sung-min are a stereotype-busting married couple who become upset at their marriage, seek out affairs online, and then accidentally end up having an affair with each other. The film’s directed and produced by the brilliant Samantha Mauney Aiken, and it stars Stacey Malone as Lashonda and William Jeon as Sung-min. It’s reached small-time internet fame with its crowdfunding campaign: the script ranked in the top 15% of scripts in the Austin Film Festival and finalized in the Beverly Hills Screenwriting Competition. Fans keep emailing to tell me how excited they are to finally see people like themselves in love.

But in the beginning, it was just me and my keyboard and the script. Just some mixed-race kid from who-knows-where who wanted to see more people who looked like my friends on the screen. In my sci-fi career, my protagonists have always been diverse or people of color because why the hell not, that’s what real-life heroes look like. But in romance, it’s personal: I’ve got to normalize mixed relationships. See, people blame our mixed race for my brother’s autism, and people told Mom not to marry my dad (who is himself mixed) because then she’d have mixed babies and OH MY GOSH wouldn’t that be difficult. Dang! We really need to see films where mixed race relationships ain’t no thang, where it’s totally normal, so we can change those kinds of perspectives. And dang, just in general, we need films where we show people of color in love! Because holy crap, did you know people of color fall in love and have babies, too?

You wouldn’t know it from Hollywood.

Im Having an Affair with My Wife

That’s the first lie, and that’s why I’m Having an Affair With My Wife! (then Seduce Me) got pitched to Samantha Aiken, on the sunny Austin, Texas day that we passed hipster graffiti and browsed the odd little art shops beyond the city’s Capitol, and ate tacos, burgers, and other unhealthy things. No big Hollywood companies, no gatekeepers, no investors, just us. After reading what brilliant Asian-American creators like WongFu Productions and actor/director Justin Chon went through, after watching what’s on the big screen, after listening to the diverse film community, it became pretty clear to me that when it comes to Big Hollywood, our kind aren’t wanted here. I never bothered to pitch anywhere else. That was my first and last pitch because Samantha gets it. I knew I could trust her with the script, that there’d be no whitewashing, no twisting of its core message, and I knew I could trust her because she had me murdered once.

Yeah, she had me killed on screen. Blood, fake tears, big-ass cameras, the works. It was just a little horror short — she’s quite ashamed of it, actually — but I got to see her directorial style, and later, got to follow her journey from big film sets like Fast and Furious 8 and Fences to tiny indie productions, documentaries, and charity films. There is nothing this woman hasn’t done, when it comes to film, and I trust her completely.

Because, see, the next lie is that you can make something diverse — and good — without input from others. It’s a lie that a mostly-white-passing writer can just sit down, spit out some stuff, and damn, it’s perfect. I write a lot about how I hate lazy writers, and how important research is even to the most fantastical story, but when it comes down to it, you need a diverse film team, not just racially or ethnically, but in experience and education.

Im Having an Affair with My Wife

So when we set out to find our leads, it became very, very important that they could provide an authentic perspective. You can hear more about our journey to find them on our casting podcast, but to summarize, we wanted two special things from our leads that we didn’t have already: one, we wanted a beautiful body-realistic woman, who understands that struggle, and we wanted the perspective of a Korean American man who can check us on the validity of our script. We got all kinds of applications from tiny, thin women and a few from non-Asian men, but for the most part our casting experience ripped open another lie, the lie people tell me every time I share studies like this.

“Oh, that study that shows Asian and Black directors are underrepresented in Hollywood? That’s just because Asian and Black people don’t want to get into film. You need to stop having numerical parity be a qualification for equality, blah blah blah, there’s no racism anymore, no of course I’m not listening to your anecdotes about people you know, la la la…” — et cetera, et cetera. It’s the same argument about women directors and producers, Asian and Black actors, etc etc. You hear Hollywood producers saying they can’t “find” actors for those kinds of roles, or that multiracial productions aren’t “marketable.” This is bullshit if you saw how Luke Cage turned out, or how Frozen’s female producer made off with all of America’s money, or how the latest Star Wars films made more money at the box office than any of the previous ones, or how Get Out is the “highest grossing debut based on an original screenplay,” or how films with diverse casts and women-led and women-written films are more successful at the box office  — do I need to keep busting your balls about market research?

Im Having an Affair with My Wife

Meanwhile, we got two hundred and seventeen applications for a tiny indie film no one had heard of at the time. One guy on our audition list offered to move across an ocean for the job. Can you imagine the number of applications the big films get for those million dollar roles? Can you even fathom that?

There are no Asian and Black actors out there, my big flat ass.

We had an incredibly hard time casting our leads because of some amazingly talented runners-up. When we finally did tell William he got the part, he yelled because all his life he’s dreamed of becoming a rom-com lead; Stacey later told us that after she got off our call she danced around her room giggling. You can’t tell me only one color of person deserves those moments. These roles didn’t get handed out for free: Stacey’s a single mother who runs her own production company, and William’s worked as a pharmacist and run a restaurant to manage the cultural pressures that say acting isn’t a real job for a guy like him. Our leads have the perspectives we asked for, and they’re fighters. They’ve each mobilized a different community that’s supported us, bringing their own fans and friends to the table, and that literally pays off in dollars. We’re proud of them, and we’re proud of the experiences they bring to the team.

Because that’s what it’s all about: if you want to make a good movie, you’re depriving yourself if you choose to cast or hire only one color of person. You’re missing out on real knowledge. On these beautiful moments where, again and again, people tell us even in pre-production we’re letting them feel seen. You might even be missing out financially, in the end, because distribution and marketing aside, Seed & Spark’s diversity incentives rock.

So stop lying. Just let go of the fear you have of diversity, and let art move you, because the spirit of art, taken to its logical conclusion, reflects the beauty and variety of reality. Support diverse movies, listen to diverse stories, and start telling a few of your own.


Jen Finelli is a world-traveling scifi author who’s swum coral reefs with sharks, done pizza on the street corner with prostitutes, gotten fired from a secret organization that was trying to control the news, discovered murals in underground urban tunnels, etc etc. She’s the writer of I’m Having an Affair With My Wife, a movie you can find at mysweetaffair.com; you can find her fiction at byjenfinelli.com, and you can follow her adventures on Twitter @petr3pan.

Adolescence and Female Friendship in Gurinder Chadha’s ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging’

After chronicling the clashes among family, football, and adolescence in ‘Bend it Like Beckham,’ Gurinder Chadha delves into similar territory with the ebullient coming-of-age tale ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging.’ An adaptation of the 1999 novel ‘Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging’ by the late Louise Rennison, the film tells the story of Georgia Nicolson, a teenager growing up in Eastbourne, England, whose entry into the world of romancing boys is as fraught and funny as you might expect.

Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging

This guest post written by Deborah Krieger appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.


After chronicling the clashes among family, football, and adolescence in Bend it Like Beckham (2002), Gurinder Chadha delves into similar territory with the ebullient coming-of-age tale Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008). An adaptation of the 1999 novel Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by the late Louise Rennison, the film tells the story of Georgia Nicolson (Georgia Groome), a teenager growing up in Eastbourne, England, whose entry into the world of romancing boys is as fraught and funny as you might expect.

Georgia falls quickly for the “sex-god” Robbie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), a new boy in town, and spends the course of the film trying to win him over. In the film’s opening scene, Georgia’s friend Jas (Eleanor Tomlinson) tells her regretfully, “Boys don’t like girls for funniness.” Taking this questionable advice to heart, Georgia attempts to make Robbie fall for her by hiding her own dramatic attitude and hapless sense of humor that separate her from the other girls in town. By the end, of course, she learns the all-too-important lesson that you don’t need supermodel looks to get a boyfriend, and that your significant other should like you for yourself and not who you pretend to be.

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging has a quite a bit in common with other movies and books in the “teen romantic comedy” genre. It is undoubtedly formulaic, and contains the expected happy ending and all-important positive message of self-confidence. Yet Georgia herself, and her attitude towards life, are what make the book and the film memorable, as Georgia is vividly crafted, full of recognizable flaws. She consistently makes the worst, most embarrassing social errors in nearly any given situation, including being caught spying on Robbie by him and his girlfriend; accidentally exposing her “knickers” to a crowd of partygoers (including Robbie) while fighting off another boy’s advances; or telling said boy that she’s a lesbian in order to avoid having to date him. For Georgia, her parents’ refusal to rent out a club for her fifteenth birthday constitutes the cruelest mistreatment, and she rather callously views her father’s job transfer to New Zealand as little more than an opportunity for her to have only one parent to supervise her misbehavior. (Of course, by the end of the film she realizes that she misses her dad and would rather have her family together.)

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Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is of opposing minds when it comes to showing how teens deal with their developing sexuality. On the one hand, many such encounters in the film are refreshingly realistic, for the most part eschewing picture-perfect kisses and idealized romantic encounters for true-to-life depictions of what being a teenager is actually like: full of awkwardness, weird mishaps, and lots of saliva. Seemingly over the course of minutes, teenage boys go from disgusting, unsanitary mysteries to objects of fledgling desire — from mere concept to attainable goal. In an early scene, Georgia’s friend Rosie (Georgia Henshaw) instructs their group of friends to sit on their hands to numb them, then to touch their chests over their clothes to simulate getting “felt up” by a boy.

On the other hand, the girls also treat sexuality in a rather cynical way: as a competition to be won, a skill to be taught and learned, and a game to be quantified and scored. Early in the film, Georgia and Jas introduce their “snogging scale,” or ten escalating forms of romantic and sexual kissing, with hand-holding while kissing at number one and “the full monty” at number ten. This scale is referenced consistently in conversations between Georgia and Jas, with them discussing their sexual experiences in terms of what number they earn on the scale. While preparing to make Robbie hers, Georgia visits the home of local boy named Peter Dyer (Liam Hess) to learn how to kiss. Peter is a local “ladies’ man” who apparently teaches snogging to all the local girls, and goes about his work with all the seriousness of a businessman. He sets a thirty-minute timer at the beginning of his lesson with Georgia, delivers questionably-sage advice, and insists that she be honest about her previous experience so that he can “evaluate” her accurately, prompting her to admit her only experience is with “the back of [her] hand.” Where other teen romances might feature the protagonist fantasizing about sharing her first-ever kiss with her crush, in the world of Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging kissing — and what comes after — is treated in a much more transactional (and perhaps more practical) way.

Another central aspect of the film’s narrative is the looming presence of beauty standards to which Georgia and her friends feel they must adhere if they have any hope of getting a boyfriend. After realizing that even to her own friends, her large nose diminishes her attractiveness, Georgia continually tries to change her looks in order to make herself more appealing to boys. While in pursuit of the kind of supermodel beauty that will undoubtedly make Robbie hers, Georgia also manages to lose some of her hair by trying to bleach it, accidentally shaves off one of her eyebrows, gives herself the appearance of having pink eye by putting Vaseline on her eyelashes, and turns her legs bright orange with self-tanner, which Robbie notices while the pair are swimming in a public pool. Yet despite Georgia’s perception of herself as unattractive and in need of beautifying, the film’s plot actually belies her claims, revealing her to be rather unreliable as a narrator. In addition to Robbie, whom Georgia wins over by the end of the film, naturally, she has to contend with two other boys who want to date her: the aforementioned Peter Dyer, he of the copious saliva, and Dave the Laugh, a boy she goes out with only to make Robbie jealous. Additionally, both Robbie and Georgia’s father comment disparagingly on her desire to keep changing herself, and that she is fine the way she is. Therefore, despite the early assertion in Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging that boys don’t like funny girls, or weird girls, or girls who don’t have the CoverGirl look, Georgia’s own travails prove otherwise, and demonstrate that she really didn’t need to change much about herself at all to get the boy she wants.

However, the film falls into some unfortunate classic teen romance narrative traps as it tries to demonstrate Georgia’s own uniqueness and establish her as the ideal girl for Robbie. Right off the bat, the film immediately draws a contrast between the inexperienced Georgia and “Slaggy Lindsay,” Robbie’s girlfriend at the beginning of the movie, and thus Georgia’s rival. (“Slaggy” basically means “slutty,” for those not of us speaking the Queen’s English.) Lindsay (Kimberley Nixon) is immediately presented as the enemy even before Robbie is in the picture, and the narrative continually backs up this assertion. Lindsay is the conventionally attractive girl who stuffs her bra and wears a thong (the horror!), while Georgia doesn’t commit those apparently unforgivable acts. Lindsay’s behavior towards Georgia over the course of the movie is presented as needlessly petty and at times cruel, even though Georgia is, admittedly, aiming for her boyfriend. Despite the fact that boyfriends can’t be stolen, it’s still a pretty selfish move on Georgia’s part, and one that manages to avoid diegetic condemnation even as many of Georgia’s sneaky and dishonest maneuvers are properly called out.

While not as prominent in the movie as in the original book, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging also keenly traces the way that girls’ friendships change during adolescence when the specter of boys — and maturity — comes into the picture. Georgia’s “ace gang” of Georgia, Jas, Rosie, and Ellen (Manjeeven Grewal) are presented as the thickest of thieves, ready to go “boy-stalking” together, take beauty quizzes, and encourage one another’s romantic adventures. Yet the very first scene actually undermines the unity of the so-called “ace gang,” demonstrating the kind of social pressures that adolescent girls must contend with, and conquer, in order to maintain their friendships. The film opens with Georgia arriving at a Halloween party dressed as a stuffed cocktail olive, making more of a statement than she’d like in a room full of sexy angels, devils, and cowgirls. We then learn that the rest of the “ace gang” was supposed to go in matching costumes, yet the other three girls have decided to join their peers in wearing sexualized and attractive costumes without telling Georgia. It is both an establishing character moment for Georgia, an olive in a room of nymphets, as well as a recognizable betrayal of friendship on the part of her friends.

Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging 2

The greatest such rift in the film, though, comes from Jas, Georgia’s conventionally pretty “best mate,” who manages to snag Robbie’s brother Tom (Sean Bourke) early on in the film with little effort. She subsequently spends much of the film disappointing Georgia and frustrating her attempts to date Robbie, culminating in a recognizable yet tragic falling-out that lasts until the end of the movie. Jas correctly points out Georgia’s “scheming and pretending” as a cause of why Robbie won’t date her, while Georgia argues (also with some legitimacy) that Jas has been a rather poor friend when it comes to keeping her secrets. Georgia also manages to dig the hole between her and Jas deeper when she criticizes what she views as Tom’s lack of ambition, as Robbie wants to be a rockstar. Jas delivers the classic fatal blow to a teenage friendship when she announces that she will be attending Lindsay’s party instead of Georgia’s, because of course they are on the same day.

Of course, the party at the end — the club party Georgia so wanted at the beginning of the film — allows everything to be solved. Jas and Georgia reconcile (as Jas secretly helped Georgia’s mother plan the whole thing, conveniently fixing their friendship), Robbie and his band headline the party set, Robbie very publicly rejects Lindsay in front of seemingly everyone in town and declares his feelings for Georgia unequivocally, and her father doesn’t end up having to move to New Zealand. Indeed, the ending of Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is the least realistic aspect of the movie — nothing in the real world resolves itself quite so easily and painlessly. Perhaps outright condemning (or at least questioning) Georgia’s perpetuation of the Taylor Swift-esque “she wears short skirts / I wear tee shirts” dynamic with Lindsay might have taken  the film all the way from cliché to truly lifelike. Still, though, it’s hard not to be pleased for Georgia and her happy ending, if only because there is so much in her (mis)adventures that are very recognizable and true.


Deborah Krieger is a senior at Swarthmore College, studying art history, film and media studies, and German. She has written for Hyperallergic, Hooligan Magazine, the Northwestern Art Review, The Stake, and Title Magazine. She also runs her own art blog, I On the Arts, and curates her life in pictures @Debonthearts on Twitter and Instagram.