Films By Women – Page 32

Travel Films Week: Let’s Keep Goin’: On Horror, Magic, Female Friendship & Power in ‘Thelma & Louise’

This guest post by Marisa Crawford previously appeared at Delirious Hem as part of their CHICK FLIX series and is cross-posted with permission.

Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise

When I think about Thelma & Louise, I have to start at the end. When Thelma says, Let’s not get caught. When she says, Let’s keep goin’. I’ve wanted to incorporate that line into a poem for years now. But I’m not sure I’ll ever find anywhere to put it because it’s just too powerful to me.

After its release in 1991, Thelma & Louise stirred up controversy mainly surrounding its connection to feminism, its use of violence, and its presentation of male characters.[i] It was criticized for its portrayal of men as one-dimensionally negative. The two heroines were accused of male bashing. It was condemned for advocating violence as a solution to women’s problems. Over twenty years later, though, I think that Thelma & Louise is most often thought of as a wild, raucous outlaws-on-the-run movie, but with girls. A buttered-popcorn, butt-kicking chick flick about female empowerment. Two strawberry blondes in a sea-foam T-bird convertible. Lite feminist fizz.[ii] It’s unthreatening. And yet, it threatens me.

I find it deeply and profoundly scary.

Chrissy and I watching it, drinking whole bottles of vodka in my studio on Mission Street. Her curly hair/my straight hair.

We called it a horror movie.

Because of the end. Because they almost made it. Because they maybe could’ve made it. Because they never could’ve made it. Because the world we live in wouldn’t have let them. And because they knew it.

Still from Thelma & Louise

There’s a trail of breadcrumbs that Thelma and Louise follow out of the confines of the real world. And there’s a thread of mistrust in that world that leads them out of it. After Louise shoots & kills the man who tried to rape Thelma, she says they can’t go to the police because nobody would believe them. Because everyone saw Thelma dancing with him all night, cheek to cheek. And I saw her shirt keep falling off her shoulder.

It threatens me because it happens in my world too. It obscures my view.

When Thelma says shouldn’t we go to the police & Louise says we just don’t live in that kind of world.

When Thelma says how do you know ‘bout all this stuff anyway.

When Thelma says it happened to you, didn’t it.

The trail of breadcrumbs starts with rape & the thread is a product of rape.

They follow the thread in circles, refusing to go through Texas.

Still from Thelma & Louise

When Steph and I were wailing along to “I Can’t Make You Love Me If You Don’t” while driving down Highway One. Her blonde hair/my brown hair.

In Europe when Jenny and I slept in the same bed every night even though there were two.

How in Spain Lana and I would sit in coffee shops for hours and get drunk on the beach and take pictures in Zara.

When we were in Western Mass and Tina brought me to the train and I didn’t want her to leave.

Geena Davis as Thelma in Thelma & Louise

Road trip logic: How you start off making small talk and three days later your hair is dirty, and you lost all your makeup and you’re attached like Siamese twins. And the top is down, and you’re singing into the hot desert wind.

Thelma and Louise being pursued by police

In Thelma & Louise, adult female friendship is a rock-solid and ecstatic alternative to female subjugation and the traditional romance plot. A joyful, vibrating vehicle through which one can achieve true freedom and meaningful self-expression. Until that vehicle drives itself off a cliff.

If men didn’t rape, Louise wouldn’t have shot the rapist. If the system didn’t blame rape victims, they wouldn’t have gone on the run. If men didn’t rape, they could have driven through Texas. If the system didn’t blame rape victims, Louise wouldn’t have been so afraid. If women weren’t taught they deserve to be treated like shit, they wouldn’t have had to become fugitives in order to feel free. If there was a place for liberated, powerful women who live on their own terms in this world, they wouldn’t have had to create their own. If there was a place for liberated, powerful women who live on their own terms in this world, they wouldn’t have had to plummet into the Grand Canyon in order to feel free.

The logic falls in on itself. Like a sea-foam T-bird falling into the Grand Canyon.

When there’s a wall of cop cars behind them and the canyon is in front of them and Thelma says let’s keep goin’.

Thelma with a gun

There’s an alternative ending to Thelma & Louise that you can watch on the Internet.

It shows the car falling all the way into the canyon instead of freezing the frame with the car in mid-air, flying outward on an upswing. Watch it. Because you can see the car getting smaller and smaller, as the canyon gets bigger and bigger. And it starts falling at an angle that no longer looks controlled, no longer looks triumphant. Which is exactly how it should look — the logical conclusion that joyful, strong women have no place in this world.

The way they freeze the frame with the car on an upswing at the end is why people call Thelma & Louise a “chick flick.” It’s why it’s remembered as a girl power-powered outlaw movie, rather than a horror one.

How me and Carrie wrote a song about Kim while she was in the other bedroom.

When Tina and I were drinking sangria in San Francisco, and we couldn’t stop prank-calling you and laughing into our sleeves.

How we were in the Catskills and I yelled at Janie, well why don’t you just eat.

Louise with a gun

Roger Ebert says that the film’s last shot, the freeze-frame of the car going off the cliff, fades to white with “unseemly haste.” He writes, “It’s unsettling to get involved in a movie that takes 128 minutes to bring you to a payoff that the filmmakers seem to fear.”[iii]

Before the credits start to roll, the white screen flashes with a montage of images showing the two women, happy and alive, suggesting a weird kind of magical realism.

It’s all in that phrase: let’s keep goin’. As if by driving off the cliff they really did keep going. As if they had reached a parallel universe in which their journey did not have to end. It reminds me of the end of Pan’s Labyrinth, before the little girl is shot in the labyrinth. In the scene where we see her stepfather watching her talking to thin air, we see a crack in the magic into a horrific reality. The last scene in Thelma & Louise shows no definitive cracks in the magic. Only a triumphant freeze-frame that loops back almost instantly to images of the heroines’ lives.

Thelma and Louise going over the cliff

Rock journalist Ellen Willis writes about how Janis Joplin’s music captured a specifically female pain and longing; pain that was caused by men — and how the emotional risk of expressing that longing was ultimately perhaps what destroyed her. Willis suggests that Joplin opened up this territory for later women artists, and brilliantly frames Thelma & Louise as “perhaps the memorial Janis deserves.”[iv]

I think, for instance, of two movie heroines, born-again desperadoes, who smash one limit after another, uncover the hidden places where anger and despair, defiance and love converge, and finally leap into the Grand Canyon because freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

I can’t decide if I think Willis is letting the film off too easy here, but I love this comparison anyway. Janis Joplin was real; her struggle was real and her death was real. But for me, growing up in the 80s and 90s, she wasn’t a real woman so much as an icon; a symbol of wild, defiant love and art, tough, complex femininity and unrelenting sexuality, her life remembered for the spirit of freedom that she embodies, rather than for the sense of tragedy. And so are Thelma and Louise, for better or for worse — their car still goin’, the music still blasting, the camera still clicking images of them, first in red lipstick, sunglasses and hair kerchiefs, and later in dirtied jeans and cut-off t-shirts, their hair whipping wildly in the wind.

Thelma & Louise DVD cover

[i] This info was found in Karen Hollinger’s book, In the Company of Women: Contemporary Female Friendship Films, University of Minnesota Press

[ii] “Light feminist fizz” is borrowed from Bill Cosford, Miami Herald movie reviewer

[iii] Roger Ebert, “Thelma & Louise,” Chicago Sun-Times

[iv] Ed. Nona Willis Aronowitz, Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music, University of Minnesota Press

Marisa Crawford is a poet, writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY. She’s the author of the poetry collection The Haunted House (Switchback Books, 2010), and the chapbook 8th Grade Hippie Chic (2013 Immaculate Disciples Press). Her writing has recently appeared in Fanzine, Black Clock, Delirious Hem and HER KIND, and on Feministing’s Community blog.

Sarah Polley’s ‘Stories We Tell’: A Radical Act

Movie poster for Stories We Tell

Written by Stephanie Rogers.

We live in an age now when things seem … less “real” to me. Facebook lets us put our private lives on display, and even then, it’s a version of our lives that we edit, exaggerate perhaps, and invent—all for public consumption. People become overnight stars when homemade YouTube clips go viral—often another version of an edited public performance. Our television shows, especially Reality TV—and even shows such as American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance—present stories that appear to be true but are, in fact, edited for a public audience.

So, how do we define “real” anymore or, for that matter, what is “true”?

Polley and her father in Stories We Tell

Sarah Polley explores this concept in her wonderful documentary, Stories We Tell. While the film focuses on her family background and a long-kept family secret of sorts, it ultimately explores memory—how it aids and fails us, and how the act of storytelling sometimes requires us to fill in the gaps. This isn’t a new concept by any means, but Polley’s decision to tell her story through film, and to put that story on screen for a wider audience—in a society (and film industry) that consistently devalues women’s work and women’s stories—is a radical act.

Mary Jo Murphy gives some background on the film in her New York Times review:

A bit more about “the story”: Ms. Polley is the youngest of five siblings. Dad was an English actor in Toronto; Mom, an actress, had two children from a marriage before she met him. She died of cancer when Sarah was 11, and at some point after that, one or more of her much older siblings began to tease her about her paternity. Eventually she did a little investigating.

When she found her answer, and talked to her father and siblings about it, she became fascinated with how each of them was “telling the story and embellishing the story and making the story their own.” The act of telling the story, she said, “was changing the story itself.”

Polley’s father in Stories We Tell

I love the idea of the past existing as fluid, ever-changing. And Stories We Tell touches on that, reminding us that people truly do live long after their deaths—in the memories and celebrations of those most important to them. I certainly don’t mean to sentimentalize the story because it’s not a sentimental film (which isn’t to say that the audience in the theater wasn’t a weeping mess), but I want to convey that a woman making an emotionally gripping film about herself, about her mother, about motherhood even—is absolutely a radical act. Some disagree. Mike LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote the following in his review (titled, “Stories We Tell Review: Not Worth Telling”):

Polley is making a film about her father, her late mother, her siblings. She should protect them. What she shouldn’t do is offer up the resulting feel-good whitewash to the scrutiny of a watching world. She shouldn’t force on strangers the task of sitting through this. And she shouldn’t present a work of vanity and closed-in narcissism as an exercise in soul baring, because it’s embarrassing for everybody.

Polley’s mother and father in Stories We Tell

In actuality, the most important part of this film—and what makes it feminist—is precisely its “vanity” and “closed-in narcissism.” Of course, I wouldn’t use those words to describe it—I’d say “intimacy” and “closed-in confidence”—because they play into the dominant ideology that women’s stories aren’t important. And Stories We Tell is exactly that—Sarah Polley’s story: embellished, re-enacted, unsure, important. She interviews her father(s), her siblings, her mother’s former lovers, and her mother’s friends, all while keeping herself outside the frame and directing her subjects, or “storytellers” as she calls them, to tell their individual version of events. How Polley chooses to direct the film, to edit it, to interrogate the assertions of her storytellers, and to learn from them—that is her story. And telling it is a radical act.

Leigh Kolb wrote a piece for Bitch Flicks last November called, “Female Literacy as a Historical Framework for Hollywood Misogyny” in which she suggested that, “When women finally break through and are able to tell their stories, those stories are immediately dismissed as silly and trivial.” She goes on to say:

Perhaps this bleak, largely anti-feminist landscape in Hollywood is more deliberate. If we acknowledge women’s long history of being neglected education and literacy, and that women have been repeatedly told (or observed) that their stories lack action and intrigue for a broad audience, how can this not have larger social effects? And at some point, do we come to the conclusion that these messages are what the dominant group wants?

Polley’s mother in Stories We Tell

The good news is that reviews like the one written by Mick LaSalle, who refers to Stories We Tell at one point as “the opposite of a courageous piece of work,” look ridiculous next to all the praise for the film. In fact, if we’re lucky, maybe the success of Polley’s piece will spark a larger conversation about the marginalization of women and minorities in our culture, about whose stories “deserve” to be told and who gets to tell them. This film—if “the personal is political” still means anything in the age of my multiple fake Facebook identities—needs to be seen. It deserves to be seen. It’s a film about women knowing and not knowing one another. It’s a film about forgiveness and disappointment and searching for one’s identity and place within the family. It’s about existing as both participant and observer in one’s own life. It’s about longing and loss and how we define families. It’s about the art of filmmaking itself. It’s about mistakes and motherhood and heredity and unconditional love.

And, perhaps most importantly, it’s about a woman in Hollywood—an industry that boasts less than 20% of women film directors and an ever-shrinking number of available roles for women—refusing to accept the devaluation of women’s work, getting behind a camera … and daring to tell a story.

Sarah Polley, badass

Picture This: A Woman Goes to Film School and Becomes a Filmmaker

Filmmaker Violeta Barca-Fontana

This is a guest post written by Violeta Barca-Fontana.

INT. FILM SCHOOL, CLASSROOM – DAY

First day of class at a film school in Madrid. Twenty impatient students are waiting for the teacher, PACO, a very well known film director. Also in the classroom is VIOLETA (20).

The professor enters the classroom with a serious look and a decided walk. Taking a moment to look over the beardless students, some with incurable acne, who return his gaze with eyes wide open waiting for his wise words.

MASTER

You are twenty five students.

Only three of you will ever direct a film.

The students look at each other hoping they misunderstood him.

The professor continues with his welcome speech.

MASTER

I see there are some women here.

(beat)

In film women usually end up in make-up, wardrobe, or as script supervisors.

The six girls, including Violeta, look at each other for moral support not knowing how to react.

MASTER

I say that, just so you take it under consideration.

That was my very first contact with the film world. The first of many scenes I would live through during my career.

But my professor was wrong. My first boss was a woman; one of the best line producers in Spain and, without a doubt, one of the toughest and most unscrupulous bosses I have ever had. I learned the most about film making from her. I learned how films were really made, and how a well organized production leads to certain success.

Carmen, my boss, treated the women of her team much more harshly than the men. At first I thought she was very unfair to do so, but after all these years, reflecting on how much I learned being around her, I realized that maybe she did it because she felt she could bring out the best in them that way.

I worked with her in two different productions. Without a doubt she treated me worse than any of my co-workers. I think she wanted to take the wind out of my arrogance and break through the wall every film school builds around you: “I know everything and I´m the best.” I think she wanted to show me the subterranean underground of real life, where real movies get made, grown-up movies; where if you want to be called Director, first you have to earn your place with lots of effort and years of experience.

Violeta, in color.

Schools, and above all film schools, just serve to create confusion among the students leading them to believe that their initial easy success inside can be achieved in the professional world. No, ladies and gentleman; making movies is very complicated.

In my second film with Carmen, she promoted me from PA to Second AD. The director was the very well known master CARLOS, already considered an icon in Spain.

Pretty soon Carlos took a liking to me and wanted me to sit in front of the monitors with him all the time, explaining every shot to me. I was fascinated to observe how he would sketch the next shot on a scrap of paper with his Mont-blanc fountain pen to show his Director of Photography. As a film student I look back on those hours with him as a divine gift.

I have great memories of Carlos as one of my greatest teachers, a true genius. Despite this I sensed that inside he believed the idea that women do not direct movies. Carlos constantly asked one of my male colleagues, strangely enough the script supervisor, when he would direct his next short film, and what was he writing lately. I always hoped that longed question would be asked of me, but it never came, as if he assumed that I was not writing, and I had no intention of directing either. I always wanted to expound about my many projects to my Master.

INT. PLATÓ DE RODAJE – DAY

A huge set with over fifty people coming and going, working, loading, unloading, cameras, rails, spotlights. Carlos in the background talking to three men in suits, producers. They talk, they laugh.

Violeta walks in their direction. Within a few feet she feels observed by the group, who have a big laugh. Violeta is about to pass by when Carlos stops her.

CARLOS

Violeta, wait. Come here for a moment.

Violeta draw close. The men in suits stop laughing but kept their smiles behind their ties.

CARLOS

Tell me, what are you working on? So you write?

Have you ever directed anything?

Violeta pauses. Uncomfortably, she looks at the group which is waiting for her to give them a failed reply.

VIOLETA

(timidly)

Well, I just finished producing a feature film with two colleagues from school. It’s called La Fiesta and the Walt Disney Company has picked it up for distribution.

Silence. Their smiles go away. Violeta smiles amiably and moves on to continue her work.

I don’t know if it’s easier or harder to work with men or women. I feel very comfortable working with both. But what I do know is that most of the time working with women means not having to constantly prove your worth. We all know what we’re capable of and just do our job.

The Color Thief crew.

This theory held up in my last project, Color Thief. A project, and I promise unintentionally, led almost entirely by females, which from the beginning has been characterized by its fluidity. Is this because it is guided by women? I do not know…

The Remarkable Story of ‘Anne Braden: Southern Patriot’

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot (2012)

“I believe that no white woman reared in the South–or perhaps anywhere in this racist country–can find freedom as a woman until she deals in her own consciousness with the question of race. We grow up little girls–absorbing a hundred stereotypes about ourselves and our role in life, our secondary position, our destiny to be a helpmate to a man or men. But we also grow up white–absorbing the stereotypes of race, the picture of ourselves as somehow privileged because of the color of our skin. The two mythologies become intertwined, and there is no way to free ourselves from one without dealing with the other.” – from “A letter to white Southern women from Anne Braden,” 1972

Written by Leigh Kolb

Anne Braden didn’t think that guilt was productive.

She thought that what got people involved in the civil rights movement was a vision of a different world.

Born in 1924, Braden grew up in Anniston, Alabama–where the Freedom Riders’ bus was fire-bombed in 1961. She talks about being a young white child in the south, and seeing her mother’s house cleaner’s daughter wearing her hand-me-down clothes. They were different sizes, so the clothes didn’t fit right, and Braden says, “Something happened to me when I looked at her. I knew something was wrong.”

Braden dedicated her life to exposing and fighting against racial and economic injustice. She was subversive. She was arrested. She was praised by Martin Luther King Jr.

She wanted a different world.

Anne Braden

Braden is the subject of the documentary Anne Braden: Southern Patriot, which is available on DVD and at select screenings nationwide.

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot trailer

Award-winning filmmakers Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering created this first-person documentary, and its brilliance rests greatly on the fact that Braden herself and her contemporaries, biographer and mentees tell the story. The seemingly hands-off approach by the filmmakers (no audible interview questions or voiceovers) works incredibly well, and lets Braden’s remarkable legacy unfold on its own merits. The soundtrack is appropriately present, but not noticeably so, as it should be in a documentary.

This documentary, in short, is amazing. Aside from the technical success of the film is the fact that Braden herself was an extraordinary human being.

Read the full transcript of the film here

Braden says that when she had the realization that something was wrong, it was like photography: “You put the film in the developing fluid and it begins to come clear, but it’s been there all along.”

The images kept becoming clearer and clearer to Braden as she worked as a journalist in the south and covered the courthouse, seeing black men be imprisoned for looking at white women the wrong way, and seeing how murdered black people were not newsworthy.

She didn’t feel guilt. She felt motivated to change her world.

Early on in her career, Braden recognized that issues of class and race were inextricably linked. She says,

“I was in a prison and life builds prisons around people and I had the prison that I was born white in a racist society. I was born privileged in a classist society. The hardest thing was class. I don’t know that I could have ever broken out of what I call the race prison if I hadn’t dealt with class.”

She married Carl Braden, who was a “radical” activist active in the labor movement. “We got married to work together,” she says. By 1951, Braden was combining marriage, motherhood and activism.

Early on, her activism focused mainly on writing for and talking to black audiences about white people’s roles in racism and classism. The head of the Civil Rights Congress, William Patterson, told her that black people already know what she’s telling them–she needed to talk to white people, because they are the problem. She remembers that he said to her, “You know you do have a choice. You don’t have to be a part of the world of the lynchers. You can join the other America–the people who struggled against slavery, the people who railed against slavery, the white people who supported them, the people who all through Reconstruction struggled.” She says, “I was very young, and that’s what I needed to hear.” Her work began in earnest.

The Bradens bought a house for a young black family, the Wades, in an all-white neighborhood (it was a way around segregation–Andrew Wade gave them the down payment, the Bradens purchased it, and then transfered the deed). The Wades’ home was shot at, crosses were burned in the yard and a bomb was set off underneath their daughter’s window (remarkably no one was physically hurt).

The Wades, showing where rocks had been thrown and broken the windows of their home.

The bomber was never caught or tried, but the Bradens were, along with five other whites who helped defend the Wades’ house. They were charged with sedition–it was, prosecutors said, all a plot by communists to overthrow Kentucky and the nation.

Braden says that “If you use every attack as a platform, they can’t win and you can’t lose. It works like a charm.” They used their arrest and jail time as a platform. “You can’t kill an idea anyway,” she says. “To a segregationist, integration means communism.”

The film highlights footage from Ku Klux Klan rallies, newspaper stories, meetings, marches, beatings and shootings during the red scare and the civil rights movement. The footage–often presented without narration–is powerful and provides the visual, historical context to Braden’s stories.

The film moves forward through each decade, highlighting social justice struggles (especially regarding race and economic injustice) and Braden’s continuous role. The complexity of anti-communist sentiment, the freedom of speech and association and violence of the ongoing civil rights struggles are examined in depth.

It was difficult watching the momentous struggles and changes of the 60s make way into the 70s, when she says, “That sense of being part of something larger gets lost.” Political activists were repressed and imprisoned, and much of the momentum was lost.

Anne Braden

As the footage from the 70s surfaces, it’s in color; all of a sudden history doesn’t seem so far away. When white women are screaming and chanting about “Niggers” when busing was implemented in 1975, and throwing rocks at the buses, it’s jarring how close it all is. David Duke screams about white power. Communist workers at an anti-Klan rally are shot and killed in the late 70s.

In a statement that seems all-too true today, Braden says of the lasting legacy of this era:

“And this idea of reverse discrimination took hold of the country, and I think it’s the most dangerous idea that’s ever been inflicted on this country. It tells white people that the source of their problem is people of color and it’s such a damn lie because it’s based on the theory that what black people got took something away from white people, and that is the opposite of what happened, every piece of legislation everything that happened that the black movement won, helped most white people and certainly poor and working class white people.”

At a 1980 rally in response to the communist workers’ deaths, she said,

“The real danger today comes from the people in high places, from the halls of congress to the board rooms of our big corporations, who are telling the white people that if their taxes are eating up their paychecks, it’s not because of our bloated military budget, but because of government programs that benefit black people; those people in high places who are telling white people that if young whites are unemployed it’s because blacks are getting all the jobs. Our problem is the people in power who are creating a scape goat mentality. That, that is what is creating the climate in which the Klan can grow in this country and that is what is creating the danger of a fascist movement in the 1980s in America.”

As the film progresses, we see Braden marching for economic justice and to end police brutality. She stands out, with her cropped gray hair, small body and denim jumpers. Her voice shakes into a megaphone when she speaks at rallies, but her age doesn’t stop her. She keeps marching. When she can’t march, she’s pushed in a wheelchair.

Braden passed away in 2006 at age 81. Right before she died, she said, “I just don’t have time.” She still felt she had too much to do.

Anne Braden and Cornel West

I don’t know that I’ve ever been so inspired by a documentary. By the end, I was crying, near-sobbing–in celebration of Braden’s life, in mourning her death and in feeling a burning fire in my white belly that I needed to do something in this world. Anne Braden had effectively told me that I needed to get to work.

At a march, Braden says, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it’s won.” It hasn’t been, and we must continue her legacy.

Anne Braden: Southern Patriot puts Braden’s lifelong activism into the developing fluid and makes it clear to all of us. We should all look carefully at these images and be moved to not just frame them for display, but to make them shape our world now.

The Flobots’ “Anne Braden”

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Mara Adina on Producing Indie Flick ‘Chuck Norris vs. Communism’

Chuck Norris vs Communism

This is a guest post written by Mara Adina, producer of Chuck Norris vs Communism.

I started my career in film in the Middle East as after university I moved to Kuwait where I worked at the national television (KTV).

I spent the majority of the first month working there trying to find ways for the all-men crew that worked with me to acknowledge my existence, and not just turn their backs when I spoke and then to get them to listen to what I had to say.

I struggled with finding ways to keep hold of my feminine identity and not succumb to the pressure of becoming “one of the guys” in order to be listened to.

On my return to the UK, I look back to what I thought were very extreme circumstances and realise that they are actually a reality here as well. We all know it’s difficult to be taken seriously as a woman in film and broadcasting – but if you add to that a pair of heels and red lipstick, things become even more tricky.

Today, I run my own company and I am one of the few who is trying to break through the bleak statistics of female producers in the industry.

Mara Adina, producer of Chuck Norris vs. Communism

I am currently producing my sister’s feature documentary, Chuck Norris vs Communism, and we are both so proud to tell the world the story of a very strong and brave woman.

Irina Nistor was one of the only female film translators to work in the Eastern Bloc during the 1980s. She dubbed over 5,000 Western blockbusters that entered Romania illegally during communism. Their rapid spread of the VHS tapes across the country turned Irina’s voice into a symbol of freedom and allowed a whole country to subvert a brutal regime. Here is our trailer:

Chuck Norris vs Communism Trailer from VernonFilms on Vimeo.

We fell in love with the story and every bit of the journey of making this film has been incredible. We don’t just want to make this film through conventional avenues, we want to fund it by gathering the support of those to whom the story speaks, inspires and empowers.

We want to build a community around it and bring this film and Irina’s story to you, who are also striving to break through the statistics.

So we have launched a crowdfunding campaign for the film where like minded people can join the crew and help tell this story through contributions as small as $10. Please have a look at our campaign and help however you can.

Screen shot from Chuck Norris vs. Communism

The fundraising campaign for Chuck Norris vs Communism is live until this Thursday (May 2).

Produced by Vernon Films in co production with Kloos & Co in Germany, 4Proof Film in Romania and WMM in North America.

Chuck Norris vs Communism tells the story of the transformation of a nation through a seemingly small act of resistance. In the 1980s, Ceausescu’s Romania became the most Stalinist regime of the Soviet bloc.

At the same time, hidden from the scrutinising eyes of the Secret Police, Irina Nistor dubbed over 5,000 foreign blockbusters that entered Romania illegally.

They turned Irina’s voice into a symbol of freedom, Chuck Norris, Van Damme and Bruce Lee into national heroes and allowed a whole country to subvert a brutal regime.

The filmmakers have been working on the project for the past year and a half, shoot for three months and are now in a critical phase of post production.

The film is nearly complete but they need you to get over the finishing line! So, they have set up a campaign page where you can make pledges and become a part of this film.

Follow this LINK for the crowdfunding page where you will find an array of exciting rewards including the chance to become an animated character in the film!

For more information go to:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/chuck-norris-vs-communism-the-documentary-feature-film

https://www.facebook.com/chucknorrisvscommunism

@ChuckvCommunism

www.chucknorrisvscommunism.co.uk

‘Yerma’: The Pain, Heartbreak and Destruction of Infertility and Patriarchy

Movie poster for Yerma

Written by Leigh Kolb for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

My womb is opening / without fear or dread /
and on white sheets / I sketch my dream.

Let us sing / let us sing / let us sing.

For life is woven in the early morn,

For the silvery moon an infant will bring.

In 1934, Spanish writer Federico García Lorca wrote the play Yerma, and it has been performed regularly since its opening that year. In 1999, a Spanish film was released, directed by Pilar Távora.

English translation of the play, which the film closely follows.

Yerma, the title character, has been married to Juan for two years and she has not been able to get pregnant. (Yerma means “barren” in Spanish.) As the film opens to folk songs with poetic lyrics that weave throughout the entire film, Yerma is taking care of him, trying to get him to drink milk and exercise more. It’s clear his work drives him–he works hard, and is tenacious in his work in the field, but not in love.

Juan and Yerma appear happy on their wedding night

Yerma seems to just be starting to devolve into an incredibly unhappy mental and emotional place in regard to their inability to conceive.

Her friend Maria visits, and she’s brought lace, ribbon and fabric. “It’s happened!” she says, and Yerma is excited for Maria’s pregnancy, asking her how she feels, and giving her loving advice. Yerma seems to have a deep understanding of pregnancy and motherhood, and displays wisdom with Maria.

Maria asks about the fact that Yerma has no children, but assures her that she’s had friends who took longer to conceive. “Two years and 20 days is too long,” asserts Yerma. “It isn’t fair that I’m wasting away here.”

Before she leaves, Maria pulls out her new fabric and lace and asks Yerma to sew little dresses for her, since she “sews so well.” Yerma graciously complies.

Yerma has tried for years to become pregnant, and her friend announces she’s gotten pregnant after just a few months of marriage.

The first scenes are familiar ones to infertile women–trying to watch after the health of her partner, tension over the desire to conceive, a friend getting pregnant after just a few months and the pain of knowing more about pregnancy than the pregnant friend herself.

Sorrow wide as a field / a door closed on beauty

I beg the suffering of a child

But the wind gives me dahlias / from under the sleeping moon

Sorrow wide as a field / I beg the suffering of a child

As time passes, it becomes clearer that Yerma’s marriage is an unhappy one. Her father arranged her marriage to Juan, but her true match seems to be Victor (who Juan runs off after he’s concerned that he and Yerma have been speaking too much). Indeed, Juan doesn’t even like Yerma going outside of the home at all.

Yerma meets an old woman on the path to the field, and she clings to her, begging her to answer questions about her childlessness since she assumes an older woman would have wisdom. Yerma says she’s been thinking about children since the moment she was engaged. “I was just the opposite,” the old woman says. “Maybe you’re thinking too much.”

Yerma says she still remains empty, but she’s “filling up with hate.”

The old woman alludes to the fact that God has no part in this, and if there was one, there should be a god who “sends lightning bolts to men with spoiled seed.” This is the first real indication that perhaps Juan is the problem (the old woman tells Yerma later that it is Juan, and he’s from a long line of men with the same problem).

Yerma goes back home and meets other women on the road who are hurrying to take their husbands lunch. One left her baby home alone, and the other talks about adamantly not wanting children and being bitter about spending her whole life cooking and washing–things that she doesn’t want to do. Yerma reacts harshly to the young mother who’s left her child at home, again reinforcing that sadness in infertile women of seeing others take parenting for granted.

Yerma changes after these encounters–Juan’s coldness and lack of desire for her or for children has become clearer to her, and the older woman’s warnings and sharp words start sinking in. When we see her again, she’s rocking back and forth in the dark, while we hear women gossip about her.

It’s a pity of the childless wife / It’s a pity of the woman whose breasts are dry

Time has passed, and a group of women is doing laundry and talking about Yerma.

“They don’t like to make lace or jam,” one woman says about barren women. “They like walking barefoot on the river.”

“It isn’t her fault she doesn’t have children,” her friend interjects.

“Whoever wants children has them,” another says.

“It’s all his fault.”

“It’s all her fault.”

The women have largely turned against Yerma as she has turned inward and become increasingly full of grief over her desire to and inability to conceive.

She and Juan lash out at one another. He says, “You keep beating your head against a wall. I feel uneasy living with you, anxious. You have to resign yourself.”

She responds, “I want to drink water, and there’s no glade and no water. I want to climb a mountain and I’ve got no feet. I want to trim my petticoats and I can’t find the thread.”

Yerma’s words about the deep, miserable feelings surrounding infertility are poignant and heartbreakingly accurate. While much is going on in this film worth discussing–the patriarchal culture that arranges marriages and ties a woman’s worth solely to her ability to have children, obviously, and the immediate blame of the woman when a couple can’t conceive–Yerma’s struggle with infertility is one of the most accurate portrayals of that grief that I’ve ever seen.

Yerma slips deeper into an obsessive depression as time goes on.

Yerma sees Maria walking quickly by her house, and asks her to stop. She wonders why she’s rushing by and Maria says, “Because you always cry.” Yerma holds the baby and kisses it.

“Women who’ve had children cannot imagine not having them,” she says. “My longing grows stronger and my hopes are fading.”

Yerma visits a group of older women who chant over her, praying to Sainte Anne, performing a ceremony in the cemetery in the middle of the night. Afterward, the older women gently criticize Yerma for “fretting” too much about not having a child and not taking shelter in her husband’s love. Yerma becomes defiant, and finally exclaims that she doesn’t love him. “But he’s my only hope,” she says. “For my honor and my family. My only hope.”

She seems relieved. “I needed to talk,” she tells the women. The female conversations in the film are both destructive and nourishing, but they are clearly good for Yerma when she is able to be a part of them.

Yerma continues to decline, though. Juan finally confronts her and tells her that he doesn’t like the idea, but he’s willing to take her himself to a pilgrimage where childless women go to be blessed with children.

At the ceremony, the old woman finds Yerma and tells her she should leave Juan and marry her son, instead, who could give her children. “What about my honor?” Yerma says, and tells her to go away. Yerma’s inability to conceive and her miserable marriage seem to fall squarely on the shoulders of Juan, but she cannot escape due to the strict morality of her culture.

“My pain has gone far beyond my body,” Yerma says.

The old woman calls her barren and Yerma repeats the word. “Since I’ve been married that word has been going around in my head,” she says, but “this is the first time I’ve said it out loud.”

Yerma runs through the woods and settles at her campsite, where Juan is drinking. She tells him to leave her alone, but he says he wants to speak.

“I won’t put up any longer for continual lament for things that aren’t real,” he says. “For things that haven’t happened, and that we can’t control. For things I don’t care about. I care about what I have in my hands.”

She says that’s what she’s been waiting to hear: that he doesn’t care.

Yerma speaks of a son, and says, “You never thought of him when you saw me long for him?”

Juan coldly says, “Never.”

After a few minutes, Juan moves over and tries to seduce Yerma. He’s forceful and rough. She starts to kiss him back, but she’s crying, and she snaps. She strangles him violently and kills him.

“Barren,” she says. “Barren for certain. Barren. And alone. Now I can rest without wakening in fright to see if my blood will tell me of new blood. My body is dry forever.” She begins to repeat, “My son.”

Maria walks up to her in horror, and Yerma keeps repeating that she has killed her son. “I’ve killed my own son. My son… my baby, my baby, my child.”

The film ends, with the dedication “to my children” as a post script.

Yerma is a beautiful film, and Yerma’s descent into grief-stricken madness is haunting and powerful. We so rarely see female protagonists, and for a female protagonist to have such a visceral struggle with such a common, yet underrepresented, issue as infertility is moving and incredibly important.

Yerma killing Juan at the end of the film is symbolic of her overcoming not only the patriarchal culture that has defined her by her inability to mother, but also her infertility. She doesn’t see killing Juan as a way to marry someone else and try to have children; she sees killing him as freeing herself from the disappointment of not getting pregnant. Extinguishing him extinguishes her hopes.

Infertility when one desperately wants to conceive is grief, obsession, emptiness and feeling completely powerless. Yerma lives in a time and place where she has nothing else except being a wife and a mother to define her, so the added pressure of being unable to conceive a child drives her to the breaking point. Juan has repeatedly kept Yerma inside of their house and away from the outside world. When he admits he doesn’t care about having a child and then tries to assault her, it’s all too much. She has to end the physical manifestation of her grief and disappointment.

Yerma proves that a film about a woman’s struggles can work, even if those struggles don’t produce the kind of action that Hollywood seems to think it needs. Yerma’s inner turmoil is palpable, and good writing and directing make her story real and compelling. The power of Yerma rests not only in its treatment of infertility, but also its larger commentary on what a culture that stifles women can lead to. Yerma’s infertility is tragic, and so is her world.

Oh woman, how great is your sorrow

A sorrow so piteous

Your tears are like lemon juice

Sour as your hope and your lips

———-

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

The Power of Portrayal: Infertility, Reproductive Choice and Reproduction in ‘We Want a Child’

Movie poster for We Want a Child

Written by Leigh Kolb for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

The 1949 Danish film We Want a Child (Vi vil ha’ et barn) deals with abortion, failed adoption, infertility, detailed fertility and prenatal care and childbirth.

Depictions of any of these subjects are few and far between in modern film and television, so the fact that a feature film was made so long ago is remarkable in itself. We Want a Child offers a frank portrayal of the emotions involved in trying to build a family.

The film opens with Else and Lief’s wedding. The audience is introduced to a happy bride (who is just doing the church wedding–“veil and everything”–because her mother wants her to) and her playful new husband.

At the celebratory dinner reception, Else’s Uncle Hans toasts the new couple and the unity of the family “up through a new generation.”

Next the audience sees Uncle Hans–a bit of a buffoon–riding his bike over to Else’s house to check on her. “No news?” he says. “No news,” she says. “I don’t want you asking me each week.”

Clearly, the family is waiting for an announcement of Else and Lief’s pregnancy, and Else is already tiring of the requests.

“Two years have gone by…” is superimposed on the screen, and the uncle walks in again. Else is polishing silver, visibly upset, and Hans notes that it’s their two-year anniversary. A puppy walks into the room, and he’s shocked: “You got a dog?”

“I know perfectly well you don’t like to discuss it,” he says, “but why don’t you have kids?”

Else says she wants to enjoy their youth, and that they don’t want children right now. She quickly breaks down, though, and says, “I’m beginning to think I can’t have a child.” Uncle Hans, without judgment, encourages her to see a doctor.

Later Else asks Lief if he wants a baby. “Doesn’t every man?” he says, playfully. She cries and hugs him, saying “What if we can’t have a baby? Maybe I can’t have any.”

Their relationship is portrayed as equitable and loving; they joke and laugh and seem to be deeply in love. When she expresses her fears, he doesn’t belittle her or act uncomfortable. Since the threat of infertility often wreaks havoc in relationships, the depiction of Lief and Else’s relationship throughout the film is refreshing.

Else does visit the doctor, and tells him she’s afraid she can’t have any babies. He asks about her menstruation and rattles off a list of other health questions. He says, “I suppose we don’t have to consider abortion.” Else answers, “Yes, we have to.”

Else confides in the doctor that she’s had an abortion. He judges, but quickly moves on to helping her.

The doctor takes his glasses off and pauses. She says that it had been an operation a few years ago, and he notes that it was “a criminal abortion.” (Abortion in Denmark was legalized in 1973.)

He stands up, and Else pleads with him, saying she knew it was wrong, but it was during the war and her fiance (now husband) had to go underground. The doctor is judgmental (saying that she “preferred to kill her child” instead of looking for help), but it’s not nearly as damning as one would expect from the time. He goes on to tell her that it might be the reason she hasn’t conceived, and that sometimes abortion causes scar tissue in the fallopian tubes. He tells her they will take x-rays and run some tests.

As Else is leaving the doctor’s office, her friend Jytte is coming in. She’s become pregnant by the married man she’s having an affair with, and he wants nothing to do with her or a baby. Jytte goes in to talk to the doctor, and is clearly upset and unsure of what she wants to do. The doctor urges her to not have an abortion, lest she “deny motherhood” and ruin her chances to have a child in the future after going to a “quack” to have her “body mutilated.” He promises her it’s not as hopeless as she thinks, and she promises to think over it–but not before snapping that a woman should be able to make her own decisions.

After these scenes, the harsh judgment surrounding abortion–which at the time was a criminal act and wouldn’t have been a safe medical procedure, so conversations about it in a feature film could only go so far–ends.

As Else leaves the doctor’s office, a mother is struggling and Else offers to hold her baby for her. The way she looks at the child is full of love and deep longing.

Jytte decides against having an abortion (even though her lover wants her to).

The doctor shows Else her x-rays–one of her tubes is blocked, but the other side is open. “You have a chance, you can become pregnant,” he says. “You must hope.” He encourages her to tell her husband.

While Else is at the doctor, Lief has befriended a neighbor child, and their interactions are sweet. The bond shows that when a couple wants children but cannot have them, they often still “parent” in other ways, whether it’s a neighbor child, or a dog, or both, in their case.

Else comes home, resolved to tell Lief about her abortion.

“Lief, can you forgive me?” she cries.

He says it’s his fault, but she responds,

“It’s what we wanted, both of us. I should have told you long ago.”

“Don’t worry, darling, we’re together,” he says.

When Lief speaks with Uncle Hans about the fact that “we’ll have to get used to the idea that it’ll be only two” of them, alone, he adds that “the doctor gave her hope, but what else can he say?”

“It’s completely idiotic in a world like ours to want my own children… yet I want them,” Lief says.

Else soothes herself by thinking that they are enjoying their youth. They get a puppy. Lief befriends and mentors the neighbor child. Lief grapples with the fact that it feels selfish to desire biological children, but acknowledges the deep urge. The way the couple deals with and speaks about their infertility is truthful and realistic.

Uncle Hans sees an opportunity, and tells Jytte he knows of a young couple who would like to adopt a baby, and that she can stay with him (since if she becomes visibly pregnant she’ll lose her job and room).

Things seem to be falling in place. The next scene is Lief and the neighbor boy carrying a bassinet upstairs to the nursery. Else’s mother visits, and is rude and dismissive when Lief tells her that Else is visiting their new daughter. “Why on earth are you adopting?” she asks, and he tries to explain that they can’t have one themselves.

Lief goes to the clinic, flowers in hand, to see Jytte and his new daughter. Else steps out of the room, visibly upset. “She said she couldn’t do it,” she says. “She can’t go through with the adoption.”

While she’s upset, Else tells him that they shouldn’t be angry. Lief gives the flowers to the nurse to give Jytte.

At this moment, we see the most tension between Else and Lief. He says he needs to go back to work, and he coldly leaves after saying goodbye. Else is left alone. The scene is harshly realistic.

Back at home, Else’s mother is condemning adoption and Jytte, but Else softly tells her, “You can’t blame her for not wanting to give up her baby.” She quickly runs from the room and gets sick.

Her mother smiles, knowing what the nausea signifies.

Else is excited when she puts the pieces together, but nervous: “I’m more afraid that it isn’t true, or if it is true, it won’t be a healthy child.” Her mother assures her that worrying is part of being a mother. The fear involved with becoming pregnant after infertility is palpable.

Else goes back to the doctor, and he confirms her pregnancy. He asks her about rickets, scarlet fever, hereditary diseases, venereal diseases and he listens to her heart and checks her back.

Else weeps with joy when the doctor confirms her pregnancy.

“We have to be careful now that we have a responsibility for a new little citizen,” he says. When she asks if he thinks it’s a girl, he says, “Male? Female? It’s a human.”

This segment of the film feels a bit like an educational video for prenatal care–he explains all of the blood tests he’s taking (including testing her rhesus type so they can take care of her properly if it’s negative). Her scenes with the doctor are clearly meant to be instructional to viewers.

Else goes home, and coyly tells Lief that she is “expecting something.” They are both elated.

Else and Lief celebrate the news.

Her pregnancy progresses normally, and Else wakes up in the middle of the night feeling pain. (The dog, not forgotten, is fully grown in a bed by Else and Lief’s bed.) She and Lief rush to the clinic, and the midwife tells Lief, “Kiss your wife goodbye, we’ll call you when it’s over.” He begs to stay, but the midwife assures him that they’ve “no need” for him. They walk away, and Lief stands alone, staring. He walks home (where he continues to pace and call the clinic for updates).

Else is given anesthesia via inhalation, and the doctor tells her that she’ll “go to sleep, wake up and it will be over and done with.” This is most likely ether, as the drugs that induced Twilight Sleep were intravenous.

She wakes up, and a nurse hands her a beautiful girl, while Lief stands beside her. “Well, we made it,” he says. They are both beaming.

The baby sneezes (baby human and baby animal sneezes are certainly evolution’s way of causing women to spontaneously ovulate), and the film is over.

While there are a couple of moments in the film that will undoubtedly make a pro-choice feminist cringe, the fact that Else is still fertile even though she had an abortion is what’s important. If the film had truly been wholly anti-abortion, she would not have been able to go on and conceive and have a happy ending. Aside from the doctor’s comments (and of course he was acting as a medical and moral authority of the time), Else and Lief are united–and both recognize that an abortion is what they both wanted at the time–and she is not punished. At the time the film was celebrated in some circles for its clear anti-abortion message, but the fact remains that Else is not infertile. Her husband isn’t angry that she had an abortion. Everything turns out just fine.

Jytte isn’t punished for her decisions, either. She seems to have a mutually beneficial life at Uncle Hans’s house. Else’s forgiving response to the adoption falling through assures the audience that we are not to be angry with Jytte, either.

Lief visits Else and their new daughter at the clinic.

The frank discussion about infertility, abortion, prenatal care and adoption make this film noteworthy. It feels quite remarkable to watch characters discuss the range of emotions surrounding these subjects. The film isn’t a masterpiece, and it moves quickly and relies on some common tropes surrounding the topic of infertility and adoption, but some of the dialogue is striking in its honesty and timelessness.

The struggles that infertile couples face in 2013–the fear and guilt that you’ve done something wrong, the desire to have a biological child, the risk of adoption falling through, facing a marriage without children–are no different than they were almost 75 years ago. These struggles, however, are rarely represented on screen. The experience of viewing characters who deal with these life events feels meaningful and important. We shouldn’t have to dig so far and so hard to find them.

* * *

One of the reasons this film dealt so well with these subjects was no doubt its director, Alice O’Fredericks (she directed it with Lau Lauritzen). O’Fredericks was a prolific writer and producer–she wrote 38 screenplays and directed 72 films. Many of her films focused on women’s stories and women’s rights. The Copenhagen International Film Festival annually awards a female director with the Alice Award, named after O’Fredericks.

Alice O’Fredericks, Danish writer, director and actor

———-

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Stillbirth. Still Ignored.

Serious Trigger Warning for discussion and images of stillbirth and infant loss.

Publicity photograph used for Peekaboo

Guest post written by Debbie Howard for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Google “stillbirth in film,” and you will see next to nothing come up about this subject matter. What does come up is very current, as people are starting to look at this a little more just now. I know of two or three films happening worldwide about this subject matter at the moment. At long last. There is a feature film called Return to Zero being made in the USA, and there was a documentary called Capturing a Short Life made in 2008 in Canada. I also saw a documentary a few years ago called Limbo Babies, very late at night on TV, and have never been able to find anything else about this since. There is little else other than my work.

I completed my short drama Peekaboo nearly two years ago, but I started writing it about three years before that. I had two friends who had experienced baby loss, one to miscarriage and one who had given her baby up for adoption. I had a dream one night that merged these two stories together; this was the beginning of Peekaboo, which is about a couple who has lost three babies to stillbirth. I wrote a first draft of the script then started researching in great detail as I developed the script. I was shocked to discover that hardly anything had been made about this subject before.

Because I had no funding to make Peekaboo, I had to crowdfund, asking for donations to help me raise the money I needed for the film. This was a blessing in disguise, because as well as raising the money, I met a great number of parents via social media who had lost babies, and I got to know some of them well. With their help, I was able to complete the film to a high standard and use two of the UK’s finest actors in the lead roles.

“A wonderfully tender and compassionate articulation of love and loss. Peekaboo unwraps the layers of grief and emotional reconciliation with heartbreaking precision and sensitivity.” –Caroline Cooper Charles, Creative England

You can watch the Peekaboo trailer here: https://vimeo.com/42260999.

I was very happy with Peekaboo when it was completed, and it was met with great acclaim from those who saw it. However, I was very disappointed with the lack of film festivals that programmed it. Compared to my previous films, this screened at far fewer festivals. The subject matter was seen as too depressing. This was very frustrating as I made the film to show people who hadn’t been through losing a baby what really happened. It told me audiences still aren’t ready to look at this. There is such a silence around baby loss. While I was in the process of making the film, many people asked me, “Why are you making a film about that?” On top of the grief that the parents have been through, there is another burden for them–to keep quiet and not upset people by mentioning their baby.

Not being one who’s put off easily, this fueled me to want to look at the subject matter again, and I felt a documentary would be more powerful. There is no one better equipped to tell stories of baby loss than the parents themselves. Due to the fantastic contacts I’d already made on Peekaboo, I had a pool of parents all very keen to take part in the film, and I started selecting the right characters and stories for Still Born, Still Loved.

Mel Scott with her son Finley

Still Born, Still Loved: The Life Within Us

Synopsis:

How do you survive when the baby you’ve been expecting for months dies before you have the chance to ever really know them? When on the day you were supposed to be bringing your baby home, you have to carry a tiny coffin and see them buried in the cold, hard ground? What happens to all the love you feel for your child? How do you move forward with your life with a heavy heart and empty arms?

This documentary goes right to the heart of the human suffering caused by the loss of a tiny life. There is no greater suffering for any parent to bear than the death of their child.

Our film is special because each of the stories within it has a powerful, life-affirming message, as the parents involved work through their suffering to accomplish something really spectacular in memory of their baby. The outcome will be uplifting and inspiring and will highlight how even the most vulnerable people can triumph in the face of adversity.

Still Born, Still Loved is a feature-length documentary, and I want it to get seen by a wide audience in cinemas and on television. I went back to our main sponsors on Peekaboo and asked if they wanted to help us get started. Through the great generosity of three women, all of whom have suffered stillbirth firsthand, and some more crowdfunding, we raised the money needed to film a very powerful pilot, which we have now completed. You can watch it here: https://vimeo.com/61217978.

Nicola Harding with her daughter Emily

An interesting question for me, when someone loses their first child, is “Can you call yourself a parent if you don’t have any children?” This is one of the questions we attempt to answer. If you ask someone what a parent is, they think of someone with one or more children, bringing up a child, caring for their needs, organising their birthday party, and tucking them into bed at night. But when you have carried a baby, spent months planning and imagining their future, gone through labour and childbirth, held your son or daughter in your arms, felt overwhelming love for your child and miss them every single day, you are definitely a parent, too. You find creative and interesting ways to spend time with your child, celebrate, and remember them.

In our film, we also use parents’ own photographs and video footage of their time spent with their babies when they were stillborn. This, of course, is both very powerful and greatly upsetting, but I feel it is important for people to really see this firsthand. It certainly makes a huge impact and shows that these babies were a real-life son or daughter to these parents who love them dearly and always will.

Christmas decorations in memory of Harriet and Felicity Morris

For more information, and to support the film or buy a copy of Peekaboo (all proceeds to Still Born, Still Loved), please contact me at debbie@bigbuddhafilms.co.uk or see our website at http://www.bigbuddhafilms.co.uk/films/documentary/still-born-still-loved/.

I’m really proud of the work we’re doing around stillbirth and baby loss, and I’m very grateful to all those who are supporting us. Together we will break the silence.

Finley Scott in his coffin

Debbie Howard is a writer/director. She set up Big Buddha Films eight years ago and specialises in making films with a strong female voice that tackle human dilemmas and show the vulnerabilities of human existence. She is a single mum and lives in Sheffield with her two teenage children.

Movie Makers from the Margins: Sarah Polley

Written by Erin Fenner

I stumbled onto Sarah Polley during a typical Sunday TV slam – in which my roommate(s) and I watch a set of television shows and/or movies while gently tearing them apart for end o’ weekend laughs.

With only Netflix to stream on this particular weekend we ended up on a movie we assumed would be a typical snort-inducing indie flick: the type that has good intentions and an endearingly low-budget, but still follows a set formula with too-familiar archetypes, dialogue and the sort of acting that can only be done with a whispery voice.

Michelle Williams and Luke Kirby in Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz

Our Sunday tease-fest was abruptly cut short because we had picked Take This Waltz. Within the first minutes of watching the film we realized we had accidentally found something fresh and interesting. The camerawork alone was captivating. The writing was surreal while remaining painfully grounded. The story about a young married woman, Margot (Michelle Williams), exploring her own dissatisfaction with her marriage while trying not to explore her attraction to another man was intense, exceedingly sexy and hilarious.

It didn’t take long before we – typical Millennials with our addiction to information and technology – started feverishly Googling the film: then discovering the filmmaker was a “she.” That may have been the first time I accidentally found a female director. Every other time has been purposeful and even then it has been rare to catch movies that were directed or written by women.

An article in the New York Times celebrated that out of the top 250 grossing films in 2012 there were more female filmmakers than the year before. That increase was from five percent to nine percent. And while any increase in diversity is valuable, I can’t help but feel a bit cynical about whipping out party favors when women are making less than 10 percent of the top grossing films.

In a society that espouses equality as an ideal; the absence of women filmmakers should incite righteous indignation, right?

Mostly it just goes unnoticed.

After my brain was lovingly melted by Take This Waltz I did what I usually do when falling for a tall dark and surrealist or postmodern director. I sought out the whole collection. I needed to see all the Polley films ever made! Achieving that was just too surmountable. The young director has only made three films, and only two are available on DVD. I can’t even be a Polley geek. I can’t go to Polley trivia nights. Watching two DVDs in a row can’t even be a Polley marathon.

The second Polley I watched was her first feature-length film, Away from Her, about a couple and how they deal with their relationship when one of them develops Alzheimer’s and eventually needs to move to a long-term care facility.

Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie in Away from Her

In Hollywood people over 60 are usually depicted as feeble and they are portrayed most often through the perspective of their children or grandchildren. Even The Notebook which features an aging couple – one suffering from Alzheimer’s – takes place mostly in the past: mostly when the couple was first falling in love and their cheeks were still fat with youth. The happy ending is that they die together.

Away from Her, instead focuses on the relationship of the aging couple as it exists in the present. The couple has regrets. They have fond memories – but their primary concerns are about how to handle their current situation and what they are losing now. Also. It shows that people over 60 have sex in a sexy but normalizing way.

The way in which Polley explores aging and disease is refreshing because while it is so different than most of the media we consume it actually more accurately represents life.

To get these sorts of new narratives we need directors from all backgrounds: not just the white male variety.

Women filmmakers are still getting into the business. They’re less established and get less attention. Which is why we need to have a director spotlight here on Bitch Flicks – and why this will turn into a column. We’ll be speaking with up-and-coming filmmakers and reviewing the works of directors who face marginalization for their identity.

Because Polley was the first female director I discovered without trying I decided it was time to make more of an effort to seek out directors from all backgrounds. If you have suggestions for writers, directors, producers or filmmakers you want to see written about: leave them in the comments so we can have a conversation.

‘The Yellow Room’ and the Timeless Locking Up of Women’s Experiences

Written by Leigh Kolb

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” on its surface, is about a woman in the late 1800s suffering from what we now understand is postpartum depression. Her physician husband locks her away in a room–employing the popular “rest cure” of the time (which Gilman had been forced to endure)–and she slips deeper into depression and eventual madness because of the isolation.

The story is also about the solitary nature of women’s experiences, and how so frequently how women are “dealt” with in society–the treatment–is much more harmful and devastating than the problem itself.

These themes propel Assal Ghawami’s short film, The Yellow Room, which was inspired by Gilman’s story.

The Yellow Room takes place in a tenement house in an American city. Sanaz, the protagonist, is a young Pakistani immigrant who is seeking an illegal abortion from a Latina “medicine woman.” The woman gives her a baggie of four pills and instructs Sanaz to “take two the first hour. When it starts, you put the rest under your tongue.”

Watch the trailer here.

She shows her to her room, which is painted a muted shade of yellow. The young woman who appears to be staying in the room also is a foil to Sanaz–angry, loud and threatening. When she finally storms off, Sanaz is left alone, avoiding calls from her boyfriend (and pushing him away when he calls, hanging up when he promises to “help [her] with the baby”).

Teresa shows Sanaz to her room.

Much like the protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Sanaz is left alone. Her boyfriend doesn’t seem to understand the severity of the situation, or be concerned with what Sanaz wants and needs (just like the husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper”).

Ghawami’s film is beautiful, and I found myself aching for more than 10 minutes. In an interview with RH Reality Check, Ghawami goes in depth in discussing both the technical aspects of the film–it was shot with one lens, and the (perfect) music was composed by a female friend from film school–and the social aspects of it.

Sanaz must deal with the consequences alone.

Ghawami–who was born in Iran and grew up in Germany–was inspired to write the film after hearing a story of a woman who had ended her pregnancy with a medicinal herb and thrown the fetus away in the garbage. Instead of judging the woman, Ghawami condemns the society that forces women to choose these routes. She says,

“The Yellow Room, similar to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ is an exploration of an old conundrum. Ultimately it’s the women who deal with the consequences, no matter if you are pro-choice or anti-choice. I just want people to look at the debate from a new angle—from the eyes of the woman who goes through with the experience itself.”

Because film so rarely explores women’s stories (especially about abortion) it’s difficult to find a chance to look through the “eyes of a woman,” tragically. If we had more exposure to those stories, certainly the dialogue surrounding these issues, and even legislation, would be affected.

In Gilman’s “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,'” she explains that the “best result” she had from writing the story is that the specialist who prescribed the harsh rest cure had changed his treatment practices since reading the story. Gilman’s story is fiction, although derived from her experiences, but it’s fiction with a social impact. Clearly, women weren’t allowed to tell their stories of isolation and further mental illness in the confines of the rest cure, because not writing or being mentally stimulated was a key part of the “cure.” Women’s stories, of course, are marginalized and often ignored.

In 2013, over a hundred years later, women’s stories about reproductive choice are typically excluded from the national dialogue. Sure, a record number of laws threatening women’s rights to abortion have been proposed and passed in the last few years, but women’s stories are largely absent.

And while we need those stories, we also need art to convey those stories.

Ghawami says:

“I don’t think art needs a cause, but every social cause, hell yeah, needs art! … Films can be a canvas in which we can find our own truth. Art encourages free thinking.”

What the antagonists in both “The Yellow Wallpaper” and The Yellow Room (the protagonists’ families, partners and societies) want is control over the women in the story. To shut a woman into a space, to back her into a corner so her choices are solitary and dangerous, is to, ultimately, control her.

There is hope and freedom at the end of The Yellow Room that we don’t see in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Ghawami doesn’t make Sanaz a tragic character; she makes her world tragic.

The aesthetics of The Yellow Room are haunting yet beautiful, and the lush strings that accompany Sanaz’s story are jarring yet gorgeous.

The Yellow Room will be screening at colleges and film festivals in the coming months, and at public venues in the New York/New Jersey area. The film’s Facebook page has updates.

Ghawami’s commentary on not only the power of film, but also how the historic literature of women’s struggles connects to the current crisis in women’s rights, gives me great hope that we will see more from her in the future.

The “social cause” of reproductive rights needs art–not just editorials or heavy handed propaganda, but stories. The Yellow Room is a lovely example of how to do the subject justice.

Assal Ghawami

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘Clueless’: Way Existential

Written by Robin Hitchcock

With Bitch Flicks celebrating its fifth anniversary this week, I wanted to write a positive and celebratory post. So I thought I would revisit one of my favorite flicks, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, for which I have not a single unkind word.

Clueless movie poster

Clueless repositions the basic plot of Jane Austen’s Emma into a Beverly Hills high school. Like Austen’s title character, Clueless‘s heroine Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is a somewhat spoiled rich girl who operates in her own reality, one slightly off-kilter from everyone else’s perception of the world. But she is not stupid, or unkind, or even particularly egotistic. Although her matchmaking and various schemes to help others are almost always somewhat self-motivated, you wouldn’t call her selfish (not to her face). Cher is an extremely likeable (and relentlessly quotable) character. This entire movie could have easily been an exercise in “look at this dumb shallow bitch,” but Heckerling’s affection for her character (echoing Austen’s for Emma) and Silverstone’s charisma sidestep that antifeminist pitfall.

Dionne and Cher

Another delightfully feminist feature of Clueless is its depiction of female friendships. There are plenty of romantic subplots to go around in this movie, but the most important relationships are between Cher and her best friend Dionne (Stacey Dash) as well as Cher and her new friend/”project” Tai (Brittany Murphy). These relationships show a lot of love, mutual support, and genuine enjoyment of time spent together, reflecting real-life female friendships in a way that is STILL woefully underrepresented in media. But these friendships are not devoid of conflict or competitiveness, which also rings true. One of my favorite scenes is when Cher and Tai make up after a blowout fight, a conversation beginning with shy small talk but quickly escalating to mutual apologies and tearful appreciation of one another. Who hasn’t had this moment with their best girlfriend?

Cher and Tai make up after a fight

Clueless also boasts an exceptionally nuanced and respectful depiction of teen sexuality. When Cher, Dionne, and Tai discuss their respective levels of sexual experience (Tai has had sex, Dionne is “technically a virgin”, and Cher is “saving herself for Luke Perry”), no one’s choices are judged. Later, when Cher finds out the guy she’s crushing on is gay, she’s surprised but almost immediately embraces him as a close platonic friend.

In general, Clueless is extremely respectful of its teen characters, even as it satirizes their naïveté and superficial tendencies. Cher can be ditzy but still corrects a pretentious college student’s misquotation of Hamlet. Dionne’s boyfriend Murray is able to eloquently justify calling her “woman”: “street slang is an increasingly valid form of expression. Most of the feminine pronounces do have mocking, but not necessarily misogynistic undertones.” Tai marvels, “you guys talk like grown-ups.” This was three years before Dawson’s Creek forced awkwardly sophisticated through it’s teen mouthpieces, and leagues more successful.

Heckerling’s unexpected adaptation worked so well that Clueless launched an entire sub-genre of the high school-set classic literary adaptations; yielding everything from the delightful 10 Things I Hate About You (a take on The Taming of the Shrew), to the enjoyable but problematic She’s All That (one of Hollywood’s many Pygmalion adaptations), the drearily self-serious Cruel Intentions (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), and the brutally faithful O (Othello). And that’s a significantly abbreviated list (anyone else remember A Midsummer Night’s Dream-inspired Get Over It? Sisqó was in it! Does anyone else even remember Sisqó?). I for one would love to see a revival of this trend. If we’re going to bring back floral prints from the graveyard of the 1990s, why not this?

I strongly suspect there was some kind of magic radiation on set that dramatically slowed the aging process in the main cast, because Paul Rudd and Stacey Dash are basically the male and female poster children for “ageless,” and Alicia Silverstone and Donald Faison are still looking remarkably fresh faced themselves. [And now, I shall pour one out for gone-too-soon Brittany Murphy. RIP] But that is neither here nor there. Clueless is timeless not because of its preternaturally ageless cast, but because it is much more than just the cultural parody it appears to be at first blush.

Foreign Film Week: Growing Up Queer: ‘Water Lilies’ (2007) and ‘Tomboy’ (2011)

Written by Max Thornton, this review previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on June 26, 2012.

Céline Sciamma’s films are ever so French. Light on dialogue, they tend to rely on lingering shots of longing glances and exquisite mise-en-scène to reveal character; loosely plotted, they leave the impression less of a story than of a series of vignettes, of tiny moments freighted with great import.

These techniques are uniquely suited to the onscreen portrayal of adolescence. It almost seems churlish to complain that Water Lilies and Tomboy lack full structural coherence, because that’s arguably intentional. Growing up, after all, is not a tightly-plotted three-act hero’s journey with clear turning points, tidy linear progression through the successive stages of personal development, and a satisfying ending. It’s a messy and confusing struggle to find a place in the world, littered with incidents that may or may not ultimately be significant (with no way to tell the difference), and most of the time the morals make no sense.

Sciamma instinctively understands this, and the little stories she tells of growing up queer are given vivid life through her two greatest strengths as a filmmaker: her ability to coax marvelously deep and naturalistic performances out of her young actors, and her eye for a strikingly memorable little scene that perfectly encapsulates a moment of overpowering adolescent emotion – the normally boisterous Anne clutching at a lamppost and weeping in Water Lilies, for example, or Tomboy‘s Laure curling up on the couch, thumb in mouth, suddenly overwhelmed by an earlier humiliation.

Both films are carried on the remarkably expressive faces of their lead actresses. There are no voice-over monologues or expository conversations, but both Water Lilies and Tomboy present the inner life of their protagonists with stunning depth and rawness.

Movie poster for Water Lilies

The protagonist of Water Lilies is Pauline Acquart’s Marie, a quiet fifteen-year-old with a crush on Floriane, star of the local synchronized swimming team. Marie’s best friend Anne, meanwhile, has her eye on Floriane’s boyfriend François. So far, so Gossip Girl, but there is nothing over-dramatic or sensationalistic about the way this love quadrilateral plays out. Although the film’s primary focus is on the blossoming friendship between Marie and Floriane, there is a clear thematic through-line of what it is to grow up female in the patriarchy. Marie, Anne, and Floriane all embody different ways of being young women, and especially young women coming into their sexuality.

Anne, though less conventionally feminine than the other girls, is confidently heterosexual and determined to sleep with the boy she finds attractive. Marie is so eager to spend time with Floriane that she agrees to help her sneak out to meet François, and her yearnings for the lithe bodies slipping through the water are beautifully conveyed through moments such as the shot of Marie shifting, flustered, as Floriane unselfconsciously changes into a swimsuit right in front of her. Floriane herself, despite the reputation she cultivates (perhaps recognizing that denial would be futile – once branded a “slut,” a teenage girl is hopelessly trapped in a no-win morass of contradictory social pressures), eventually confesses to Marie that she has never actually had sex, and in fact is afraid to do so.

“If you don’t want to do it, don’t.”

“I have to.”

“Where did you read that?”

“All over my face, apparently. If he finds out I’m not a real slut, it’s over.”

Floriane recounts several instances of sexual harassment from men; when Marie has no similar stories to share, Floriane tells her, “You’re lucky… very lucky.” And perhaps to some extent she is. Perhaps, as Anne and Marie float fully-clothed in the pool at the end of the movie, while Floriane dances alone for the boys she’s not certain she even wants to be with, they are considering their good fortune: they, at least, are strong enough to defy the patriarchal dictates around female sexual behavior, to name and claim their desires (or lack thereof), to make mistakes and learn from them without being defined by them. Growing up female in this world is hard, but they know they will make it.

Movie poster Tomboy

Tomboy tells a very different story of growing up queer. Zoé Héran turns in a truly remarkable performance as androgynous ten-year-old Laure, who, on moving to a new neighborhood, is asked by the friendly Lisa, “T’es nouveau?” – “Are you new?” – in a way that genders Laure male. In that moment, Laure becomes Mikael, a boy who spends a happy summer among his new friends and his puppy-love girlfriend Lisa. For the duration of the summer, Laure is confined to home and family (well-meaning dad, heavily pregnant mom, hyper-femme little sister Jeanne), and Mikael is the face presented to the world.

Any ten-year-old lives in the present, and Mikael meets each challenge as it arises – sneaking away deep into the woods when the other boys casually take a pee break; snipping a girl’s swimsuit into a boy’s, and constructing a Play-Doh packer to fill it; swearing Jeanne to secrecy when Lisa unwittingly tells her about Mikael – even as it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that eventually Laure’s parents must find out about Mikael. As loving as they are, they still exert some gender-policing of their oldest child: Mom’s delight at hearing that Laure has made a female friend (“You’re always hanging out with the boys”) might have been tempered if she’d remembered that “copine” can also mean girlfriend!

The relationships between the various children are superbly observed, and constitute reason enough to see Tomboy in themselves. The energetic activities of childish horseplay that give Mikael such joy in himself and in his body – dancing enthusiastically with Lisa, playing soccer shirtless, wrestling in swimsuits on the dock – are balanced by the many lovely domestic scenes demonstrating the closeness of Laure’s relationship with Jeanne. This is honestly one of the most moving and genuine cinematic portrayals of a sibling relationship in years, and after her initial shock Jeanne takes to the idea of Mikael like a duck to water, boasting to another child about her awesome big brother, and telling her parents that her favorite of Laure’s new friends is Mikael.

The parents themselves, unfortunately, are much less accepting of Mikael. The film’s ending is ambiguous, allowing for multiple readings of the exact nature of Laure’s queerness; indeed, the film has been criticized as “an appropriation of trans narratives by a cis filmmaker toward her own purposes”; but to me the ending is terribly unhappy. With deep breaths and with profound conflict on Héran’s preternaturally expressive face, the character is forced to claim “Laure,” the name and gender assigned at birth and not the ones of choice. The cissupremacy has won this round.

Though Tomboy is the better film, the two movies make excellent companion pieces. Between them they depict a range of queerness and explore a variety of strategies for growing up queer (and/or female) in a hostile world. And yet they offer no easy solutions, no cheap moralizing, no promise that it gets better. These films, and the characters they portray, simply are. And, in the end, isn’t that the one universal truth of queer people? There is no ur-narrative of queerness. There is no right or wrong way to be queer. We simply are.

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Max Thornton is a Bitch Flicks writer, blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.