When I contemplate women in film, two thoughts come to mind: women in front of the camera, and women behind the camera. We are all familiar with the stereotypical female characters in movies and TV shows that portray traditional, predictable roles. There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it isn’t teaching us anything new about what it’s like to actually be a woman. When I fell in love with independent film in the early 2000s, it was for one reason: I had never experienced anything as risky or as honest as filmmaking without rules or boundaries. This was especially true in terms of exploration of female characters. It was refreshing, enlightening and, eventually, life changing.
Blue is the Warmest Color
This is a guest post by Jen West.
When I contemplate women in film, two thoughts come to mind: women in front of the camera, and women behind the camera. We are all familiar with the stereotypical female characters in movies and TV shows that portray traditional, predictable roles. There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it isn’t teaching us anything new about what it’s like to actually be a woman. When I fell in love with independent film in the early 2000s, it was for one reason: I had never experienced anything as risky or as honest as filmmaking without rules or boundaries. This was especially true in terms of exploration of female characters. It was refreshing, enlightening and, eventually, life changing.
One of my favorite films of 2013 was Blue is the Warmest Color. It’s an outstanding example of including high-impact female characters. I stumbled into it one rainy afternoon in Atlanta, flying solo on a weeknight. I grabbed my bag of popcorn and took a seat in the nearly empty theater. I was originally intrigued by the trailer I had seen and the artwork of the mysterious girl with the bright blue hair. I soon saw that there was something different happening between these characters that I had never experienced before— a depiction of a true lesbian love affair on screen. I was sucked into the world of Adèle, a 15-year-old girl exploring love and sexuality for the first time. I know some would argue that the characters were a little too pretty, making the film feel a little like soft porn at times, but I found it to be intimate and intense. It wasn’t afraid to take us in the bedroom and expose the passion that existed between the two girls. Isn’t sexuality a part of all of our lives, whether in abundance or lack thereof? We shouldn’t be afraid to explore that. It was a brave film and the actresses held nothing back for those parts. That’s what independent film is all about— taking risks and pulling out raw emotions in the viewer. I liked that it made me feel vulnerable. I loved that snot dripped out of Adèle’s nose every time she cried. It was female authenticity. I want more of that.
Brie Larson in Short Term 12
Another recent stand-out performance for me was from Brie Larson in Short Term 12. This is a great example of not shying away from the ugly parts of life. Her character, Grace, deals with past sexual abuse as a life-changing event and she continues to deal with it while working at a adolescent treatment facility. She shows us the face of an abuse survivor, which isn’t always pretty. Everyone has demons that chase them down eventually. Each person’s coping process is unique. Grace is a beautifully broken and complex character who will go down as one of my favorites of all time. If you haven’t seen it, then you are missing a pivotal film in the indie universe.
I want the ugly. Give me the behind-closed-doors intimate moments that really mean something to my own struggles. I don’t care about surface appearances and the masks that each of us wear every day in order to fit in. The true self lies far beyond that. It’s a scary, but unifying experience to be let into another’s intimate universe. Film is a great medium to explore this concept, especially with female characters.
Nothing turns me on more than a powerful female performance, whether it be the actors on screen or the writers and directors behind the camera. As I’ve traveled the film festival circuit with short films of my own, I’ve always kept an eye out for my peers. Through this self-initiated challenge I’ve found the likes of Josephine Decker, Eliza Hittman, and Leah Meyerhoff. You should become familiar with these women. When you aren’t paid yet for your craft, when each film comes from your soul—that’s how you know someone is a real artist. It’s hard, sometimes even nearly impossible, but you do it anyway. There is absolutely no shame in wanting to be paid for your work, however there is something to be said for pursuing your passion just because it’s a part of your being. That’s the kind of filmmaker I strive to be.
Filmmaker Josephine Decker
For all of you female filmmakers out there— let’s keep creating characters that reveal something important about our humanity. It doesn’t matter if it’s done through humor or drama. For those of you who are film fanatics, or just the occasional theater dweller, I challenge you to discover more independent female-focused content and filmmakers. It’s easy to turn on Netflix and watch what’s on top of your recommended viewing list. Instead, why not dive into something different (but equally convenient) like Seed & Spark, or just dig a little deeper into your preferred medium for that independent film you’ve never heard of. Better yet, attend your local film festival and see what’s surfacing beyond the TV and movie theater. I guarantee that you’ll discover amazing female-focused content once you start searching.
Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Jen West is a writer and director living in Atlanta, Georgia. She is known for Piece of Cake (2006), Crush (2011), Bubble (2013) and “Call Me” (2014 – music video for St. Paul and the Broken Bones). She wrote her feature script, Electric Bleau, as part of a creative residency with the Cucalorus Film Festival in 2014. Currently she is in preproduction for her next short, Little Cabbage and is crowdfunding on Seed & Spark.
Local film festivals have proliferated in recent years–every city and town seems to want its own Sundance and my city is no exception: every spring it has a well-respected, week-long independent film festival with celebrity appearances and panels. But well-publicized festivals focusing on women don’t seem to be part of this trend. In the 90s women in the arts, not just film, seemed to finally be given a chance to do their own work and tell their own stories. In the era of ‘Thelma and Louise,’ women taking up a more equitable piece of the pie in filmmaking (as well as in writing books and in the visual arts) seemed inevitable. In the 21st century we seem to be going backward: the percentage of women making films has dropped since 2012 so we’re overdue for a festival like Athena: “a celebration of women and leadership.”
In the 90s and early 00s women’s film festivals were more common than they are now: my local independent art house had one that lasted a week every year, complete with celebrity appearances and panels. Of course, some of the films were crap (or just not my taste) and I remember one panel in which successful women directors made the puzzling argument that so few women were allowed to direct films because movies were “a business.” I’m sure law firms, banks, publishers, and uh, businesses would be glad to know that all they had to do was declare, “Hey, we’re a business” and they magically wouldn’t have to put any more women in leadership positions either.
Local film festivals have proliferated in recent years–every city and town seems to want its own Sundance and my city is no exception: every spring it has a well-respected, week-long independent film festival with celebrity appearances and panels. But well-publicized festivals focusing on women don’t seem to be part of this trend. In the 90s women in the arts, not just film, seemed to finally be given a chance to do their own work and tell their own stories. In the era of Thelma and Louise women taking up a more equitable piece of the pie in filmmaking (as well as in writing books and in the visual arts) seemed inevitable. In the 21st century we seem to be going backward: the percentage of women making films has dropped since 2012 so we’re overdue for a festival like Athena: “a celebration of women and leadership.”
Short Term 12received excellent reviews when it opened this past fall, as it did during its premiere during last year’s SXSW, but suffered from a lackluster performance at the box office, perhaps in part because of the trailer, which makes the film seem like another rebel-goes-against-the system movie, an oversimplification of the many currents running through the film.
Grace (Brie Larson), the main character, works at a group home for kids who seem to range from middle-school-age to 18. Cretton himself worked at a similar facility and more than one scene has the counselors: Grace, Grace’s live-in boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), newcomer Nate (Rami Malek) and Jessica ( Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatrizwho gets hardly any lines) first shooting the shit and joking with each other as coworkers in an office might and then having to leap into action in the face of a crisis: a sudden shift familiar to anyone who has worked in direct care.
Short Term 12 gets right for much of the film, what so many other films about human services get wrong. Larson’s Grace seems to be wearing hardly any, if any, makeup and what she wears to work consists of high top sneakers, skinny jeans and a loose shirt–clothes that can be thrown away if they get ripped or stained. When we see her dressed up later in the film, she doesn’t suddenly seem to have acquired a stylist (the one other “ordinary” women characters in mainstream movies have): she wears ankle boots that don’t really match her not-very-flattering dress and still eschews makeup. She rides a bike to the facility: most of these “counseling” jobs pay very little, so the character couldn’t afford the new car a more mainstream film would give her. She’s also the boss on the floor, the manager, and she’s not portrayed as manipulative or mean, as so many other women bosses are in films, just alternately (and appropriately) authoritative, playful and tender with the kids.
Grace and Mason
Short Term 12 is based on a short film of the same name made by the writer-director in 2008, in which the protagonist was a man. Some aspects of the gender change go smoothly. We find out Grace has a history of her own much like the troubled kids she looks after, and the film contains the first instance I’ve seen where a woman commits (mild) self-injury in response to some very stressful news but avoids treating her like a headcase. Saintly Mason (impossibly patient and understanding with Grace; he even does all the cooking) also comes from an unstable background (though eventually he landed with a large, very close, Latino-headed, multiracial foster family). The film starts to strain credulity here: although some people working in human services are trying to give back to a system that helped them, those people are often not the most effective at their jobs (or if they are, stay for a limited time and then go on to other careers). Many of the people who end up doing the best work for the longest time in direct care are, like Nate, from relatively stable backgrounds that enable them to deal with the stress of the job without reliving their own trauma (they are also able to occasionally rely on their middle-class or wealthy families for rental deposits on apartments or used cars to make up for their very low salaries). In real life, the “Graces” of the world, no matter how kindly, or what inside knowledge they would bring to a care facility, would get a job in an office, retail, a restaurant, anywhere that wouldn’t dredge up the ghosts of the past (which Grace has avoided talking to even Mason about).
Grace also has an unplanned pregnancy and here the film really veers off into Fantasyland. What Cretton never seems to consider is: the job we’ve seen that Grace loves and is so good at is one she could never keep if she has the baby. The work is physically rough (adolescents kick at and strike out at counselors, certainly not ideal for a woman in the latter stages of pregnancy) and human services direct care jobs don’t typically offer paid maternity leave or childcare. Even if she were able to return to the care facility, her salary is probably barely enough to support one person, let alone two: Mason’s wages kicked in would barely make a difference.
Jayden
Troubling too is the latter part of the film when Grace identifies deeply with Jayden, (Kaitlyn Dever) a sharply dressed, artistic, new girl in the facility who, we find out, shares not only Grace’s flair for pencil sketching, but also seems to give signs that she has been abused. Grace’s ensuing actions made me think Cretton has seen too many Bruce Willis and Jack Nicholson films. Her overinvolvement in Jayden’s home life includes breaking and entering and vandalism–and nearly involves assault and battery with a deadly weapon. All the while, Cretton seems not to realize that Grace’s behavior is endangering Jayden more than anyone else.
Of course it all works out in the end. Jayden tells authorities about her father’s abuse; Grace decides to go through with the pregnancy; even the kid turning 18 and aging out of the facility, the one who attempted suicide, gets a foxy, new girlfriend and a job afterward. Hollywood endings can’t help polluting even “realistic” independent films.
Lake Bell as Carol
In a World is a much lighter film than Short Term 12 and a lot sloppier: many of the contrivances seem like placeholders in the script, meant to be replaced with better-thought out action later on, but the movie still contains some truths that don’t make their way into films directed and written by men. Bell plays Carol who is struggling to make a living as a vocal coach and a voice over artist. We see her midway in the film in a circumstance that male directors and writers rarely present, where a man who we’ve seen is somewhat repellent and seems to be feeding her a line to have sex with her succeeds, not because the Carol doesn’t realize he’s feeding her a line (and is perhaps not who he seems) but because he’s reasonably attractive and it’s only for one night. Bell presents the Irish guy (Jason O’Mara) who tempts Carol’s sister (Michaela Watkins) into cheating on her good-guy husband (Rob Corddry) as genuinely handsome and charming: too many straight male directors seem to not notice that the men who get all the ladies in their films would leave most women cold.
Bell isn’t above using men’s bodies as a kind of punch line either, the way women’s bodies (especially old or fat ones) are used in other films. When Carol’s Dad (Fred Melamed) is shirtless, as he is for more than one scene, we see him in all his hairy-backed, saggy-pecced glory.
Carol and her one night stand
When Carol and her real love interest (Demetri Martin) in the film first kiss, she’s the one who makes the first move. When they kiss a second time she first feeds him a line of her own (though unlike that of her one-night stand her line isn’t insincere). All these moments might seem like tiny victories in a film, but other women seem to want to support Bell’s vision: cameos in the film include Eva Longoria (trying to approximate cockney vowels with a cork in her mouth), Cameron Diaz and Geena Davis. Maybe they noticed, as many of the rest of us have, that the trajectory from performer to director that seems so easy and natural for men (both Jon Hamm and John Slattery from Mad Men have also directed more than one episode of the series) is not one that women can readily follow (neither Christina Hendricks nor Elisabeth Moss, nor any other actress on the series has directed a single episode of Mad Men–yet).
That reason is the crux at my argument that as good a film as Short Term 12 is (and as “strong” as its female protagonist may be) because it’s directed by a man, it doesn’t belong in Athena or any other women’s film festival. The producer of 12 told the audience in the Q & A after the film that the writer-director, as a result of this modestly budgeted, not very financially successful film (which won some minor awards) was now writing something for Jennifer Lawrence. In an earlier “master class” (really a Q & A) with Callie Khouri, the writer of the big-budget, huge hit Thelma and Louise (for which she won an Academy Award) informed us that she didn’t get to direct a feature film for ten years after Thelma came out–and hasn’t gotten to direct one since. Khouri isn’t the only one who is facing resistance: it’s a story other women who have made well-reviewed, theater-released films are still telling today–and won’t stop telling until they get the showcases they deserve.
Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast,xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.
Last weekend, several ‘Bitch Flicks’ writers were lucky enough to attend the Athena Film Festival (AFF) at Barnard College in New York. The festival bills itself as “a celebration of women and leadership,” and it’s a four-day extravaganza of women-centered and women-helmed films. I already wrote about ‘Radical Grace,’ the terrific documentary about nuns fighting for social justice, and here is a whirlwind tour of some of the other highlights of my AFF weekend.
Last weekend, several Bitch Flicks writers were lucky enough to attend the Athena Film Festival (AFF) at Barnard College in New York. The festival bills itself as “a celebration of women and leadership,” and it’s a four-day extravaganza of women-centered and women-helmed films. I already wrote about Radical Grace, the terrific documentary about nuns fighting for social justice, and here is a whirlwind tour of some of the other highlights of my AFF weekend.
SUPER RAD
Maidentrip
You may recall reading a few years ago about Laura Dekker, the then 14-year-old Dutch girl who had to battle the authorities to be permitted to sail solo around the world. Dekker won, and Jillian Schlesinger’s film Maidentriptells the story of her journey.
Laura Dekker is, as you might expect from someone who sails solo around the world at an age when most of us are primarily concerned with acne and algebra, a fascinating figure. According to Schlesinger, in the course of her two years at sea, Dekker only shot ten hours’ worth of video diary footage, and so much of the film is reconstructed around ex post facto interviews. Dekker is an extraordinarily self-possessed and contemplative young woman. If she were twenty years older and male, somebody would write a film based on her life and it would be hailed as a remarkable character study of an enigmatic figure and win all the Academy Awards. We so rarely see people like Laura Dekker in our popular culture, where teenage girls are portrayed as insecure, frivolous, or catty, that this film is a much-needed counterweight to the bulk of film and TV. Rachel and Megan wrote a detailed review recently, which you should read if you haven’t already.
(Be aware, though, that this film might make you feel terrible about yourself. At 16, Laura Dekker had circumnavigated all 24,000-some miles of this planet. I just turned 25 and I still consider it an accomplishment if I can get out of bed in the morning.)
Also, it made me kind of seasick.
Short Term 12
As a teenager in the UK, I watched embarrassing amounts of Tracy Beaker, so I have a soft spot for stories about kids in care. For a children’s show, I think Beaker set the bar quite high for realism and heartbreak without dissolving into schmaltz, and Short Term 12definitely delivered on that front.
The center of the film is Brie Larson’s Grace, a young woman who works at a foster home, but the ensemble is crucial too, from starry-eyed naif Nate to sassy Luis. When difficult 15-year-old Jayden arrives at the home, Grace begins to suspect that the girl’s problems mirror her own painful past, and becomes determined to help her. Is that a cliché? Undeniably, but it’s pulled off with such deftness and sensitivity that I couldn’t help loving the film. Both the humor and the awfulness of daily life in a residential home really shine through, but it’s the crackling chemistry between Grace and Jayden that makes the film for me. Not quite sisters, not quite teacher/student, not quite friends, theirs is a mentor/mentee relationship that showcases female guidance at its best.
One interesting factoid about the film is that it began life as a short in which the Grace character was a man. Not having seen the short, I can’t directly compare the two versions, but there are some aspects that are clearly changes made for a female character. However, they seem reasonably organic, and Grace is such a developed character (and Brie Larson such a wonderful actor) that I mostly set aside my reservations about certain over-employed plot points.
Regina
It’s no secret that awesome religious women are an especial enthusiasm of mine. Since the exclusion of women from the hierarchies of the Abrahamic faiths has been so thorough for so many centuries, the women who have left their mark on the traditions have tended to be particularly strong, determined, and fierce. Kind of like Beyonce, but with God instead of pop music.
Regina Jonas was the first fully ordained female rabbi, and she was certainly a very strong Jewish woman. Reginafocuses on her life, from her childhood ambition toward the rabbinate to her untimely death in Auschwitz. Diana Groó’s film is poetic to a fault, offering frustratingly little context or explanation for its monochrome images, but it’s a fascinating story of an intriguing figure. To be honest, the film is more of a starting point for learning about the rabbi than a comprehensive source of information, but luckily there is more information about Regina Jonas on the web, and I am grateful to this film for bringing her to my attention.
Rabbi Regina Jonas is taking precisely none of your shit.
As well as these films, the Athena Film Festival gave me the opportunity to see some rather more film-festival-specific events, including a wonderful program of short films and a panel discussion in which some wonderful women film writers talked about the role of the Bechdel Test today (look out for a detailed write-up from one of my Bitch Flicks colleagues soon). My Athena weekend was terrific, and I can’t wait for AFF 2015.
Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He got to meet NPR’s Linda Holmes at AFF, which was very exciting for him.
