Tag: Women Film Directors

Top Ten Reasons Why I Am Thankful for Lake Bell’s ‘In a World’

Movie poster for In a World …
This is a guest post by Molly McCaffrey.

1) Number one and most important of all, I’m thankful this movie was written and directed by a woman and that it’s a story about a strong, smart, interesting woman.

Director and screenwriter Lake Bell at the Sundance Film Festival

I am incredibly thankful about that.

2) I’m thankful this movie stars an actress who doesn’t look like every other Hollywood actress. Yes, Bell is beautiful, but she also doesn’t have the button nose, full lips, perfect posture, and blond hair that has become so annoyingly ubiquitous among our female movie stars.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) sing their guts out in In a World …

And neither do her co-stars…

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Cher (Tig Notaro) watch Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) record a voice-over.

(You also gotta love a movie that has both Tig Notaro and Geena Davis.)

3) On a related note, I’m thankful Bell’s protagonist, Carol Solomon, doesn’t always act like a leading lady—she shuffles, lurches, and acts generally spazzy. She doesn’t always look glamorous either—she doesn’t always wear makeup or look perfectly primped and often wears regular-people clothes (sweatpants, thermal underwear, t-shirts, football jerseys, overalls, ill-fitting dresses, etc.)—just like the rest of us.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) hatch plans to take over the voice-over industry.

At the same time, I’m glad Carol looks attractive when she wants to without looking trashy or showing off all the goods.

4) I’m also thankful that several men are attracted to Carol even though she doesn’t know how to dress or stand up straight (and that the men who are drawn to her are attractive but not perfect either).

Carol Solomon’s love interest, Louis (Demetri Martin)

5) I love, too, that this film shows an intelligent, driven, attractive young female protagonist in a relationship, but it isn’t what defines her. Let me say that again: Thank God her relationship doesn’t define her!

I was equally thrilled that Carol had casual sex with some random guy she met at a party and celebrated it. And that she didn’t end up regretting her actions or have something bad happen to her as a result. In this movie, sex was just part of life—no big deal—much like it is in real life.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) karaoke the night away in In a World …

6) I was also head over heels over the fact that the two sisters—Carol and Dani—were so close and leaned on each other for everything.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her sister, Dani (Michaela Watkins)

I was glad, as well, that the person who had an “affair” in this movie was a woman (rather than a man) and that she didn’t actually go all the way.

7) I really appreciate, too, that this movie shows a young person living at home with a parent and that she isn’t doing so because she’s a lazy, lost, unmotivated slacker.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her father (Fred Melamed) argue about her career.

And I was truly blown away by the film’s characterization of Carol’s family—a real family having down-to-earth, regular problems.

No, nobody is dying of cancer, nobody is mentally ill or disabled, nobody is in prison, nobody is an alcoholic. The characters in this movie are just average people with average problems—like jealousy, resentment, miscommunication, and selfishness.

I am very grateful about that.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her father (Fred Melamed) on the way to an industry party.

8) I’m thrilled about several things relating to Carol’s job…

I’m relieved Carol works in a non-glamorous industry that we don’t usually see featured in movies—the voice-over industry.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) records a voice-over.

I love, too, that she cares so much about her work even though it doesn’t pay the bills.

And I’m glad that the film shows her having some success in that field without totally dominating it a la every other movie ever made (Erin Brockovich, Jerry Maguire, The Devil Wears Prada, Working Girl, etc., etc.).

9) I’m downright ecstatic about the fact that Carol didn’t have to trip or fall to make us laugh, avoiding the ridiculous formulas that often dominate movies about women.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) surrounded by her work notes in her bedroom at her father’s house.

Thank you for that, Lake Bell!

Tangentially, it was also awesome that Carol was irritated by stupid people doing stupid things and didn’t apologize for that.

10) And last but not least, I’m incredibly thankful this movie made me laugh and feel and, for God’s sake, think.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell)

If only all movies did the same.

 

 
Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She has worked with Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple and received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Currently she teaches at Western Kentucky University and designs books for Steel Toe Books. She is at work on her first memoir, You Belong to Us, which tells the story of McCaffrey meeting her biological family. 

A (Bad) Teacher

Written by Max Thornton.
  
Movie poster for A Teacher
People sure like to make movies about teacher-student relationships. It’s always incredibly skeevy, of course, to watch someone in a position of authority abuse their power, but cinematic representations are rarely as nakedly awful as the reality.
A Teacher consciously downplays the really appalling aspects of intergenerational classroom romance without ever intimating that it’s anything other than a very bad idea. As suggested by the title, the film focuses entirely on young English teacher Diana Watts (played by Lindsay Burdge), for whom the relationship is at least as destructive as it is for Eric, the pupil (who is, if it makes a difference, a high-school senior and significantly bigger physically than she is).
The total focus on Diana is signaled from the opening classroom scene, where the camera stays fixed on her, regardless of who is speaking. This directorial choice recurs throughout the film, and it serves to highlight her naïve solipsism. It’s tricky to maintain audience empathy for a viewpoint character while also drawing attention to her self-centered immaturity, so props to director Hannah Fidell for finding a deft way to put us inside Diana’s head (hearing other characters’ dialogue from her perspective) while still maintaining an outsider’s gaze (looking at her face).
Lindsay Burdge as Diana.
Overall, both style and acting contribute to an odd sense that Diana is not the one doing the victimizing in this circumstance. Factor out her job, and this movie would just be the story of dumb puppy love, a young woman so hopelessly smitten with the very idea of romance that she’s heedless of the realities of the situation. But, of course, her job is the point – the movie’s called A Teacher – and the experience, knowledge, and wisdom implied by that position are dramatically at odds with her incredibly adolescent attitude toward the whole relationship.
Early in the film, while hooking up with Eric in his car, Diana reminisces about similar trysts from her own high-school days. It’s a tellingly sad and uncomfortable little moment that kicks off a spiral of nonstop sadness and discomfort: Watching a grown-ass woman sext and Facebook-stalk a teenage boy is both tragic and kind of disturbing. There’s something Carey Mulligan-esque about Burdge’s face when she’s in bed with Eric, evoking (as does the title) another film in which the questionable sexual relationship is the other way around, age- and power-wise.
Perhaps the echo is deliberate. Diana never seems to have any power in this relationship, never acts like the teacher or the one giving the education. Even in the bedroom, Eric calls the shots (“Take your clothes off.” “Come here.”), and, while driving his car, he describes feeling as though his penis is getting bigger, coming into its own, “powering up.” For him, sex with an attractive young teacher is a power fantasy come true. The lovelorn look of the infatuated is notably absent from his face throughout the film, even as Diana is distracted from grading papers by soft-focus fantasies of him.
Oh girl.
Diana doesn’t have to be alone in these delusions of romance. The hand of friendship is consistently extended by her coworker and her roommate – both of whom are women, the latter of whom is even named Sophia– but she ignores this potential salvation in order to continue down the self-destructive path of reliving her high-school sexuality and daydreaming of underage man-meat.
That’s not really an unfair assessment of Eric, who is little more than a cipher. He’s just there to be strong and silent and sexy, a backdrop for Diana’s nostalgic projections, whose actual personality she never seems to take into account. Almost everything he says to her is to do with sex. By contrast, Sophia tells Diana she cares about her. In a heartbreaking pre-Thanksgiving scene, Sophia monologues anxiously about the upcoming holiday with her family, and Diana completely ignores her in order to text topless selfies to her teenage boyfriend.
Ultimately, the film’s lesson is of the value of companionship and empathy, and the danger of total self-absorption. Someone who only chases empty nostalgia for her former self (check her name, Diana, and in case you didn’t get it her brother’s called Hunter), and never bothers with the richness of female friendship that is right there in her life, is not going to end happily. A shallow focus on finding hunkitude in all the wrong places, instead of paying attention to your friends, is not the pathway to a fulfilling life. 
Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He can never format this bio line correctly.

‘Touchy Feely’ Explores the Link Between Physical and Emotional Contact

Written by Lady T.

Josh Pais and Rosemarie DeWitt in Touchy Feely

A free-spirited massage therapist develops a powerful aversion to touch, alienating herself from her clients, her boyfriend, and even her own body. Meanwhile, her straitlaced, reserved brother develops an almost miraculous ability to heal jaw pain in the patients of his dental practice.

This is the premise of Touchy Feely, a new film by writer-director Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister’s Sister). Rosemarie DeWitt plays Abby and Josh Pais plays Scott in a story where sister and brother find themselves abruptly switching roles. Abby becomes isolated from the people around her, and Scott connects with his patients for the first time and finds a new source of energy and inspiration in his life.

Abby examines her hands after developing her aversion to physical contact

Shelton uses extreme close-ups of the human body to show the source of Abby’s fear of contact, focusing on thin, fine hairs and cracks in the skin. Her approach to depicting Scott’s sudden gift for healing is a little different, giving us a montage of grateful patients hugging the awkward dentist after he cures their problems.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Abby and Scott, though sharing relatively little screentime together, are two sides of the same coin. Their emotional health and sense of well-being are directly linked to their comfort with physical contact. Abby is emotionally connected to others and at peace with herself when she can make physical connections with people, and cut off and withdrawn when physical contact sends her running into the bathroom.

Sometimes, actual touch isn’t necessary to feel a connection. Inspired by his recent successes at work, Scott meets with Abby’s friend Bronwyn (Allison Janney) to learn about the Japanese art of reiki, where little hand-on-skin contact takes place. Abby, meanwhile, experiments with ecstasy, and while it doesn’t immediately cure her aversion to touch, she experiences the world in a different way, with her senses of sight and smell heightened. Jenny (Ellen Page), Scott’s daughter, is one of the only characters who can put her desire for human contact into words, saying, “Do you ever want to kiss someone so badly that it hurts your skin?”

Scott learns about the practice of reiki from Bronwyn (Allison Janney)

Shelton’s direction is careful, patient, and intimate, lingering on her actors’ faces and bodies, letting their physicality do the talking rather than overwhelming the viewer with dialogue. It’s a wise choice in a film that’s so focused on the relationships the characters have with their bodies and their comfort with physical contact.

What’s missing from Touchy Feely is the motivation. We know

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a screenplay, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

Spike Lee’s "Essential Films": More Annoying Than Your Average List

Filmmaker Spike Lee

 
Written by Robin Hitchcock

Any list of the “greatest” “essential” “best” “definitive” films (or books/tv shows/albums/Got Milk? ads/insert your pop cultural poison) is going to have its detractors. The controversy that inevitably follows these lists is a big part of the reason we make them in the first place. Dissecting a list’s failures and defending its bold choices is most of the fun. So I suppose I should thank Spike Lee for giving us all another opportunity to quibble, with his recently-released selection of 87 “essential” films he tells his NYU students every aspiring filmmaker must see. But mostly, I’m just so tired of this bullshit.

Spike Lee’s Milk ad, which is on my essential list.

The only movie on the list with a female director is City of God, co-directed by Katia Lund. Spike Lee thinks aspiring filmmakers will have the essentials even if they have only seen one movie with a female (co-)director.

Which I don’t have that much to say about. I am ZERO SURPRISED. The marginalization of women filmmakers is nothing new. Seeing it happen again annoys me, of course, but it also EXHAUSTS me. We keep telling male cultural arbiters, “HEY, DON’T IGNORE US” and they keep doing it.
And what makes me particularly upset in this case is that Spike Lee released this list in the context of trying to prove his genuine support of filmmakers excluded from the Hollywood power system.
Spike Lee is funding his latest project with Kickstarter. Like Rob Thomas’s and Zach Braff’s recent Kickstarter campaigns, this has generated a bit of controversy. Sure, we’re all excited there is going to be a Veronica Mars movie, but most of us have mixed feelings about established artists crowdsourcing their projects. It seems to co-opt the platform from the truly independent artists initially associated with Kickstarter, artists without access to the alternative resources (including, among other things, significant personal wealth) these established filmmakers could tap if necessary.

In the YouTube clip above, Spike Lee argues that criticism is a fallacy. Kickstarter isn’t a zero sum game, and he’s bringing people who have never even heard of Kickstarter, especially people of color, to the site and to the crowdfunding movement generally. I have no idea if that is true. He says there is data regarding Thomas’s and Braff’s Kickstarters bringing in first-time backers, but I haven’t actually seen that data. Anyway, it’s a plausible idea, and a nice one. I hope it is true.
But wishing doesn’t make it so. And when Spike Lee points out that he’s been crowdsourcing his movies his whole career, he seems to fail to recognize that so has every other independent filmmaker in the history of ever and the entire point of the Kickstarter revolution is to help out those people who don’t have the personal networks he refers to. [I know Spike Lee has had trouble with studios over fear of controversy, and that his films haven’t been huge financial successes, but he is a LIVING LEGEND. When he makes those phone calls, people will answer.]
In the same video defense, Spike Lee argues that he must be on the side of young filmmakers because he’s taught at NYU for fifteen years and has donated $20,000 to the Spike Lee production fund at NYU for young filmmakers. [Lee’s Kickstarter goal is $1,500,000.]
[He also name drops Mike Tyson as “his good friend.” I can’t tell if he is kidding?]
Lee shared this list, part of his curriculum for this students, as evidence of this “I just want to advance the medium” message. And then the list pretty much ignores women, and is surprisingly mainstream in a lot of other ways (choosing an “unexpected” Woody Allen movie isn’t really THAT outré). I’m not reassured by it at all.  
Though I’m guessing this additional angle of controversy brought more eyes to Spike Lee’s Kickstarter. Someone remind me when I’m famous and revered to use my immense media platform to argue that Gremlins 2: The New Batch is the greatest film of the 20th century so I can generate some hype through grumpy blog posts like this one. 

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who really does love Gremlins 2, even if it isn’t quite as good as Do the Right Thing.

Travel Films Week: Finding a Brave ‘New World’

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
This is a guest post by Li Lu.
It’s quite serendipitous that May is “Feminist Travel Films” month here on Bitch Flicks. My film, There Is a New World Somewhere (TIANWS), is exactly that. We are crowdfunding on Seed&Spark, a platform exclusive to truly independent films and filmmakers. We are midway through our campaign, and my team and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s going thus far.

Our film is centered around Sylvia, a troubled young woman. Sylvia struck out from her small town roots in Texas to try her luck in New York City. Why New York? Well, I think E. B. White said it best:

Many of [NYC’s] settlers are probably here to merely escape, not face, reality. But whatever it means, it is a rather rare gift, and I believe it has a positive effect on the creative capacities of New Yorkers – for creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.” –from E. B. White’s Here Is New York

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
Her “creation” comes in the form of painting. Sylvia strives to achieve success as an artist, but after years of rejection, the honeymoon is over. Now, the city is oppressive rather than inspiring. When an old friend invites Sylvia back to Texas for her wedding, Sylvia jumps at a chance to escape her diminishing self to find the confidence she’s left behind. But on the night before the wedding, she meets Esteban, an electrifying drifter. He dares her to join him on a roadtrip he plans to take through the Deep South. On the morning of the wedding, the two strangers speed off toward New Orleans, leaving the wedding party behind.

Sounds like a dreamy escape, doesn’t it? Travel, for most, is the highest form of escapism. Vacations take you away from the monotony of the daily grind and are the only allotted times when we are allowed to shut that phone off 100%.

This kind of “escapism” is tied to a kind of forgetting or relaxation, but what happens when the act of letting go becomes a euphemism (or “excuse” instead of euphemism) for burying deeper problems at bay? Sylvia, our heroine, takes escapism to the absolute extreme – she literally runs away into the unknown to avoid facing her own shortcomings. It’s an intimate portrayal of a young woman at the sobering, pivotal moment when she must choose to continue to try or to retreat completely. I’m sure everyone has had that moment when you ask yourself: At what point do my dreams begin to hurt me?

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
Esteban isn’t a perfect man either. He’s a failed musician and has refused to let music become a source for third party pain. He drifts from one place to the next, and seems to kindle a true lust for life. Sylvia admires him and attaches herself to him in hopes of emulating his free spirit. The two find each other at different points in their lives, but they are both just as lost.

This is where the road comes in. Roadtrips are amazing. They give the explorer the freedom to experience and connect with different people and places along the way. There is no itinerary other than the time you allow yourself to become lost within it.

So is this kind of escapism “bad”? Is it selfish? Why does this term connote a negative, judgmental tone?

Ultimately, no. I think it’s necessary to detach from our obligations and get lost for a while, even if it hurts the ones we love. As human beings (let alone professional creatives), we forget that inspiration is the key element to everything that we do. In all honestly, forcing creativity is the crux of the problem. I recently picked up a book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work to try to see how my heroes did it. The ultimate conclusion? Practice makes perfect, but you can’t rush it. Although Sylvia ditches her friends for a random stranger, she is choosing to embark on a journey of self-discovery, even if she did so unconsciously. And she has to hope that her friends can understand and love her all the same.

Still from There Is a New World Somewhere
What makes this a feminist film? As a female filmmaker, I want to tell this story because it is so intensely intimate to Sylvia’s point of view. I relish the intimacy of films such as Oslo August, 31 or Lust, Caution, and I want to make a film that doesn’t shy away from hard or complex issues. The love scenes will be scenes, not flashes of toned muscles and fluttering eyelashes. Yes, you can call it a coming of age film, but please don’t expect quirky shrugs or one-liners. This is a film about the fight, and all the beauty and ugliness it can contain. I’m not shying away from the hard stuff. I’m not making a self-important film either. I think anyone who has tried to express anything creative can relate to Sylvia’s fears and can take away something meaningful from the film. As Wim Wenders said, “I want to make personal films, not private films.”

All in all, the story of TIANWS and its journey to getting made has clearly been an introspective one. Putting this process out there for all to see is scary as shit. But when I feel this vulnerable, it usually means I’m doing something right.

Here’s to going for it.

To all the roads ahead,

Li

Li Lu was born in Suzhou, China & raised all around the US. She is an alumna of USC’s School of Cinema-TV. Her narrative work has played international festivals and screening series. Her music videos have aired on MTV, Nickelodeon, and YouTube, with some surpassing 1 million views. She loves Siberian huskies.

Travel Films Week: "It Seems to Me That She Came From the Sea": A Review of Agnes Varda’s ‘Vagabond’

Agnès Varda directs Vagabond
This is a guest review by Rachael Johnson.
Vagabond is one of Agnès Varda’s finest films. First released in 1985, its title in French is Sans Toit Ni Loi–Without Roof or Law or Homeless and Lawless. It is the story of Mona, a young homeless woman roaming the landscape of a French wine-growing region in deepest winter. Lined with a feminist sensibility, Vagabond is both naturalistic and formally remarkable. Filmed in a realistic, pseudo-documentary style, it is structurally ambitious and bleakly poetic. Varda, interestingly, dedicates her film to Natalie Sarraute, one of the key writers of the Nouveau Roman (New Novel), the French literary movement that challenged post-war narrative conventions. Vagabond also features a compelling central performance by Sandrine Bonnaire. The actress, unsurprisingly, won a César (French Oscar) for her courageous turn as Mona. The film itself won the Golden Lion at the 1985 Venice Film Festival.
We begin at the end with the discovery of Mona’s corpse in a ditch. The young vagabond, it seems clear, froze to death. Through interviews with the people she met on the road as well as flashbacks, Vagabond explores the riddle of Mona. The young woman, it soon becomes apparent, is a complex, contradictory figure. Although spunky and independent, she can be curiously passive and sluggish. She does not care what others think of her but is defensive when challenged. She can also be as stubborn and sullen as a small child. Mona’s grit and sass are evident in the opening flashbacks when we see her flipping off a truck driver. There is, equally, a sensuality and earthiness to the young woman. We see her first–in long shot–emerging naked from the sea. The unseen interviewer (Varda herself) narrates in voice-over: “It seems to me that she came from the sea.” 
Sandrine Bonnaire as Mona Bergeron in Vagabond
The director’s feminist aesthetics are apparent in the framing of these early flashbacks. As Mona emerges from the sea, the viewer sees that she is being watched by two young men. Varda’s shot of the naked Mona is succeeded by a shot of postcards of naked women for sale in a bar frequented by the same young men. Disturbingly, they talk of missed opportunities. Varda depicts the sexual objectification and exploitation of Mona in a quite unobtrusive, subtle fashion. Many of the male characters reveal their misogyny themselves in interviews. A garage owner who exploits Mona has the audacity to say female drifters are “always after men.”
Many of the women Mona meets seem to understand and appreciate her more. A few even envy her mobility and freedom. A teenager longingly observes, “She was free; she goes where she likes.” Another much older woman admires her character: “She knows what she wants.” Amusingly, she tells her husband that she would have been better off if she had kicked him out at Mona’s age. The charged, poignant comments suggest deep female dissatisfaction with the domestic space.
Mona can be a subversive, liberating force. There is a wonderful scene where she gets drunk on brandy with a wealthy, old lady. The old woman revels in Mona’s anarchic spirit and the mischief of the moment. She knows her nephew wants her money and home and Mona helps her cut through the bullshit of bourgeois propriety and hypocrisy. Amusingly, the young vagabond has been squatting in an abandoned wing of the woman’s château with a young man she has picked up. Mona is also–at first at least–a romantic figure to the old woman’s nurse. A dreamy woman disappointed in love, she is fascinated by Mona’s relationship with the young man. The lovers eat from cans in candlelight, drink wine, smoke pot and listen to music. We see them–in a fine tracking shot–wander the grounds of the property wrapped in blankets. Mona does not, however, play the conventional romantic role for long. An autonomous, capricious spirit, she abandons young male lovers and companions when she feels the need or inclination. 
Mona drinks with a wealthy older woman
The young vagabond is a complicated, ambiguous character. She is prepared to play the dependent, happy to take, and willing to steal. She hooks up with a sweet Tunisian vine-cutter who provides shelter and promises to provide. When he is forced to choose his job and co-workers over her, she is bitterly wounded. She is offered a role and place to stay by a goat farmer but chooses to do very little. She expresses interest in growing potatoes but does not take up the man’s offer of help. She even steals from his wife. The goat farmer, a university graduate, is repelled by Mona’s aimlessness and lack of work ethic. Calling Mona “a dreamer,” he tells her of friends who have been destroyed and taken by life on the road. Mona, it is true, has no plan or ideology. She is not on a journey of spiritual or intellectual enlightenment. She does not want to remake her world. Mona, for her part, defiantly asks why a highly-educated man would herd goats for a living. The suggestion is that the farmer is himself somewhat of a dreamer and even guilty of middle-class self-indulgence. It is never fully clear what drove Mona to choose the road, but we learn that she hated her secretarial job and “jumped-up bosses.” She no longer wants to play the game. When a female agronomist she meets asks Mona why she dropped out, she answers: “Champagne on the road’s better.” Does she believe herself? The factor of class is alluded to but not underscored in Vagabond. Mona quietly observes, “There are so many big houses, so many rooms.” But we know little of her background and education.
The agronomist is intrigued and troubled by the young woman’s way of life. She offers Mona food, champagne, and temporary shelter in her car. The middle-aged woman plays a sisterly-maternal part and expresses deep concern about the dangers that may befall Mona when she finally parts ways with her. They are realised. Mona’s journey takes a tragic turn when she is raped in the woods. Varda, notably, pulls her camera away from the horror. Mona’s life gradually begins to unravel. Although she gains a new set of (delinquent) companions, she becomes increasingly unmoored and scarred by her state. We see her vomiting at a bus station, bombed out of her mind, and we see her, finally, break down and cry. The cold will soon take her. 
Sandrine Bonnaire in Vagabond
Vagabond is an unsentimental study of the road and Mona is not drawn as particularly sweet or predictably heroic. The film does not address gender politics in direct, didactic fashion. Varda’s feminist sensibility and aesthetics are, however, evident throughout. The veteran director never sexually objectifies her female protagonist, and her portrait of Mona is complex, humane, and provocative. The young woman is, in many ways, a truly transgressive figure. Her vagabond state represents an absolute rejection of the comforts, confines, and conventions of domesticity. Although young and attractive, Mona refuses cultural norms of feminine beauty. Mona’s filthiness is, pointedly, the subject of incessant comment throughout Vagabond. With these repeated references, Varda alludes to the deep-rooted misogynist cultural belief that an unclean woman is nothing less than a monstrous aberration. A male student of the agronomist declares, “She’s revolting, a wreck. Makes me sick…She scares me because she revolts me.”
Mona intrigues, unsettles, and repels the people she meets. Vulnerable, variable, tough, apathetic, hedonistic, wayward, and free, she cannot be pinned down and defined. If Vagabond sounds like too grim a journey, it is not. It is an absorbing, at once harsh and beautiful tale about an enigmatic girl who wandered in winter.

Rachael Johnson has contributed articles on film to CINEACTION, www.objectif-cinema.com, and www.jgcinema.com.

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

Movie Makers from the Margins: Celine Sciamma

Written by Erin Fenner

French filmmaker, Celine Sciamma, brings you uncomfortably close to the lives of adolescents.

She does this intentionally, but not in a voyeuristic way that so often comes along with any Hollywood film. Instead, her proximity to her characters creates a level of intense intimacy. Even when her characters are dealing with issues like sexuality, her work doesn’t feel sexy, but nerve-wracking, like being a teenager does.

In her first feature-length film, Water Lilies¸ we follow the experiences of three girls who are on a synchronized swimming team together. We see their stories through their eyes only – rarely even glimpsing a character who is older than 18.


The girls are all trying to understand how sex and desire fit into their lives. Marie (Pauline Acquart), who we follow most closely, longs for Floriane (Adele Haenel). Anne (Louise Blachere) longs for Francois (Warren Jacquin). Floriane seems fixated more on the functioning of her own desire and how it can connect her to many people, rather than any one individual.



Louise Blachere, Pauline Acquart and Adele Haenel in Water Lilies
We see them clumsily sort out their first interactions with their own desire and the desire of others. While Floriane flirts with Marie, she is not monogamous in her affection. And this functions as a regular torture for Marie, who spends much of her time helping Floriane meet with boys. Francois walks in on Anne while she is completely naked, and this moment catalyzes Anne’s burgeoning infatuation with Francois.


In her second film, Tomboy, we meet Laure (Zoe Heran) who expresses hirself as a boy. While the film doesn’t explore whether Laure identifies as a boy, it does sift through the complications that come with assigned gender. It also touches on how we make assumptions about a person’s identity and how antagonistic adults, in particular, can be toward androgyny.  


The American approach to stories about youth usually looks as though they’ve been filmed through a gauzy lens. American audiences are bombarded by nostalgia for fat-cheeked childhood. And, lessons of discovery and coming-of-age are typically shown through the perspective of the privileged. Sciamma does fall into the trap of focusing solely on white stories, and while it’s a relief to see stories that aren’t just focused on cis-males, it would be better to explore issues of race as well.

She does try to address these identities as authentically as possible. Sciamma comments on this and says casting is important to her.
“I chose them to be very age appropriate to the story, because I wanted that innocence and fear and inexperience and passion to come through. I didn’t think a 20-year-old playing 15 would give that same performance,” Sciamma said in a 2008 interview with Go Magazine.

And because her actors are the age of the characters, the pathos is stronger and the emotional arc is more realistic. We can connect to the sexual experiences of the girls without sexualizing them.

In the same interview, Sciamma talked about being outed as gay by the American press.

“I am a lesbian director, but I’m also a woman director, and a French director. If you add them all, it’s okay, but separating one out is not honest. In France there is less of a question of whether you are a lesbian or not. It’s other places that it is such a big deal,” she said.

She talked about the issue of being a woman and a director in another interview with Canape in 2008.
“The secrets of the girls I think is the secrets of women in general. That’s why I made the movie, because I think cinema has really been celebrating women but it’s always men doing the talking and it’s always in the man’s point of view. I think the secrets of women is that they have no secrets. They can be cruel. They can be ugly. They can be beautiful. They can be awkward. Cinema is always enhancing the mysteries of women. What I wanted to tell is what is behind the mysteries.”

And in not trying to enhance anything about the experiences of girls and women, Sciamma provides a refreshing narrative about coming of age.

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.

Fight to See Yourself On Screen

This is a guest post by Joyce Wu.

I’ve always loved movies. When I was a kid, nothing brought me greater pleasure than walking across those sticky floors to find the perfect seat, the scent of stale popcorn hanging in the air. My dad, my big brother, and I would always share a box of Sour Patch Kids. I loved spending those two hours inside the theater on thrilling adventures, falling in love, traveling to exotic locales, suffering terrible tragedies.

But Asian Americans didn’t seem to go on these adventures; they didn’t seem to fall in love; they didn’t travel to exotic locales. If anything, they were merely set decoration when the real protagonists of the stories got to those places. People of Asian descent didn’t seem to exist on screen at all, and when they did appear, bucktoothed and bumbling, their fleeting presence filled me with a burning shame, as if watching a family member humiliate himself in front of someone I was trying to impress.

When you hardly ever see anyone who looks like you on screen, and when the only people who look like you don’t seem like people at all, you begin to have a very limited notion of your own possibilities. This nagging insecurity I’ve lived with my whole life (and truthfully, what will always be a part of me and what drives my work) was nagging particularly loudly a few weeks ago.

Still from Screaming in Asian

I was at CAAMfest, an Asian American film festival in San Francisco. For the last two years, I’ve been trying to raise the money to make my first feature film, The Real Mikado, a comedy about an out-of-work Asian American actress who moves back in with her parents and directs a production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s opera The Mikado to try and save the community theater. I was at the festival to sceen the first ten minutes of the film as a short and to pitch the feature for the chance at a grant.

The day before the pitch, all of the filmmakers did a practice run-through of the event, and I was the last to present. I saw these passionate, talented people pitch their films about victims of war and impoverished children, and when it was my turn, I couldn’t find my words. All I could think was, “Why should anyone care about me or my stupid movie?” After years of struggling, I was so exhausted from pretending to be far more confident than I really was and so frustrated and hurt by the constant rejection that it all finally got to me.

Still from Screaming in Asian

I did the one thing that a woman who wants to be taken seriously is never supposed to do. I cried. I couldn’t even hold it together long enough to wait until I was in the privacy of a bathroom stall. I did it in front of everyone. Fortunately, the other filmmakers were incredibly supportive. Some of them cried too. That night, I stayed up all night revising and rehearsing my pitch. I stood in front of a mirror staring into my own bloodshot eyes and tried to convince myself that my movie was worth making.

The next morning, on about two hours of sleep, I walked up to the podium and told a panel of judges and an audience of about 70 people about The Real Mikado. I summoned everything I had from the deepest places of my soul and gave those people everything I could about who I am and why my film needs to be made. I killed it. I did as well as I possibly could have.

Short film teaser for The Real Mikado

Even though I gave it my all, I didn’t win the grant (that went to a wonderful documentary), but when I finished, a throng of young women from the Center for Asian American Media student delegate program came up to me and told me how excited they were about my film. They asked to take pictures with me and for advice on how to be an actor and whether or not I would watch their videos on YouTube and give feedback. One of them exclaimed, “Everything you said is what I feel!”

I had been feeling so defeated and so trivial that I failed to remember how powerful movies can be in shaping a person’s imagination and sense of self. These young women are yearning for the same thing I did and do: they want to see themselves as protagonists in their own stories; they want to go into a theater and see themselves.

Maybe this is too simple or wide-sweeping a generalization about white male privilege, but I doubt that Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach ever wondered if their stories deserved to be told. The fact that I was filled with so much self-doubt speaks to a vicious cycle we’re all in, and we need to work together to stop it. How can we expect young girls (especially those of color) to grow up with enough confidence to be filmmakers when everything they watch is telling them that they are not valuable and that their stories don’t matter?

My film, like a lot of first features, is a personal one. It’s a little embarrassing to admit that I’m acting in and directing a movie that I wrote based on my own life. It feels more than a little self-involved to put myself on screen for all the world to see. But I realized a long time ago that if I don’t do it, no one else will.

Joyce Wu grew up outside of Detroit. Her short films have screened at festivals around the world. She was awarded a full-tuition scholarship to attend New York University’s prestigious graduate film program, where she completed her course work and is in pre-production on her first feature film, The Real Mikado. To find out more about the film, please visit: http://www.seedandspark.com/studio/real-mikado.

 

The Ten Most-Read Posts from February 2013

Did you miss these popular posts on Bitch Flicks? If so, here’s your chance to catch up.

“A Post About Community‘s Shirley? That’s Nice.” by Lady T

“Bitch Slapped: Female Violence in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters“ by Rachel Redfern

“The Complex, Unlikable Women of House of Cards“ by Leigh Kolb

“Feminism and the Oscars: Do This Year’s Best Picture Nominees Pass the Bechdel Test?” by Megan Kearns

“The Women of The Walking Dead: A Comparative Analysis of the Comic vs. TV” by Amanda Rodriguez

“Heroic Black Love and Male Privilege in Django Unchained“ by Joshunda Sanders

“2013 Academy Awards Diversity Checklist” by Lady T

“5 Female-Directed Films That Deserved Oscar Nominations” by James Worsdale

“Thoughts on The Mindy Project and Other Screen Depictions of Indian Women” by Maryna Przybysz

“Beasts of the Southern Wild: Deluge Myths” by Laura A. Shamas

Shut Up and Sing: The Dixie Chicks Controversy Ten Years Later

Movie poster for Shut Up and Sing

This is a guest post by Kerri French.

This month marks ten years since Natalie Maines made her infamous statement during a packed Dixie Chicks gig at Shepherd’s Bush in London, acknowledging the recent events pointing to the United States’ imminent invasion of Iraq by saying “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all. We do not want this war, this violence. And we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” Two days later, the latter part of her statement was quoted in the British newspaper The Guardian and soon picked up by the Associated Press, grabbing headlines across the US. While the Dixie Chicks initially tried to downplay Maines’ comment in the hopes that the controversy would blow over, it quickly became evident that there was no turning back from the stand they had taken.

Targeted by the right-wing group Free Republic, their number one single quickly fell down the charts, album sales dropped, and radio stations refused to play their music. Faced with boycotts throughout their summer tour and the possibility of losing corporate sponsorships, Maines and sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison quickly realized that the issue could not be easily swept away and chose instead to embrace the controversy, framing it as a free speech issue that they would not back down from. They found themselves further faced with harassment, vandalism, and threats of violence, serving as an example to the rest of the country as to what can happen when you choose to express an unpopular opinion.

The Dixie Chicks messing around on stage

Throughout this time and for the three years following, filmmakers Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck documented the band’s reaction and response to the treatment they faced following their 2003 statement. Alternating between footage filmed immediately after the 2003 controversy and two years later as the Dixie Chicks were writing and recording Taking the Long Way, their 2006 album that served as a response to the backlash they experienced throughout their Top of the World tour, Shut Up and Sing highlights the ways in which the band was forced to reconsider not only how they presented themselves as artists but what kind of music they now wanted to create. Maines, Maguire, and Robison take on the task of writing an entire album of songs for the first time, using many of the songs as a way to reflect on and respond to the hostility, threats, and pressure that surrounded them several years prior. As Kopple and Peck show the band preparing to promote the new album, it becomes evident that the 2003 controversy has become a part of the band’s identity, even three years later when Maines’ actual words have been forgotten by most. Refusing to apologize for what they believe in became deeply embedded into who they were, unable to be separated from the discussions of how best to introduce the music industry and fans to the band’s move away from a more straightforward country sound that now incorporated rock and pop influences. Maines in particular seemed hesitant to introduce their new sound and songs too quickly, wanting to be more cautious than Maguire and Robison out of fear of the backlash the band could experience all over again. The documentary offers a very real glimpse into not only how three musicians balance their career with their beliefs, but also how they deal with the emotional aftermath of all that they are up against.

The Dixie Chicks on Entertainment Weekly
What is most impressive, however, is the way Kopple and Peck use the documentary to capture the bond and friendship among three women facing enormous pressure in an industry that refuses to reward women for being true to themselves. Despite countless questioning from the press over how Maguire and Robison feel regarding Maines’ statement, the band continues to think of themselves as a “we” and Maguire and Robison’s support of Maines is unwavering. Indeed, the band doesn’t back away from the controversy that the statement created, refusing to cater to a fan base and industry that showed them so much hostility. The film highlights the band’s anger in conversations filmed backstage during their 2003 tour, with each member arguing with longtime manager Simon Renshaw over what constitutes a radio ban, insisting that they have done nothing wrong and have no reason to show remorse or ask for a second chance. The connection between these three women appears to only grow stronger the more they embrace their newfound political roles as advocates for free speech. In one poignant moment, the documentary shows Maguire tearfully stating that Maines still blames herself for what happened, despite Maguire’s insistence that it was the best thing that could have happened to their careers. She continues, stating that she would give up her career if that is what Maines needs. Their 2006 studio album has, in fact, proven to be their last; despite brief reunions to play a handful of concerts together, the band has headed in different directions, with Robison and Maguire forming the duo Court Yard Hounds while Maines is set to release a solo album with a decidedly more rock focus in May.

The Dixie Chicks singing the National Anthem

Watching the documentary so many years later, it is hard not to wonder why these three women’s actions in particular so enraged the country. The Dixie Chicks were certainly not the most outspoken celebrities to speak out against the war, yet theirs is the controversy that will ultimately be remembered from that time. Was it more shocking that three country musicians could be politically and socially liberal? Admittedly, it probably came as no shock that Sean Penn and Tim Robbins were against the war, but even liberal Americans must have been surprised that it was the Dixie Chicks of all artists who managed to stir up such strong feelings about patriotism and the war.

Still, the question arises whether these three women were punished so harshly because they were country artists whose opinions went against the grain of a large percentage of their fan base or because they were women who dared to have an opinion. Would a male country artist expressing antiwar sentiment have been met with radio bans and death threats? The behavior of male country artists, after all, is often excused or even glorified with their “rebel” persona; it’s all well and good for male musicians to be loud and outspoken but when a woman dares express an opinion outside of what middle America believes, she not only puts her career at risk but exposes herself to harassment and discrimination from fellow musicians, the country music industry, and all of its fans.

Fans unite in support of The Dixie Chicks
And harassment and discrimination is the only way to fairly describe what happened to the Dixie Chicks in the wake of their 2003 statement against the President. Not only did Clear Channel Communications strike the group from country radio station playlists, the uproar from fans wanting all of their CDs bulldozed was nothing short of a modern day witch-hunt. Metal detectors were installed at their shows throughout the summer and a police escort was needed that July when the FBI revealed knowledge of a death threat against Maines in Dallas. Fellow country artist Toby Keith, branding Maines a “big mouth,” began using a doctored photo of Maines with Saddam Hussein as a backdrop at his concerts while singing “You’ll be sorry that you messed with the U. S. of A. / We’ll put a boot in your ass / It’s the American way”—an act that he was never reprimanded for, despite the use of Maines’ image serving as nothing but pure incitement of hatred and violence against a woman who dares hold her own political opinions. The irony, of course, is that it was the Dixie Chicks, not Toby Keith, who had to worry about their tour sponsorship deal falling through when Lipton sent in a PR consultant to discuss whether the company felt they could go forward with the relationship after the band’s “brand” had been tarnished.

The Dixie Chicks sweep the 2007 Grammy Awards
Ten years on, the very conservative demographic who demonized Maines for expressing her disapproval of President Bush and the war are now the ones saying far worse about President Obama. Maines’ statement seems absolutely uneventful in comparison, so much so that the country’s response to her words is near comical when viewed now. Still, the documentary serves as a reminder that the way these three women were treated was anything but comical; it is clear that under the right political circumstances, political groups and corporations can exert enormous pressure on those who choose to express an unpopular opinion. It is especially fitting, then, when the Dixie Chicks return to Shepherd’s Bush in London at the end of the documentary to promote their new album and Maines jokes that she would like to say something the audience hasn’t already heard before and then goes on to say, “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” This time around, the comment wasn’t met with protests and boycotts; the band was instead rewarded in early 2007 when they swept the Grammy Awards by winning all five categories for which they were nominated. In the end, the Dixie Chicks committed themselves to remaining true to who they were no matter the professional, financial, or personal cost—something an audience has rarely heard before, indeed.

 The Dixie Chicks perform “Not Ready to Make Nice” at the 2007 Grammy Awards Ceremony
Kerri French is a poet whose writing has been featured on Sirius Satellite Radio and published in Barrow Street, Mid-American Review, DIAGRAM, Sou’wester, Waccamaw, Barrelhouse, Best New Poets 2008, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. A North Carolina native, she currently lives in Cambridge, England.