Women Make Media

Screenings for the week of April 4th:

Schmeerguntz - By Gunvor Nelson and Dorothy Wiley 

1966, 15 Minutes, B&W, Sound 

"Schmeerguntz is one long raucous belch in the face of the American Home. A society which hides its animal functions beneath a shiny public surface deserves to have such films as Schmeerguntz shown everywhere - in every PTA, every Rotary Club, every club in the land.  For it is brash enough, brazen enough and funny enough to purge the soul of every harried American married woman."

 - Ernest Callenbach, Film Quarterly
 

 Information at Canyon Cinema 

 

The Mom Tapes (Excerpts) - Ilene Segalove 

1974-1978, 4 Minutes, Color, Sound

Segalove takes her mom as subject in these short pieces, recording her stories, her advice, and her daily routine. What results is a portrait of a contemporary mother-daughter relationship, touchingly devoid of drama and full of whimsical humor. For example, in one piece the camera focuses on a pair of unoccupied, overstuffed chairs. The voice of a teenage girl whines, "Mom, I'm bored—" then proceeds to reject each of her mother's suggestions by throwing objects across the room: books, food, sports equipment, the telephone, and so forth. 

Information at Video Data Bank

Info at Video Data Ban

Measures of Distance - Mona Hatoum

1988, 15 Minutes, Color, Sound

In this resonant work, Palestinian-born video and performance artist Mona Hatoum explores the renewal of friendship between mother and daughter during a brief family reunion in war-torn Lebanon in 1981. Through letters read in voice-over and Arabic script overlaying the images, the viewer experiences the silence and isolation imposed by war. The politics of the family and the exile of the Palestinian people are inseparable in this forceful, moving video.

Information at Women Make Movies

Picturing Oriental Girls: A (Re) Educational Videotape - 

Valerie Soe

 

1992, 12 Minutes, Color, Sound

 

Picturing Oriental Girls is filled with geisha girls, china dolls and dragon ladies populating a visual compendium of representations of Asian women in American film and television. Juxtaposed with text from mail-order bride catalogs, men's magazines and popular literature, these clips from over 25 films and television programs explicate the orientalism and exoticism prevalent in mass media images of "oriental girls." 

Information can be found on the Valerie Soe page at Flicker 

Girl Power- Sadie Benning

1992, 15 Minutes, B&W, Sound

Girlpower opens with a statement of the themes of violence and disempowerment. The only hope of escape from a world both “brutal and needy” is found in the realm of the imagination where teenage girls can, at last, make their own rules: “I built my own world inside my head. I had imaginary friends, make believe love. I traveled to far away places and did as I pleased. I fought the law and, of course, made my own rules.”

Information at Senses of Cinema

Removed - Naomi Uman 

1999, 8 Minutes, Color, Sound

In Removed, Naomi Uman physically erases the female body from old 16mm porn using nail polish remover and household bleach. This gorgeous attack of beauty and domestic product on celluloid results in a series of animated white 'holes' writhing orgasmically in the place of porn stars. The leering men are captured in various inadequate poses and the original dialogue tracks remain, complete with badly dubbed exchanges. The hole in the film becomes an erotic zone, a blank on which a fantasy body is projected. This brilliant work is unusually precise: it is politically subversive, pornography in its own right, sassy and extremely funny. 

Information at Peripheral Produce


Shirin Neshat - The Woman Moves

2004, 42 Minutes, Color, Sound


An acclaimed photographer, filmmaker, and video artist, Iranian-born Shirin Neshat addresses the complex forces shaping the identity of Muslim women throughout the world and explores the social, political, and psychological dimensions of women's experiences.