"I was being presented with this history of filmmaking that was totally male
dominated," says Johanna Dery of her time as a film and video student at the
Rhode Island School of Design. "Out of the desire to see work made by a diverse
group of people, I organized a film series as a senior. Curating that was my
first experience with promoting women's voices in film."
She's at it again. The goals of the first annual Providence Women's Film
Festival (an event she hopes to make annual or bi-annual) are simple: "Bring
these works to new audiences -- film students and regular moviegoers -- and
[bring] artists to Providence."
Toward that end, Dery has enlisted nationally-known talents like Frameline
award winner Barbara Hammer, who has made more than 80 films, and Abigail
Child, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art
in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, to speak at the fest. But the
films, of course, are the thing. And it's a disparate group, divided roughly
between documentaries and experimental fare. In fact, the only thing most have
in common is the gender of their makers.
"Some have high production values and are beautiful," says Dery. With others,
"the technical standard is really low," but in a real way that only adds to
their power. "They're so raw . . . so totally sincere and earnest."
A film that fits that latter description rather well is Jackie Joice's Punk
Pretty. It's raw indeed: a string of lo-res videotaped interviews and
performances of female members of Bay Area punk bands, it describes a scene not
known to most, but of vital importance. The shaky camera plunges the viewer
into an "all-or nothing hardcore" scene that's hyper-politically aware (even if
the bromides about "empowerment" are somewhat facile). Interviews with
"feminists in action" are interesting, especially as they posit themselves as
different from established figureheads like Gloria Steinem. Internecine
struggles are touched upon too, between women who are engaged ('zine creators,
members of bands) and those who are "the girlfriends and backpack carriers."
Death On a Friendly Border is Rachel Antell's harrowing documentary
about the hideous death toll of Mexican aliens attempting to cross into this
country, going to extremes to evade capture by Operation Gatekeeper, which
"treat[s] them like a hostile force." Thousands have died of dehydration in the
merciless desert. "We find seven, eight, nine, 10 bodies at a time," says one
official. Especially haunting is the final scene of a memorial, listing the
names of the dead -- a list where actual names are outnumbered by "no
identificado."
Filmed in Peru Juliana Marchand's La Santa (The Saint) is a hypnotizing
oral history. Locals tell of a mysterious black slave (despite its illegality,
slavery was still practiced in some quarters there as late as 1940) who, after
escaping from her master's clutches, with his mysteriously afflicted daughter
in tow, travels from town to town, healing babies, animals, improving harvests.
"Everyone knew she was a saint," says one elderly musician.
The experimental shorts are all visually striking, even if their ultimate
point is sometimes obscured by their artiness. Unhindered by that syndrome is
The Escapades of Madame X. Kerry Laitala and Isabel Reichert have
created an alluring, vaguely eerie work, all swirls and eddies. It brings to
mind the early years of Hollywood through its scratchy soundtrack and Madame X
herself -- a Garbo-esque vamp with robe, bobbed hair, cigarette holder, and a
vagina that can do some . . . interesting things.
Gretchen Hogue's Periphery is an engrossing hodge-podge of techniques
that takes a its premise "a lifetime of pans and zooms [that] passed my mother,
brought back to center through two eyes that resemble hers." Save for the sound
of a rickety projector or various outdoor sounds, the piece is largely silent,
allowing for her images to speak for themselves. The most successful of these
are a series of close-up of a seated, woman, the camera lingers lovingly on the
contours of cellulite here, birthmarks there.
In The Shape of the Gaze, Maia Cybelle Carpenter again uses silence to
great effect. The series of images she presents, portraits of "butch" lesbians,
staring witheringly into the camera, overlaid with scratchy, crinkly, blue
primary colors, patterns resembling microbes or maps or cracked paint are
striking.
Another colorful piece is The Devil Lives in Hollywood, Amy Lockhart's
mediation on the bizarre and sometimes troubling state of modern American
culture. With its primitive, shaky animation on a white background and its
off-kilter ditty, it's simultaneously funny and creepy. If what its title says
is true -- I suspect it is -- these talented women filmmakers should stay away
from Tinseltown and continue to create their art far from its corrupting
influence.
Films will be shown October 12-14 at the RISD Auditorium, 17 Canal Walk,
Providence. Call 454-6356.
Issue Date: October 12 - 18, 2001
