Film Categories: Work about Women

  • You Be Mother

    “You Be Mother” uses stop-frame animation to disrupt the traditional orders of animate and inanimate, the fluid and the solid. An hallucinatory space is set up when a frozen image of the artist’s face is projected onto weighty pieces of crockery atop a table. Ears, eyes, nose and mouth, all become spatially dislocated as a determined hand begins to reposition, decant and mix. Events unfold to the amplified sounds of grinding, pouring and stirring.

  • Red Like Meat

    A husband’s fantasies about his wife are stimulated with a bizarre fashion magazine. Both amusing and disquieting, the photographs in this magazine are those of the highly acclaimed Canadian photographer Janieta Eyre.

  • #01 hygienist

    A woman is seeing her hygienist and finds herself in an unexpected situation.

  • Four Feet

    As Veronica ponders her current relationship, a psychic appears out of nowhere and gives her an answer she never expected.

  • I Want To Be a Secretary

    The ladies in the typing pool have always believed in recycling. The footage for “I Want to Be a Secretary” has been reclaimed and reworked from a selection of all-but-forgotten post-war recruitment films encouraging the modern girl to pursue a secretarial career. What other path is open to an independent-minded young lady after all? What are the secrets of the boardroom? And what is the meaning of the firm-but-fair Miss Ingall’s mysterious smile? Our plucky young career gal heroine is about to find out. I Want To Be A Secretary: A career girl’s adventure in the typing pool.

  • Damned if You Don’t

    “‘Damned if You Don’t’ is a real prize. Beautifully shot in black and white, it blends ‘conventional’ narrative technique with impressionistic camera work, symbols, and voice-overs to create an intimate study of sexual repression… “[It begins with footage from] a stylish old potboiler about an isolated convent, filmed directly from the television screen, in silence, but with plot narration and plenty of dramatic close-ups. Its tale of passions leashed and unleashed provides the leitmotif for a young lesbian who watches it and the lonely nun she pursues and seduces. As the two women’s lives get closer to joining, voice-overs from…

  • Moving Pictures Quartet

    A new DVD compilation of four short dance films produced by the Moving Pictures Dancefilm Art Society. ICARUS Dir. Curtis Wehrfritz, 6 min., 2001 Shot on two hand-cranked cameras, this film captures segments from “Wind,” part of a performance cycle about the four elements choreographed by Bill James. Inspired by the Greek myth of Icarus, who fell from grace after flying too close to the sun, this work contrast post-industrial waste with stunning images of artifice. Performed by Yvonne Ng, Shannon Cooney and Robert Glumbek, with music by Tom Third. GARDEN OF STONE Dir. Gregory Nixon, 5 min. 1999 Kathak…

  • Devotion

    “Devotion: a story about Ogawa Productions” is an 82-minute documentary of an important Japanese post-war documentary collective that made significant films of social struggle and village life. This investigative documentary situates the revolutionary lifestyle and films of Ogawa Productions within the framework of the global student movement of the New Left in the mid-’60s and the emerging documentary movement in Japan. In-depth stories from the collective members who contributed to this unique film making process are examined from a variety of perspectives and understandings. OSHIMA Nagisa, HARA Kazuo and HANEDA Sumiko, well-known film directors, present their personal recollections of this…

  • Taking My Skin

    “I’m not aware of you taking my skin,” says the artist’s mother to the camera as it zooms in on her eye as close as the lens will allow. “Taking My Skin” tracks a dialogue between the artist and her mother. Their exchange ranges from narrating the filming process “in the moment” to relations in an earlier time – “how long do you think it takes for a child to become separate?” Throughout the journey film spaces continuously dissolve and collapse only to separate again. Sometimes the artist is behind the camera, sometimes the mother, sometimes both simultaneously behind and…

  • Dance of Life, The

    “The Dance of Life” features the extended monologue of a first-generation Canadian woman. This stream-of-consciousness reflects a discourse of existence fractured among the many “characters” seen in the film. A dizzying exploration of many people in the process of becoming many other people. Inevitably this cyclical dance, this tautology of existence, leads us to “la vie c’est la mort.”