Women Make Movies – Spectacle Theater

FEMINIST HOLLYWOOD TAKEOVER

Posted on February 21, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

Feminist Hollywood Takeover is a series of shorts by female filmmakers who have deconstructed the predictable roles we tend so fondly remember when we think of old Hollywood films. Daringly, each film rebels against the tired archetypes of the mammy, tragic heroine, and hetero-glamourpuss comprising a joint rejection of oppressive stereotypes, and starring some of the most iconic Hollywood starlets to grace the silver screen.

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

MONDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 14 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 – 10:00 PM

LIP
Dir. Tracey Moffatt, Edited by Gary Hillberg, 1999
Australia, 10 min.

Australian artist, Tracey Moffatt, takes aim at Hollywood’s portrayal of black women in a cheeky montage of (surprise) maids throughout film history. Moffatt recontextualizes your favorite actresses as pegs in a machine of oppressive stereotyping and bigotry, in this strangely hilarious short, which sheds a familiar yet refreshing light on #whitegirlproblems. With clips including a young Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, and Patty Duke, among others, LIP is like a trip down memory lane with modern criticism instead of nostalgia.

THRILLER
Dir. Sally Potter, 1979
UK, 34 min.

Performance artist, experimental filmmaker, composer, dancer, and general badass Sally Potter eschews the typical Hollywood narrative with a deconstruction and rewriting of Puccini’s LA BOHEME. A staple of feminist film theory, THRILLER is one of Potter’s first international successes as a filmmaker in a career that includes such undertakings as ORLANDO and YES. In Potter’s version of Puccini’s legendary opera, Mimi, the tragic heroine who is supposed to die by the end of the opera, is granted the agency to question her own life story and the reasons behind her death. She juxtaposes her own role in the story with that of her female foil, Musetta, the “easy” woman, and challenges the idea that the “good” girl should always be youthful, weak and distressed.

MEETING OF TWO QUEENS
aka Encuentro entre dos reinas
Dir. Cecilia Barriga, 1991
Spain, 14 min.

Cecilia Barriga’s culty video montage tells the story of two queens who fall in love, unwittingly played by Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. Clipped from their most iconic works, the Chilean born video artist manipulates scenes from the legendary actresses to turn two of the most well known Hollywood starlets in film history into a silent-film style lesbian fantasy. Barriga drives the narrative using common motifs such as the cigarette and the one-eyed glance from beneath a wide brimmed hat, motifs which are familiar to us, but recontextualized within a queer narrative. Major points for including a rainmaker in the soundtrack.

THREE FILMS BY KIM LONGINOTTO

Posted on February 18, 2014December 23, 2019 by spectacletheater

DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, 1998
Iran/England, 80 min.
In Farsi with English subtitles.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 25 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

Hilarious, tragic, stirring – this fly-on-the-wall look at several weeks in an Iranian divorce court provides a unique window into the intimate circumstances of Iranian women’s lives. Following Jamileh, whose husband beats her, Ziba, a 16-year-old trying to divorce her 38-year-old husband, and Maryam, who is desperately fighting to gain custody of her daughters, this deadpan chronicle showcases the strength, ingenuity, and guile with which they confront biased laws, a Kafaka-esque administrative system, and their husbands’ and families’ rage to gain divorces.

With the barest of commentary, acclaimed director Kim Longinotto turns her cameras on the court for a subtle, fascinating look at women’s lives in a country which is little known to most Americans. Directed by Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, author of MARRIAGE ON TRIAL: A STUDY OF ISLAMIC FAMILY LAW.

“A fascinating verite-style documentary that counters with compassion, humor, and a keen nose for spotting empathetic characters, strong-willed women, and dramatic moments, the traditional stereotypes of women in the Muslim world as passive victims.” – Hamid Naficy, Author, ‘The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles’

SHINJUKU BOYS
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams, 1995
Japan/England, 53 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles

SATURDAY, MARCH 15 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 18 – 7:30 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

From the makers of DREAM GIRLS, SHINJUKU BOYS introduces three onnabes who work as hosts at the New Marilyn Club in Tokyo. Onnabes are women who live as men and have girlfriends, although they don’t usually identify as lesbians. As the film follows them at home and on the job, all three talk frankly to the camera about their lives, revealing their views about women, sex, transvestitism and lesbianism. Alternating with these illuminating interviews are fabulous sequences shot inside the Club, patronized almost exclusively by heterosexual women. This is a remarkable documentary about the complexity of female sexuality in Japan today.

GAEA GIRLS
Dir. Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams, 2000
England/Japan, 106 min.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, MARCH 15 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MARCH 25 – 10:00 PM

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

This fascinating film follows the physically grueling and mentally exhausting training regimen of several young wanna-be GAEA GIRLS, a group of Japanese women wrestlers who are just as violent as any member of the World Wrestling Federation. One recruit, Takeuchi, endures ritual humiliation not seen on screen since the boot camp sequences of FULL METAL JACKET.

“Longinotto and Williams’s ability to penetrate facades is remarkable. The filmmakers build their story in a way that’s more compelling and suspenseful than many narrative films.” – Chicago Film Festival

Film synopses courtesy of Women Make Movies!

Women Make Movies and Spectacle Present: LOVE & DIANE

Posted on November 4, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Women Make Movies and Spectacle co-present:

LOVE & DIANE
Dir. Jennifer Dworkin, 2002
USA, 155 min.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13 – 8PM
One night only!

Just over ten years ago, Jennifer Dworkin’s groundbreaking documentary broadly addressed issues of poverty in New York City though a sensitive portrait of one family and an unflinching chronicle of their experiences with the occasionally Kafka-esque government programs that were ostensibly meant to help them.

With a narrative constructed by following the Hazzard family – principally Diane, her daughter Love, and Love’s newborn son Donyaeh – for eight years, this documentary’s scope and breadth allow it to tell its story without resorting either to pure, soulless cinéma vérité or to bland “issue” filmmaking. There are no talking heads here. Instead, an immersive experience fairly captures the life of a family trying to persevere in the face of daunting challenges and a society’s pervasive indifference.

Visit the Women Make Movies website to read more about LOVE & DIANE. If you view the press kit for the film there is a full interview available with Jennifer Dworkin by Michelle Materre, a WMM program consultant! Special thanks to WMM!

WOMEN MAKE MOVIES PRESENT: MADAME X

Posted on August 27, 2013December 22, 2019 by spectacletheater

Spectacle and Women Make Movies, the celebrated non-profit organization and distributor of independent film and video by and about women, are proud to host a new series of collaboratively programmed screenings that will delve widely and deeply into WMM’s diverse catalog, showcasing noted classics and underscreened gems, including both works of radical feminism and documentary journalism by established and emerging filmmakers.

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 26th – 8PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

MADAME X: EINE ABSOLUTE HERRSCHEIN
(Madame X: An Absolute Ruler)
Dir. Ulrike Ottinger, 1977

Madame X, the cruelest and most successful pirate of the Far Eastern seas, puts out a call to all women seeking a world full of gold, love, and adventure to join her crew and become marauders on the high seas. But even after their first pitiless attack on a yacht carrying hilarious caricatures of bourgeois male hegemony leaves them awash in plunder, the increasing assertion of the new pirates’ identities and desires leads an already chaotic journey into absolute bedlam.

This first feature effort by Ottinger – whose work in both fiction and documentary has since won wide acclaim – is an exhilarating experience both for its righteous appropriation of a genre often rife with casual misogyny and for the director’s irresistible invitation to revel in the visual beauty and surreal discontinuity of her film’s world. An opportunity to see this rarely-screened work is not to be missed!