feminism
The Empowerment Project is a feel-good documentary, made by women travelling the country and interviewing strong women in positions of power.
20th Century Women is a remarkable character study of women in the 1970s, but it falls just shy of greatness due to its lack of plot.
White Girl reflects the embodiment of societal and interpersonal dysfunction while exploring the role of the body in film and in life.
The Love Witch is an aesthetically sophisticated and deeply-layered dramatization of the gender obstacles that we continue to embed in our society.
Moonfaze Feminist Film Festival takes place on December 1 in LA . We caught up with Premstar Santana, founder and director of the festival.
Amy Adrion shared her insights on gender inequality in the film industry and how we can create change for women in Hollywood.
The other night, when my friend and I sat down to watch the 1967 cult classic, Valley Of The Dolls, I came across a Netflix member review that claimed: “It’s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s without morals or class.” “OK, I’m sold,” my friend said.
The Silence of the Lambs is an enduring piece of cinema. Jonathan Demme’s crime-thriller touched a nerve because of its mainstream appeal crossed with glimpses of macabre imagery. A young FBI trainee named Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is enlisted by her superior to visit with notorious cannibal Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in prison with hopes of gaining insight into another active serial killer:
When I was seven years old, one of my best friends told me about a movie called Legally Blonde. “I think you would really like it,” she excitedly announced to me after school one day. “The main character is a girly girl who’s also really smart.
“It’s like everything changed in the blink of an eye. One moment we were fine, then everything turned to shit.” When I heard those words in voice-over I thought:
The past couple years have sparked seemingly, sudden changes in Hollywood. The #OscarsSoWhite trending this year launched a complete member overhaul in the Academy and the way voting was handled within the membership. The EEOC launched an investigation of the Hollywood’s studio system’s complete neglect of hiring women directors, which has sparked an online movement for women in film, both in front of and behind the scenes.
In part one of ‘Gender at War’, we looked at several films which have changed the perception of women in war. Traditionally, women have been pushed to the side – presented as Madonnas (wives, mothers or whores) with no space for them in the gritty action. The increased presence of women as soldiers in war films (instead of passive grieving objects) has forced other questions about the act of war to arise.
The opening sequence of Ousmane Sembene’s Faat Kiné shows us the complexity of urban motion in a place where modernity and traditionalism are still somewhat at odds. We see groups of women in traditional Senegalese dress walking through the city of Dakar. Then, the camera pulls further and further away from them until we can see can see a whole city block.
As a society, recent events have left us more divided than ever. The people on one side of this socio-political argument are trying to undermine unrepresented voices in the culture by calling for a cry back to the “good old days” and using hateful rhetoric in order to get what they want. The other side are being labelled as mere “liberals” with a politically correct agenda that isn’t attuned to the desires of the majority of people.
We have plenty of excellent and notable films about women in wartime, but their narratives are all too familiar. Often the female protagonist is waiting for the return of her husband or lover, or she is grieving at sending her sons off to war (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Private Peaceful). Sometimes, the war itself exploits and manipulates the nature of our protagonists leading them to betray their country (Rome Open City, to name but one).
