The opening seconds of Kate Novack‘s terrific visual case study, Hysterical Girl, sifts your psyche through several potential discourses of film story-telling. A blizzard of popular culture, archive footage and familiar media coverage whizzes by our eyes. Somehow constructed mesmerisingly alongside the recounting of a certain Sigmund Freud and a female subject. Too, a modern kind of reconstruction has “actress” Tommy Vines, candidly admitting her nerves as make-up is applied. She takes on the role of Dora, blending the line between aggrieved and historical so brilliantly.
The references, the evidence of these so-called hysterical girls and women, keep on coming – sourcing rapidly from animation, on-screen text, sports clips, paintings. It’s a short film that reminds us how this unparalleled movement of female empowerment is growing, while cementing even further how valid it is. Hysterical Girl won the Silver Sword and Editing prizes at the 6th Femme Film Fest.
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