I spy with my little eye something beginning with Academy Award winner for Best Director. Wowsers. Day two of the 8th Femme Filmmakers Festival features renowned motion pictures by not one, but two, rightful owners of the Best Director Oscar. Step forward, Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion. Have a look below at the line-up and what else is in store. Watch those short films, talk about them, scream about them.
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Saturday 23 September
The Piano (Jane Campion) feature film selection
Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow) feature film selection
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Willing to go there (Laura Beckner) competition selection
Radical Honesty (Bianca Poletti) competition selection
Ties (Dina Velikovskaya) showcase selection
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With Willing To Go There I found something that I never thought possible; a partial homage to Tarkovsky (especially Mirror, in terms of the Woll’s countenance, repeated motifs of the elements of wind, water, fire, inside versus outside, interior and exterior voices, displaced time etc, even spilt milk!) refracted through the generic prism of the horror and slasher film. They’re not that far away really. The film even had elements of Ben Rivers and Maya Deren. The fact that it ends with a touch of Lynch simply tells you all that you need to know; an a-list actress, excellent equipment and technicians, a bagful of good intentions informed by judicious use of a season ticket taking in the rarest of influences from the cinematic realm won’t get you out of trouble when you realise you don’t have a synthesis of such elements. A good first, or second, or third film, beautifully shot and otherwise put together, but it’s commentary on female-male interaction, especially of a more nefarious nature, and the power dynamics underlying that, or what it could say about desire, twisted or not, is virtually non existent. A missed opportunity, a film that should have been twice it already slightly laboured running time, to straighten it out and take it where it really wants to go, whilst not compromising on any of its eclectic mixture of forebears.
Radical Honesty is really quite funny indeed, and the perfect length to make its central point with sass, clout and extra emphasis; I started laughing the second the guy took his phone out. After that, because of that, as if! A spiky little film, cunning and satirical. Ironic from beginning to end, good choice of soundtrack elements and dialogue. Look forward to watching it again, and the parallels and contrasts that can be found…
The Piano remains monumental, growing richer, and stranger, with each passing year and viewing, yet retaining its place within the evolving tradition of “women’s” or “costume” pictures. The great performances go without saying, no pun intended. Campion should have won best director for this.
Blue Steel I’ve always thought of as a different kind of masterpiece. It has all of Bigelow’s noted style and intrinsic grasp of the experience of the film medium, at least how it was experienced back then, but goes much deeper. A visually stunning, psychologically attuned cat and mouse game film, and not just between the protagonists. Jamie Leigh Curtis has never been better, unless recently, of course, and that thing so very rare nowadays, yet altogether commonplace at the time of the film’s release; an effortless performance from an assured, centred character actor, the great, deeply missed Ron Silver. Such bark at the moon aggression coupled with raw yet controlled masculinity. A character bursting from his skin yet, in small moments, eliciting empathy and compassion from both the audience and other protagonists. A timely performance, still resonant, in other words.
To think that Campion and Bigelow would have the filmographies that they have had after these films, is mind blowing, but to consider that they were both, at the time, addressed in critical terms by comparison to male filmmakers, shows that we’ve come quite some way, with much more to hopefully come.
An excellent day at the festival!