Film Categories: Work about Women

  • Untitled

    A performance film consisting of a string of five slow motion portraits of a young woman. Each portrait varies in length and gesture as her myriad expressions invite our gaze. With each action performed in dead silence, stretched to the limits of voyeuristic levels of comfort, the simple act of looking is made fragile. A curious exchange is established between spectator, creator, and subject through a careful appropriation and reframing of social media conventions and advertising iconography transposed into a cinematic space—pointing to a cycle of regressive media consumption.

  • BLU In YOU

    Walter Benjamin suggests that film is comparable to surgery, the instrument allowing the operator to penetrate the body of the subject while, paradoxically, maintaining his or her distance. This statement self-reflexively sets up the female spectator at the helm of the art-installation opening of Blu in You—an eloquent essayist film with visual conversations that dissects historical and contemporary representations of the black female body, sexuality and subjectivity. The female spectator (Melanie Smith), views the staged art installation conversations between visual arts curator (Andrea Fatona) and writer (Nalo Hopkinson). The conversations begin with a cultural history of violence, ethnographic display and…

  • On the Line

    “On the Line” is inspired by Isa Shimoda, a butch gender nonconforming immigrant who served meals to Japanese American tuna cannery workers in her restaurant on the docks of San Diego in the 1930s. She was known for her masculine attire as well as her skills at naginata, a sword-based martial art practiced by Japanese women. Her restaurant was a refuge for the women who endured gruesome hours cleaning fish and lived in meager housing shelters known as “fish camp.” Shimoda has two sets of wartime records from the incarceration camps—one identifying her as female, the other as male. “On the Line” uses…

  • Wayward Emulsions

    Fleeting cinematic impressions of a wayward woman are captured in the oblique wanderings of emulsion lifted from stray reels of 35mm film. Winner, Experimental Short Grand Jury Prize, Slamdance Festival 2019

  • Night Scenes

    Katerina feels nauseous. Michael used to be an alcoholic. They are a Russian couple living in Toronto. Katerina is pregnant, and her father is dying. Michael has lost Katerina’s trust. He is awkwardly trying to make things right.

  • Holding Hands with Ilse

    “Holding Hands With Ilse” is a moving documentary about the search for the German teenage girl who took care of the filmmaker between 1948-1950 in Walbrzych, Poland where he was born. Knowing only her first name and circulating a small photograph taken in 1950 of the two, the director explores the urban landscapes of western Poland and the journey involved in their unexpected reunion that recently took place in Ibbenbüren, Germany. Filmed in the USA, Poland and Germany.

  • Between Two Cinemas Part 1

    For the past thirty years filmmaker/archivist Ross Lipman has cut a winding path between classic international cinema and the American avant-garde. In this riveting but completely unclassifiable work, he looks back at a life in the cinema and an indescribable divide at the heart of it. Part biography, part clip essay, part abstract painting, “Between Two Cinemas” integrates 4K restorations of his old films inside a new documentary/essay linking them. It uncovers previously unseen archival material on Stan Brakhage and Andrei Tarkovsky, and adds new collaborations with artists including visionary experimentalist Bruce Baillie, Jeanne Dielman cinematographer Babette Mangolte, Bela Tarr…

  • Terminations

    “Terminations” is an exploration of womanhood and the struggle over a woman’s right to control her own body, and in turn her own destiny. The film’s separate yet connected story lines focus on a day in the lives of seven female characters, all at the emotional crossroads of terminating a pregnancy. As we steal a look into their lives, their stories are unmasked.Broken relationships, death, cultural clashes between parent and child, and faith are all themes which emerge within the film, as interveners between these women and their bodies. 

  • Between Two Cinemas Part 2

    For the past thirty years filmmaker/archivist Ross Lipman has cut a winding path between classic international cinema and the American avant-garde. In this riveting but completely unclassifiable work, he looks back at a life in the cinema and an indescribable divide at the heart of it. Part biography, part clip essay, part abstract painting, “Between Two Cinemas” integrates 4K restorations of his old films inside a new documentary/essay linking them. It uncovers previously unseen archival material on Stan Brakhage and Andrei Tarkovsky, and adds new collaborations with artists including visionary experimentalist Bruce Baillie, Jeanne Dielman cinematographer Babette Mangolte, Bela Tarr…

  • Daily Bread

    In a WWII internment camp in Indonesia, Jeanne and a group of Dutch women and children face a daily struggle against abuse, disease, and starvation. Meanwhile, the Camp Commandant’s beloved white fluffy cat is fed fresh juicy meat….