Aside from the return of Aniston of the week, and September’s short essay on the wondrous experimental films of Dana Burman Duff, this site has been somewhat neglected of late. Programming, rather than writing has been my main occupation. Behind the Curtain is a project that was in the concept stage for a long time. The initial idea was to find a way to share with audiences, films which represent the eclecticism of my taste in cinema, so there’d be documentaries, and comedies and experimental works and more.
What came to fruition is a project that is quite close to that ideal, but with the added theme of a feminist film club. As I developed the idea, what became important was to show a cinema that is representative of all the different perspectives and creative practices of a variety of filmmakers. Behind the Curtain exists to support women filmmakers, queer cinema, filmmakers of colour and d/Deaf and disabled filmmakers – it is therefore by this very nature a feminist project.
With funding from Film Hub Scotland and in partnership with Alchemy Film & Arts and Moving Image Makers Collective, I programmed and produced 7 screenings from September – December 2017 here in the Scottish Borders, where I’m based. The feminist film club theme ran most obviously through five of the screenings, with films touching upon subjects such as the construction of gender in relation to female reproduction (Maja Borg’s Man, Anna Linder’s Spermwhore), the intersection of race and gender (Cecile Emeke’s Strolling episodes 1 and 7), inequalities of gender in colonialism (Onyeka Igwe’s We Need New Names), female power, both physical and intellectual (Evi Tsiligaridou’s On Your Feet, Woman!, Vēra Chytilová’s Daisies), inherited oppression in mother-daughter relationships (Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie), the problematics of radical feminism (Bruce LaBruce’s The Misandrists) and narcissistic feminism (Anna Biller’s The Love Witch).
Each of theses screenings inspired thoughtful conversations with the audience, especially the occasional opportunity to address a film’s relevance to feminism and the important intersections of other inequalities with that of gender.
Other film’s in the season were John Paizs’ Crime Wave, the cult, underappreciated Canadian comedy programmed by Glasgow’s Matchbox Cineclub, which depicts with a somewhat tender absurdity, the tribulations of the writing process. I also screened Further Beyond, the first feature documentary by Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, aka Desperate Optimists, which uses essayistic approaches, reflexive use of voice over and reconstruction to tell the story of Ambrose O’Higgins.
The intention is for Behind the Curtain to continue in some form, though I’m flexible as to what form it might take. Rather than have a fixed idea of programmes and projects I’d rather respond to the specific context here in the Borders, taking screenings to locations where there’s a shared interest in all the possibilities of an eclectic, feminist cinema.
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