Happy International Women’s Day
Betty and Marie
Marie Trintignant retains a few performative constants as the ground shifts below her feet as the title character in Claude Chabrol’s Betty (1992): a stare that vacillates between the suggestively dim and the piercing, an insatiable whiskey habit, rampant chain smoking, a visage that appears as if it’ll crack into surrender at any given moment, and a Chanel suit as uniform.
The Metamorphosis of Birds (2020) dir. Catarina Vasconcelos
When I was growing up I kept a memory box for keepsakes. Being sentimental and shy meant each trip outside warranted souvenirs.
From the Beating Heart of the Feminist Rally: A response to ‘Battlefield’ (2020), dir. Silvia and Andrea Laudante
Where do they walk, these womxn? To work. To their kids. To their lovers. To rally, to fight for the rights of their own bodies.
Book of Judith
One of my most memorable experiences during lockdown was reading Deadline at Dawn, British critic Judith Williamson’s sparkling collection of essays from the eighties.
On how things actually play out
To be regarded as an artist, as a person, rather than a ‘woman filmmaker’, a ‘woman’.
Corita Kent
Corita Kent – artist, nun, activist – flaunted her own interpretation of holiness by artfully expressing her love for the most common of things.
JD 2.0
Since the official start of the pandemic one year ago, I have found myself thinking about Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975) every now and then.
Winter for Rose
I am absolutely tickled by the fact of a filmmaker named Rose making a name for herself with a ‘Bouquet’ series, collecting flowers.
Your Laughter is Spit in the World’s Face: Milla (2017) and Valérie Massadian
“Instead of offering closeted conservative condemnation, or liberal handwringing and outsized guilt, Massadian has been making a cinema of the ‘animal’ intensities and lucidity of childhood and the often debilitating growing pains of young adulthood.”