Women in the Director’s Chair International Film and Video Festival
Five short videos by local artists. In the moving autobiographical meditation Another Clapping, Chi-jang Yin uses fragments–voice-over, printed titles, phone messages, and old photographs, some with her father’s image cut out–to tell the story of a family fractured by domestic violence and the forces of history and to explore the ambiguous feelings between mother and daughter. Footage from the Cultural Revolution, including shots of kids humiliating an old man, forms an eerie parallel to the daughter’s alienation. The lively and affecting What We Leave Behind, a collaboration between the Women’s International Information Project and several women who have formerly been incarcerated, warns young people about the grim realities of prison life and uses letters and interviews to record the human cost of mothers being separated from their children. The closing statistics on the huge rise in women prisoners–80 percent of them mothers–conclude an effective plea for reduced sentences for nonviolent crimes. 82 min. (FC) (Preston Bradley Center, 7:00)
A screening and discussion with Colombian director Marta Rodriguez. (WIDC Theater, 1:00)
Cusp
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Six short films about the issues young people face when teetering on the edge of adulthood. Cusp, Ruth Sergel’s dead-on depiction of the emotional growth spurts of adolescence, follows a gawky, strong-hearted 12-year-old as she argues with her single mother, loses her best friend, and learns about adult relationships and femininity. Sergel based the film on workshops with young girls, and the pain and joy are authentic enough to leave you reeling. Ellie Lee’s bleak but intriguing Dog Days, based on Judy Budnitz’s novel Flying Leap, shows a suburban family fraying out of desperation amid a terrifying future war; the daughter befriends a man begging at the back door in a dog suit, throwing him sticks as if he were a real dog. 93 min. (Jennifer Vanasco) (Gene Siskel Film Center, 6:00)
Director Cheryl Dunye reportedly spent four years researching this drama about women in prison, and its authenticity–especially its strong sense of group dynamics–immediately distinguishes it from sexploitation flicks like Chained Heat. Treasure (Yolonda Ross) is glad to transfer from juvenile detention to the state penitentiary on her 21st birthday, thinking that the birth mother she never knew is doing life there, but when she tries to kindle a mother-daughter relationship with a ruthless clique leader (Davenia McFadden) she provokes the jealousy of the woman’s other “daughter” (Rain Phoenix). Dunye bluntly portrays the prisoners’ brutal aggression, the intense racial antagonism, and the trading of sex for protection, but she’s just as interested in the tender camaraderie and in Treasure’s moral awakening. Except for an unconvincing coda, the script is excellent, and Nancy Schreiber’s fluid camera work and harsh lighting transform the prison into a womb both menacing and comforting. Ross and McFadden turn in riveting performances. (TS) Dunye will attend the screening. (Gene Siskel Film Center, 8:15)
Florence Jaugey’s documentary follows a series of domestic and child-abuse cases brought to a world-weary female police officer at the Police Commissaries for Women and Children in Nicaragua. More often than not the women withdraw their charges, even when they’ve been abused badly. The most interesting segment, in which a husband who clearly loves his wife tries to refute the charges against him, suggests that extreme poverty and a culture of machismo drive good men to hit their wives, lovers, and children. Jaugey doesn’t provide much sociological context until a textual epilogue, and the short segments begin to blur together with their litanies of threats and thrown punches, but the film should make good fodder for the discussion that follows the screening. 61 min. (Jennifer Vanasco) (WIDC Theater, 1:00)
