The Gender Institute continued its tradition of Thursday night screenings of films by and about women, beginning on January 19th, 2006 and extending through March 2nd. Films chosen for the 2006 festival include films from Argentina, China, India, Israel, Spain and the USA.

Films screened in 2006: 

January 19th:  The Holy Girl/La Nina Santa.  Lucrecia Martel.  Argentina, 2004.

A chance encounter between Amalia and Dr. Jano, who is attending a medical conference at her family's hotel, allows the young girl to at last fufill her secret mission: to save one man from sin.  Dr. Jano becomes caught up in Amalia’s web of good intentions and the respected doctor finds his world is on the brink of collapse when her adolescent obsession sets off a chain reaction of social catastrophe.  Understanding the temptation of good - and the evil it causes - LA NIÑA SANTA delicately explores themes of sin, frustration and desire.

With her award-winning feature-film debut, La Ciénaga (The Swamp) (2001), writer-director Lucrecia Martel emerged as one of the brightest figures of the new Argentinean cinema. In her follow up, the 2004 Cannes Film Festival Competition entry, LA NIÑA SANTA (THE HOLY GIRL), Martel intimately explores the burgeoning sexuality and religious fervor of two teenage girls, Amalia (MARIA ALCHÉ) and her best friend, Josefina (JULIETA ZYLBERBERG). Artfully piecing together a mosaic of nuanced details, fragments of sounds, and small moments, Martel creates a potent and specific portrait of adolescent life.

January 26:  Red Doors.  Georgia Lee.  USA, 2005, Color, DVD.  English/Chinese with English Subtitles.

Red Doors tells the story of the Wongs, a bizarrely dysfunctional Chinese-American family living in the New York suburbs.  Ed Wong (Tzi Ma) has just retired and plots to excape his mundane life.  However, the tumultuous, madcap lives of his three rebellious daughters change his plans.  

Samantha (Jacqueline Kim), the eldest daughter, is a tough New York businesswoman engaged to a prominent young man (Jayce Bartok). Festering beneath her controlled surface, however, is a deep-rooted resentment for being pushed onto the straight and narrow path.   

Julie (Elaine Kao), the shy middle sister, is a fourth-year medical student whose only social outlet is her weekly ballroom dance class. Julie has always been the quiet center of the Wong family storm. However, Julie’s world is turned upside down when she meets Mia Scarlett (Mia Riverton), a movie star researching her next role at the hospital, who sets Julie’s heart aflame.

Katie (Kathy Shao-Lin Lee), the youngest sister, is a disaffected high school senior who engages in an elaborate prank war with Simon (Sebastian Stan), her longtime neighbor and nemesis. While the pranks start out innocuously, the incidents rapidly escalate to dangerous proportions until the two finally discover their own peculiar brand of emotional connection.

For the Chinese, to paint one’s front doors red is said to bring good luck, fortune, and harmony to the household. The term “Red Doors”is therefore an ironic counterpoint to a family that is emotionally distant and struggles to communicate. The film reflects on how it is often most difficult to connect with those nearest and dearest to your heart. 

February 2nd:  The Journey/Sarcharram. With director Ligy Pullappally in Person!  India/USA, 2006, Color, 35mm.  Hindi with English subtitles.  Introduction by Swati Bandi, Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo.

It was on anauspicious day--the day of Kiran’s arrival from Delhi, and the wedding day of Delilah’s eldest brother--that the two girls first meet as children; and though they couldn’t be more different, they become fast friends.  Delilah (Shrruiti Menon) blossoms into a fiery irreverent beauty with the unconditional love of her grandmother, and despite the controlling eye of her hard-working widowed mother. Kiran (Suhasini V. Nair), as the only child of an intellectual father and aristocratic mother, matures into an introspective young woman.  Theirs is an idyllic life of family and community, and most of all an enduring friendship.  But when Kiran comes to terms with the fact that her physical attraction to Delilah is something she can no longer suppress, her once idyllic and familiar world is shattered.

Though Kiran and Delilah's first stab at intimacy leaves Delilah shaken, the two embark on a romance that proves an evolution for both young women. In particular, Kiran’s characteristic restraint evaporates, as her confidence blooms. But when their romance is discovered, the scandal is explosive, and a both tragic and triumphant culmination is triggered. 

Kiran and Delilah will come to learn that it is their life’s journey, both enchanting and heartrending, that will forge the women they ultimately become; most importantly, it is through the journey that they will come to know who they are.  As the film concludes, a new journey begins.

February 9th:   The Syrian Bride.   Eran Riklis.  Israel, 2004, Color, 97mins, DVD.

Mona's wedding day was the saddest day of her life.  She knew that once she crosses the border between Israel and Syria to marry Tallel, she will never be able to go back to her family in Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights.  The story of Mona's wedding day portrays all those gathered for the wedding -- the family, led by Hammed, a strong-headed political activist, government officials, soldiers, police officers, Red Cross workers, Druze, Syrians and Israelis, focusing on Mona's older sister Amal, a modern woman trapped in traditions she wants to break away from. 

A pessimistic story, perhaps an optimistic story, certainly an optimistic* one set in a picturesque location in a region haunted by hostility, indifference and bureaucracy.

* Optimism:  Optimism mixed with pessimism, a good way to survive in the Middle East.

February 16th:  Take My Eyes/Te Doy Mis Ojos.  Icíar Bollaín.  Spain, 2003, 109 mins, Color, 35mm.  In Spanish with English Subtitles.
 

One winter night, Pilar (Laia Marull) runs away from home. With her, she takes only a few belongings and her son, Juan (Nicolas Fernández Luna). Antonio (Luis Tosar) soon sets out to look for her. He says Pilar is his sunshine, and what's more, "She gave him her eyes"...

Throughout the story of TAKE MY EYES, Pilar rewrites a marriage agreement where nothing was right. Where it said "home", there was hell. "Love" was pain, and the person who promised "protection" brought only terror... But a change in part of the text alters the rest... maybe even tearing it to shreds.

Comments by the director - Iciar Bollain:  After Flores de otro mundo (Flowers from another world) (1999), I wanted to make a denser film with fewer characters, which perhaps meant it would be starker and more intense. And for some time, Alicia Luna, coscreenplay writer, and I had been thinking about spouse abuse. We found that, although this subject is constantly in the media, we had lots of unanswered questions.

Why does a woman stay for an average of ten years with a man who beats her? Why doesn’t she leave? And not only that, why do some women even insist that they are still in love? Being financially dependent is not enough of a reason to explain the fact that one out of every four women in Europe and the United States has experienced a violent relationship in her life. In the course of our research, we learned that one of the main reasons they stayed was because they kept hoping the man would change. That is why our main character is a woman who keeps hoping every day that the man she originally fell in love with will walk in through the door... But who is that man? Why is there almost no standard profile for a wife-beater? And, for years, why do those men abuse the very person they claim to love with all their hearts?

There are men who are physically violent. Others are also psychologically violent and are probably the ones who do the most damage. Some are genuinely cruel, while others are also victims themselves, who only know how to solve conflicts by using violence, who need to keep tight control over the person they love, who are very afraid... and that is what the man in our film is like. Someone who has the chance to see himself for what he is, and change.

TAKE MY EYES aka TE DOY MIS OJOS is Pilar and Antonio’s story, but it is also about the people around them: a mother who condones the situation, a sister who does not understand, and a son who sees all but says nothing. The city of Toledo, with its artistic splendor and historical and religious importance, adds yet another dimension to this story about love, fear, control, and power.

February 23rd:  Electric Shadows / Meng ying ton nian.  Xiao Jiang. China, 2004, 95 mins, Color, 35mm.  In Mandarin with English subtitles.

Winner of the Audience Award at the Deauville Asian Film Festival, ELECTRIC SHADOWS is a charming tale reminiscent of Cinema Paradiso, about characters who not only love movies but whose lives have been shaped and guided by the movies they love. This time, the story is set in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, at a time before TV, telephones and the internet, when outdoor cinemas offered escape from the everyday.

One evening after work, a young man named Dabing crashes into a pile of bricks in an alleyway while racing to the movie theatre on his bike. As he’s picking himself up, a young woman named Ling Ling takes a brick and hits him on the head. He winds up in the hospital where he learns that Ling Ling is also being treated-- in the psychiatric unit, for attacking him. When Dabing confronts Ling Ling, she asks him to go to her home to feed her fish. He does so and is amazed to discover that the woman’s room is a virtual shrine to the movies, crammed with posters, stills and memorabilia. There he finds her diary, and begins reading about a life filled with a passion for the movies that they share, in more ways then one.

XIAO JIANG was born in northern China in 1972, a few years after the most chaotic period of the Cultural Revolution. She performed in student dramas at university and then went on to join the Directing Class at the Beijing Film Academy. She graduated in 1995 and began working for television, making programs for China Central TV, Beijing TV and Phoenix TV before joining China Film Group as a screenwriter. ELECTRIC SHADOWS is her debut feature as writer and director.

"In her feature debut, Xiao Jiang, a new female voice in the lively panorama of young Chinese filmmakers, offers a stirring exploration of the troubled lives of unwanted children. Successfully integrating the sentiment of cinematic classics with children's fantasies, this Chinese cousin of Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso aims straight at the heart with warm performances and direct filmmaking."

-Toronto International Film Festival

A lovely, elegant paean to the joy and liberty that films offer…ELECTRIC SHADOWS is sweet and accomplished and Xiao Jiang is a terrific new find."

- The Hollywood Reporter

"Supremely entertaining debut feature by woman director Xiao Jiang…a highly emotive love-letter to five decades of Chinese movies."

-Vancouver International Film Festival

March 2nd:  BORN IN FRAMES: 10 for 10.   Curated by Swati Bandi, Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo.

Introduction by Pat Shelly, Associate Director, Gender Institute –IREWG, University at Buffalo

The title references and pays homage to the iconic feminist film "Born in Flames," the 1983 documentary-style feature by Lizzie Borden that opens a decade after the “Second American Revolution”has brought democratic socialism to the United States. The heroines, mostly lesbians of color, form a women’s army on bikes to fight against the oppression they still face in the new society.    Born in Frames encapsulates the spirit of feminist thought that is at the very core of the objectives of the film festival. The word 'frames' immediately draws to mind the framing of the woman within society.  It also, very importantly, throws light on the framing of the filmic picture that we as female filmmakers create. The artists: Swati Bandi, Stefani Bardin, Ruth Goldman, Holly Johnson, Meg Knowles, Elizabeth Knipe, Caroline Koebel, Julie Perini, Rosalind Peters & Carolyn Tennant.

Swati Bandi is a Ph.D. Student in American Studies and Media Study at the University at Buffalo. After many years working in low-budget, multi-starring Bollywood films, she decided to study them rather than make them. She makes documentaries that investigate and interrogate the woman’s question in micro- rather than macrocosms of society. Her film deals with the female breast and combines with it elements of her own personal negotiations with it.  

Stefani Bardin is currently pursuing her MFA in Film and Video at the Department of Media Study at UB. She is working on a multi-media, multi-channel film about the life and work of the 20th Century writer and cultural theorist Walter Benjamin -- the man who has become the axis on which her world rotates. 

Ruth Goldman is an academic by day, a filmmaker by night and an activist on weekends. Sometimes she even tries to wear all three hats at once. Ruth teaches in the American Studies Department at UB where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Documentary Studies.   She will present Do I Look Like Your Husband? (2006).  

Holly Johnson is an artist, designer and teacher. She is currently working on a multimedia hypertext project called "Dare, Virginia" on the disappearance of real and imaginary American women.  

Meg Knowles is an award-winning documentary and experimental video artist whose work has been screened at festivals, galleries and museums including the Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, the Athens International Film & Video Festival as well as on public access television and PBS.  Meg is a graduate of the MFA program in Film Media Arts at Temple University and is a Director and Producer for the Termite TV Collective. She is also the Technical Director at the Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo and teaches Video Production classes there.  

Elizabeth Knipe is a digital poet and experimental video maker who is entertaining an emerging interest in physical electronic art. Her work often deals with social dynamics and reconstruction of "the real" in the digital realm, exploring the role of interactivity in a user's/viewer's experience of an artwork. She is an MFA candidate in the Media Study Department at the University at Buffalo where she also teaches a course in digital art and web design.  

Caroline Koebel is an artist, writer and curator on faculty in the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. She has exhibited her experimental films, performative videos, and multimedia installations internationally. Through a post-conceptual art and critical practice she cultivates a necessary response to the demands of our times for sociopolitical engagement. Amidst such gravity, the artist takes those strong women of history’s call for subversive play to heart, and she thereby exercises her rights to shake, guffaw, spasm, and all the other things, not least of which is the freedom of the mind to wander.  Pricks, gaps, dots, openings Hole or Space (2006) takes its cue from contortionists of the early screen in spiraling out from conceptions of the body as whole.  

Julie Perini is an artist who makes experimental videos, installations, performances and events. She works with strangers, friends and other artists, as well as alone. She uses what is available in her everyday life, particularly time, space, people, gestures, gifts, words, ideas, an assortment of tasks and various machines. Perini received a B.S. in Communication from Cornell University in 2000. She is currently pursuing and M.F.A. from the Department of Media Study at UB.      http://www.julieperini.org/ 

Rosalind Peters is a film and video maker who works with non-dialogue driven narrative, incorporating movement, rhythm and heavily worked sound design. Her films have screened nationally and internationally and her funders include the UK Film Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.  Dress Film (2006) stitches together various attempts to put on a dress. Prolonging the point of composure, the edit becomes a form of stitch-up, withholding the arrival of a person ‘dressed’.

C. Tennant is an operator of multiple media. Her work examines local inventions of early image processing machines. Using these tools she has created a series of experiments that offer her a story of technology.