FEMINIST HOLLYWOOD TAKEOVER

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Feminist Hollywood Takeover is a series of shorts by female filmmakers who have deconstructed the predictable roles we tend so fondly remember when we think of old Hollywood films. Daringly, each film rebels against the tired archetypes of the mammy, tragic heroine, and hetero-glamourpuss comprising a joint rejection of oppressive stereotypes, and starring some of the most iconic Hollywood starlets to grace the silver screen.

Special thanks to Women Make Movies!

MONDAY, MARCH 10 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, MARCH 14 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19 – 10:00 PM

LIP
Dir. Tracey Moffatt, Edited by Gary Hillberg, 1999
Australia, 10 min.

Australian artist, Tracey Moffatt, takes aim at Hollywood’s portrayal of black women in a cheeky montage of (surprise) maids throughout film history. Moffatt recontextualizes your favorite actresses as pegs in a machine of oppressive stereotyping and bigotry, in this strangely hilarious short, which sheds a familiar yet refreshing light on #whitegirlproblems. With clips including a young Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, and Patty Duke, among others, LIP is like a trip down memory lane with modern criticism instead of nostalgia.

THRILLER
Dir. Sally Potter, 1979
UK, 34 min.

Performance artist, experimental filmmaker, composer, dancer, and general badass Sally Potter eschews the typical Hollywood narrative with a deconstruction and rewriting of Puccini’s LA BOHEME. A staple of feminist film theory, THRILLER is one of Potter’s first international successes as a filmmaker in a career that includes such undertakings as ORLANDO and YES. In Potter’s version of Puccini’s legendary opera, Mimi, the tragic heroine who is supposed to die by the end of the opera, is granted the agency to question her own life story and the reasons behind her death. She juxtaposes her own role in the story with that of her female foil, Musetta, the “easy” woman, and challenges the idea that the “good” girl should always be youthful, weak and distressed.

MEETING OF TWO QUEENS
aka Encuentro entre dos reinas
Dir. Cecilia Barriga, 1991
Spain, 14 min.

Cecilia Barriga’s culty video montage tells the story of two queens who fall in love, unwittingly played by Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. Clipped from their most iconic works, the Chilean born video artist manipulates scenes from the legendary actresses to turn two of the most well known Hollywood starlets in film history into a silent-film style lesbian fantasy. Barriga drives the narrative using common motifs such as the cigarette and the one-eyed glance from beneath a wide brimmed hat, motifs which are familiar to us, but recontextualized within a queer narrative. Major points for including a rainmaker in the soundtrack.