HOARD MAGAZINE - September 2003
When I was first propositioned by Hoard Mag to write something for The MadCat Women's International Film Festival, I jumped at the opportunity without a second thought. After all, I have fond memories of Septembers at the El Rio - friends, beers on tap, the smell of tasty BBQ, a patio full of feisty women, and the search for somewhere among the vast outdoors of El Rio to plant our tushes. Yup, it's true. MadCat is a packed affair. It's grown, too, and I'm excited to have watched it mature. When I moved to San Francisco in 1999, a mere newborn to a festival that was already three years old, I was impressed by the range of programming. Films from women, as you might imagine, are broad and encompass many topics. Some films related directly to the experience of being a woman. Others didn't. Some were experimental, some animated, some novice, some expert, some narrative, some documentary, some silly, and some very political. I have always admired the breadth of what the festival tries to achieve with regard to filmmaking by women, this year's programming is particularly impressive. Not only have the superficial (albeit important) aspects of MadCat grown-such as its captivating new program, the ads in the weeklies, and the general buzz as an extremely competitive and hot festival, but it's also grown thematically. This year, MadCat takes on history, and it's a good thing, too. Sometimes we are so fixated on the current issues of women that we forget the struggles that many women before us have had to face. What's more, it's easy to scrap their ideologies and experiences as a "thing of the past" without understanding women within the contexts which frame them. The programs, especially The Student Nurses, and Educated Ladies, are particularly good examples of this. With a campy title like Stephanie Rothman's The Student Nurses, you'd think you were in for a soft porn. True, all the nurses-to-be are typically sexy 70's girls a la Charlie's Angels, and a bit of the movie is devoted to their sexual antics. Despite what the title suggests to us three decades later, the movie is more drama than comedy or porn. Set in Los Angeles, the women face "real" problems, such as dealing with unwanted pregnancies. Educated Ladies has a similar effect of showing what was on women's minds in the 1940-1970's. Strangely enough, it also shares something else in common with The Student Nurses: an ability to tickle our kitsch radars. The films, of course, are earnest and intended to give insight into things like cotton or folk-music of the Arkansas Ozarks or diving techniques. But the rhetoric of the time period isn't exactly what we'd now call enlightened. For example, Your Body During Adolescence, fails to mention important details of sex education (like how it happens at all), but finds a "don't worry if one breast grows faster than the other" crucial to a 12-minute film on reproduction. The images, paper-doll versions of girls and boys, also, tow a curious line between informative and confusing! Finally, Cut Snip Ooze will bring you back to the very present. This animation program has some arrestingly stark images. Of particular interest is Anorexie, which makes its first US debut at MadCat. A disturbing animation style that uses colors sparsely for effect, explores the intricate relationship between a girl's context and her eating disorder. I can't go without mentioning Sarah Jane Lapp's Chronicles of an Asthmatic Stripper, which features Lapp's recognizable and delightful animation style as well as a complimentary score by Mark Dresser. Chronicles delves into a complicated subject for women: our bodies as objects of desire versus the physiological body in which we live. Also, in this program is the strange but fascinating faux documentary, Historia del Desierto. Of course, that only skims the festival's offerings, which you can find in detail online at www.madcatfilmfestival.org. If you want to find me, however, be sure to make it to The Student Nurses at El Rio. I'll be the one in the cute nurses uniform, wearing one of those funny hats and carrying a cold pint. [ END ] ----- |
