Women Make Film 11: Tension, Stasis, Leave Out

Women Make Film: Chapter 29: Tension: Selma / Ava DuVernay, GB/US 2014. Screenshot from the Women Make Film website. A classic scene about passive resistance.

Women Make Film: Chapter 30: Stasis: Les Rendez-vous d'Anna / The Meetings of Anna / Chantal Akerman, FR/BE/DE 1978. Screenshot from the Women Make Film website.

Women Make Film: Chapter 31: Leave Out: Wadjda / وجدة / Haifaa Al-Mansour, SA/NL/DE/JO/AE/US 2012. Screenshot from the Women Make Film website.

Women Make Film. A New Road Movie Through Cinema
Women Make Film. Uusi matka elokuvaan
    GB © 2019 How To Make A Movie Ltd. PC: Hopscotch Films. P: John Archer. EX: Clara Glynn, Tilda Swinton. Assistant P: Sonali Choudhury. Associate P: Carl Beauchamp, Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Barbara Timmer.
    D+SC: Mark Cousins. Sound mixing: Diane Jardine. S: Joe Harfield. ED+script consultant: Timo Langer. Online: Chas Chalmers. Edit assistant: Scott Bilsbrough. P coordinator: Mhairi Valentine. P team: David Brown, Rowan Ings, Raja Kryda. World Sales: Dogwoof. Head of sales: Ana Vicente. Legal: David Burgess.
    https://www.womenmakefilm.com/
    14 hours – HD – 16:9
    Festival premiere: 1 Sep 2018 Venice Film Festival
    Finnish telepremieres of the 14 episodes: 3.3.2020, 10.3.2020, 17.3.2020, 24.3.2020, 1.4.2020, 8.4.2020, 15.4.2020, 22.4.2020, 29.4.2020, 6.5.2020, 13.5.2020, 20.5.2020, 27.5.2020, 3.6.2020
    Corona lockdown viewings / Women Make Film.
    Yle Areena: viewed on a 4K tv set at home in Helsinki, 13 May 2020.

Episode 11/14: Tension, Stasis, Leave Out
Jakso 11/14: Jännitystä ja pysähtyneitä hetkiä
Narrator: Thandie Newton
Finnish / Swedish subtitles: Tiina Kähkönen / Sari Östman

Chapter 29. Tension / Jännitystä ilmassa

Demon Lover Diary / Joel DeMott, dok, US 1980 [unreleased in Finland]
Dreams of a Life / Carol Morley, dok, GB/IE 2011 [unreleased in Finland]
Archipelago / Joanna Hogg, GB 2010 [unreleased in Finland]
Blue Steel / Kylmää terästä / Kathryn Bigelow, US 1990
Hotell / Hotel / Lisa Langseth, SE/DK 2013 [unreleased in Finland]
Évolution / Evolution / Lucile Hadžihalilović, FR/BE/ES 2015 [unreleased in Finland]
Ung flukt / The Wayward Girl / Nuoret syntiset / Edith Carlmar, NO 1959
The Peacemaker / Rauhantekijä / Mimi Leder, US 1997
De Stilte Rond Christine M. / A Question of Silence / Marleen Gorris, NL 1982 [unreleased in Finland]
Selma / Selma / Ava DuVernay, GB/US 2014
Astenicheski sindrom / Астенический синдром / The Asthenic Syndrome / Asteeninen oire / Kira Muratova, SU 1990

Chapter 30. Stasis / Levollisuus / Stillhet

Plätze in Städten / Places in Cities / Angela Schanelec, DE 1998 [unreleased in Finland]
Brownian Movement / Nanouk Leopold, NL 2010 [unreleased in Finland]
Astenicheski sindrom / Астенический синдром / The Asthenic Syndrome / Asteeninen oire / Kira Muratova, SU 1990
Colour Poems: Terra Firma / Margaret Tait, exp., c.m. GB 1974
Kid / Fien Troch, BE/NL/DE 2012 [unreleased in Finland]
De Stilte Rond Christine M. / A Question of Silence / Marleen Gorris, NL 1982 [unreleased in Finland]
Les Rendez-vous d'Anna / The Meetings of Anna / Chantal Akerman, FR/BE/DE 1978 [unreleased in Finland]
Double Tide / Sharon Lockhart, dok, US/AT 2009
Hamaca paraguaya / Paraguayan Hammock / Paz Encina, AR/NL/Paraguay/AT/FR/DE 2006 [unreleased in Finland]
Khamosh pani / خاموش پانی / ਖਮੋਸ਼ ਪਾਨੀ / Silent Waters / Hiljaiset vedet / Sabiha Sumar, PK/FR/DE 2003
Marlina si Pembunuh dalam Empat Babak / Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts / Mouly Surya, ID/FR/MY/TH 2017 [unreleased in Finland]

Chapter 31. Leave Out / Pois jättäminen

Chekhovskie motivy / Чеховские мотивы / Chekhov's Motifs / Tshehovilaistunnelmissa / Kira Muratova, UA/RU 2002
Je tu il elle / Chantal Akerman, FR/BG 1974 [unreleased in Finland]
Baby ryazanskie / Бабы рязанские / Women of Ryazan / Rjazanin naiset / Olga Preobrazhenskaya, SU 1927
Wadjda / وجدة / Vihreä polkupyörä / Haifaa Al-Mansour, SA/NL/DE/JO/AE/US 2012
Khake sar beh mohr / خاک مهر شده / The Sealed Soil / Marva Nabili, IR 1977 [unreleased in Finland]
The Day I'll Never Forget / Kim Longinotto, dok, GB 2002 [unreleased in Finland]
Baxter, Vera Baxter / Marguerite Duras, FR 1977 [unreleased in Finland]
Proof / Sokeat todisteet / Jocelyn Moorhouse, AU 1991
Povest plamennykh let / Повесть пламенных лет / The Story of the Flaming Years / Liekehtivän taivaan alla / Yuliya Solntseva, SU 1961

AA: In Episodes 9 and 10 of Women Make Film, Mark Cousins started to discuss genre, but having presented comedy, melodrama, science fiction and horror he abruptly stops. Most genres are left out: war, musical / rock / pop, biopic, epic, Western, gangster / crime / thriller / film noir, adventure... including one of the most interesting in this context: romance. Of animation, experimental, and documentary film there seem to be no chapters, either.

In a way, Chapter 29: Tension is still relevant to genre, as discussed in the previous chapter. Joel DeMott's Demon Lover Diary (1980) is one of the earliest examples of the "found footage" horror trend best known from Blair Witch Project made 19 years later.

I need to see Marleen Gorris's De Stilte Rond Christine M. / A Question of Silence, also relevant to horror, and also to Auli Mantila's The Collector, as an account of a raging rampage of a female protagonist.

This episode contains some of the most disturbing samples of the series. Here we have one of the silent cinema's most powerful rape sequences, in Women of Ryazan: the lesson, like in Fritz Lang's M, made three years later: the less shown, the more disturbing it gets. In Kim Longinotto's The Day I'll Never Forget the topic is female genital mutilation. Again, nothing is shown, and our imagination fills in the blanks.

The series is increasingly erratic, the argument hard to follow. In Chapter 29: Tension I would have expected Lois Weber and Phillip Smalley's Suspense (1913), an early masterpiece of the genre. But it's better to learn to stop worrying and love the samples we get. Some of them would have been at home in Chapter 19: Sex such as the clips from Angela Schanelec's Plätze in Städten, Nanouk Leopold's Brownian Movement and Chantal Akerman's Je tu il elle.

I have been recently studying Leo Tolstoy and the cinema. A great relevant sequence, worthy of the cavalry sequence in Gandhi, is in Ava DuVernay's Selma, a film about Martin Luther King's civil rights movement based on passive resistance. Black Selma voters sit down on the lawn in front of the courthouse where they have arrived to register, ignoring police orders to disperse.