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| 2002
Women in Cinema Film Festival January is a depressingly downbeat period
for most American filmgoers, what with studio sewage valves spewing their
post-holiday dregs into multiplexes across the country. As Hollywood purges
itself with this bitter enema, frantically marketing second-string,
first-of-the-year dreck like Birthday Girl
and Slackers, hardcore cinemaniacs hit the festival circuit instead. A
plane ticket to Park City could land you at Sundance, America’s most
widely-publicized and chilliest festival experience. However, unless you’ve
booked the flight well in advance of the event’s army of airborne actors,
agents, publicists, directors, and journalists (or reside in neighboring Salt
Lake City), this elite Utah stomping ground of stargazing and pre-release sneak
peeks might be an unrealistic choice. Take Seattle’s cinema crowd, for instance,
where crummy mainstream offerings are coupled with bogus, wet weather, gray
skies, and Seasonal Affective Disorder. Some northwest film freaks deal with
this dilemma by popping liberal doses of antidepressants and washing them down
with white-chocolate mochas from Starbuck’s. Others beat the winter blues by
attending Women In Cinema, an annual
event sponsored by Cinema Seattle and featuring female-helmed motion pictures
from across the globe. Many of the movies reflecting their varying shades of
light from the Harvard Exit’s art-house screen also depicted women in roles
not typically associated with the female gender. Woman as Pornographer was the
theme of Bad Girl, Woman as Romantic
Aggressor embodied Rain and La
Cienaga, and Woman as Outlaw dominated the Mexican landscapes of Otilia
Rauda. Other uncharacteristic depictions included a disappointed dog sitter
who deals with life’s ugliness by imitating a pooch in Bark, a suicidal matron from It
Should Have Been Nice After That, and Arab women damaged by misogynistic
cultural traditions in Season of Men. Meanwhile, an archival presentation of 1932’s
German classic The Blue Light
commemorated famed (infamous?) director Leni Riefenstahl’s upcoming 100th
birthday (August, 2002), and a screening of What
Matters Most by late director, artist, musician, and writer Jane Cusumano
benefited the University of Washington’s Breast Care and Cancer Research
Center. Although all of Women
In Film’s featured offerings were created by women, they weren’t always about
women. Miracle, for instance, dealt with a boy’s coming of age on the
streets of Denmark, while The Mark of Cain
explored the predominantly male Russian prison system and the hidden meaning
behind inmate body tattoos. Like the Seattle International Film Festival, its mammoth summer counterpart,
Women In Cinema was much more than
simply an excuse to sit in front of a screen, although Capitol Hill’s Harvard
Exit Theatre made for a relaxed, comfortable home base. Attendees gorged their
faces at a brunch, were treated to stand-up storytelling (featuring Washington
native Julia Sweeney, alumni of Saturday Night Live, star of It’s
Pat, and creator of God Said, "Ha!"),
and took in a regional art show entitled, "All About Eve." Meanwhile, a panel of
filmmakers including Sweeney, Faye Dunaway
(The Yellow Bird), Jill Sprecher, (13
Conversations About One Thing), Diana Turner (Writer’s
Model), Kasia Adamik (Bark), and
several other talents addressed "the wonderfully diverse ways women inhabit and
express their physical selves." This seventh Women In Cinema festival transported viewers on a matronly mystery
tour covering features and shorts from twenty countries. Beginning on January 24th
and continuing through the end of the month, Women
In Cinema embraced The Body Female
as its theme. Director Kathleen Murphy promised attendees "marvelous cinematic
manifestations of womanflesh and spirit," and her weeklong production didn’t
disappoint.
Be sure to read our reports from these other film festivals as well:
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