May 13, 2009 | 2 Comments | ByMelissa Silverstein
Star Trek film, directed by JJ Abrams
Didn’t you just love Startrek? Our friend Melissa Silverstein from the fab blog Women and Hollywood was all excited to see it, but had some serious frustrations about the missed opportunity to bring women into the future (as anything other than mothers or sex symbols, that is)…
Mar 3, 2009 | 1 Comment | ByBirds Eye View
Sophie Ivan writes about Peace Mission and why you should get yourself along to the ICA on Monday March 9th for An Introduction to Nollywood – the third largest film industry in the world.
Peace Anyiam-Fiberesima at her desk
Never mind Nollywood, Peace Anyiam-Fiberesima is a one-woman industry all of her own. We first catch sight of her, a mobile phone clamped to each ear, arranging a slew of business meetings as she is driven in a blacked-out car through the choc-a streets of Lagos. Producer, director, talk-show host, founder and CEO of the African Movie Academy, which produces the continent’s equivalent of the Oscar’s each year, Peace is the embodiment of the energy which she describes as Nollywood’s driving force. It produces well over a 1000 films a year, and is Nigeria’s second largest employer (after the oil industry): in terms of sheer output, that makes it the third biggest film industry in the world.
Read the full story
Feb 23, 2009 | 4 Comments | ByTamsyn Dent
Hit by Slumdog Millionaire fever? Tamsyn Dent suggests you come watch a deeper and more realistic portrayal of women in India in Leena Manimekalai’s award winning documentary Goddesses.
India is everywhere at the moment! Even pre-last night’s Oscars smash, you could barely turn on your television or open the newspaper without seeing something about Danny Boyle’s wild card hit of the awards season, Slumdog Millionaire. Like it for its feel good factor and rags to riches storyline or loath it because of the negative image of the slum inhabitants of Mumbai, you can’t deny that this is a visually stunning film and through it Bollywood, and more importantly, India is seeping into the mainstream.
But what about the women in the film? To me the women lose out, the love interest is unconvincing and never fully explained and the only other strong female character is the stereotypical traditional mother.
Feb 16, 2009 | 1 Comment | ByBirds Eye View
BEV programmer Daniela gives us a second update from Berlin, and is thrilled to hear that her favourite film won the Golden Bear…
From the very opening scene I knew I was seeing a very special film (and that I made the right choice to make it to the 9.30 am screening after having gone to sleep at 4 am…) – a beautiful, haunting lament, a single voice, gorgeous, soft, heart-breaking- its owner soon revealed- an old woman, lying in bed with her eyes closed, her wrinkled face framed by beautiful long ashen hair spread over the pillow… She sings about how she was raped by rebels years ago, her husband killed in front of her, her unborn daughter witnessing this brutal act from inside her mother’s womb. The daughter’s face leaning gently over the old woman’s, their destinies bound by a bond much deeper than most mothers and daughters – a mysterious illness was passed on through her breast milk, and is said to affect children of thousands of victims in Peru’s bloody civil war – the sickness of fear.
Feb 12, 2009 | No Comments | ByBirds Eye View
BEV programmer Daniela Boban is at the Berlin Film Festival, catching the latest films by women directors including our favourite Julie Delpy with an early, (even more) gruesome version of botox, and a Chytilova comedy classic on the side…
Daniela Boban (BEV Programmer)
Yesterday, I caught Julie Delpy‘s latest offering: The Countess, Panorama Special screening, a period piece about a notorious 17th century Hungarian countess Erzsebet Bathory, played by Delpy herself, who allegedly used virgins’ blood as a pre-botox youth potion, in a desperate and increasingly gruesome bid to retain her youthful looks. A powerful, independent noblewoman falls for a lovely young man 20 years her junior after her husband’s death. This young man ends up breaking her heart and unleashing her murderous tendencies. She believes that the reason for the abandonment is her age, and becomes convinced that virgins’ blood can reverse signs of ageing, starting a series of gruesome murders of local maidens to feed her obsession with youth and beauty. Although the film portrays the story as if it was actually true, Delpy very strongly suggests that this was all possibly fabricated by the Countess’s enemies – what better way to get rid of a powerful woman than by spreading rumours about her as a blood-thirsty insane monster.
