Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 13. June 11 1979
Seeing Red — Women's Film Festival
Seeing Red
Women's Film Festival
In June and early July of this year, the New Zealand Students' Arts Council is touring a programme of women's films around the country. The films, made by women and focusing on women, cover an ambitious range of issues: from the historical perspective on women fighting for union rights in the 1930's to the present situation of women in society: how they believe they appear to others, how they act and make decisions in a social context, how the myth of womanhood is perpetuated; from the struggles of coming to terms with relationships within the family and with other men and women, to the intensely personal and creative aspects of rinding one's own self in the tangle of the mind. The unifying factor in such a bewildering diversity of themes seemed to be the consistent anger felt by the film-makers and expressed in the films about the status of women in society, and so we've called the programme 'Seeing Red.'
The festival has been brought about by a visit from Carole Kostanich, a feminist film-maker and former New Zealander now living in Sydney who approached the Students' Arts Council with a package of films from the Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative. Carole is excited about the work of the Coop and the possibilities of film, and her enthusiasm is catching. She cares desperately that New Zealand women see these films.
Carole's visit to New Zealand is significant. Few Australian film-makers have the time, energy or money to spend on a New Zealand public which in general supports the monopolistic commercial film circuit. But Carole was raised in this country and feels an obligation to give some feedback to the growing women's movement in this country, as well as to reaching a wider audience of women here who may as yet feel that the movement has no validity or power to change their lives.
The programme consequently tries to reach out to all women. Size 10 (Col. 20 min.) is a conscious attempt by the film-makers and the women filmed to understand the notion of idealized and commercialized female beauty — and don't we all want to be size 10? How do you begin to break free from the conditioning which has insisted on hairless legs, sweet-smelling armpits and shapely breasts? It isn't easy. Similarly, The Selling of the Female Image, (Col. 9 mins.) Carole's own film, focuses on the powerful medium of commercial advertising on television which is bent on projecting women in stereotyped and restricting roles 'Why do all the men get to be scientists and chemists?' What the film-makers are emphasising is the powerlessness a woman feels about her own body and her growing sense of alienation from it. It effectively means that she is wasting her valuable energy trying to reconcile the myth of the body beautiful with her own apparently imperfect continually changing appearance and capabilities. And naturally enough, a woman's personality and ability to act in the world are impaired in an effort to reconcile the two. To complicate matters (for the woman, that is), the multi-million dollar fashion industry is continually changing the ideal of so-called beauty and enormous amounts of time, money and female resources are being expended trying to keep up with these changes. As Penny Gulliver says in her article The Magic Moment Never Comes' (Film newsDecember 1978), This keeps most women in a constant state of waiting for worth whileness.' Is it any wonder that the film-makers feel angry?
In contrast to the analysis of the myth of womanhood, Maidens, (Col. 33 mins.) looks at one woman's attempt to find her identity, a self that feels real. The film is a compilation documentary of the film-maker's maternal family using old photographs, slides, home movies and excerpts from [ unclear: sor] historical women's films. [ unclear: Throu] four generations of these [ unclear: wome] Jeni Thornley traces their [ unclear: relatio] ships with each other and the men, and their fight for survival a hard land - 'The women want love and marry.' Jeni experience a crisis of identity, and desperate find herself, she seeks out her flection in mirrors, but to no [ unclear: av] 'I am beginning to see me in [ unclear: hi] and him in me.' The film faces [ unclear: t] whole question of Jem's [ unclear: ment] paralysis, her hang-ups and [ unclear: tensio] with an unstinting sense of honest When the film ends, Jeni is [ unclear: st] searching, but with the help [ unclear: t] other women who share her [ unclear: grie] ances and have the love [ unclear: a] strength to accuse each other, [ unclear: je] feels she is beginning to trace [ unclear: th] pattern in her life.
With Babies and Banners [ unclear: Co] 40 mins.) looks at the great [ unclear: Gener] Motors strike in Michigan in [ unclear: t]1930's. It was the men [ unclear: wh] decided to have a sit-down [ unclear: strik] protesting against working [ unclear: conetions] and pay, but the women [ unclear: wh] supported them discovered the own mettle while the men [ unclear: beseig] the factory. The women were [ unclear: tin] of the bureaucracy which gave [ unclear: yo] a job because you were [ unclear: good-loo ing] or a back-breaking worker, [ unclear: i] working conditions where then were no safety precautions an toilet breaks were timed. They a determined to force the hands [ unclear: e] General Motors for their rights, [ unclear: a] a time when union meetings [ unclear: we] held in coal sheds, and being member meant getting fired. [ unclear: Th] film looks at the struggle of [ unclear: thos] women involved to gain their right as workers, and shows how it [ unclear: wa] their anger that turned the tide [ unclear: i] that fight. When General Motor signed the agreement to the workers' demands on February 1 1937, not only had a victory bee won against the world's larges corporation but also against [ unclear: th] entrenched attitude towards women in society.
From the historical perspective we look to the present. Elsie, (b/w 15 mins.) shows the running of [ unclear: th] Elsie Women's Refuge in Sydney and how the women participate in the collective decision-making [ unclear: o] the organization, decisions which are ultimately political statement about the power of women to do something about their status [ unclear: in] society.
Women in fact have very little idea that they can bring about change possibly because so few of then have ever had a real sense of responsibility. They have no idea [ unclear: o] their history in implementing change and to begin to see themselves as significant in this process means challenging their [ unclear: traditiona] notions of history, confronting the apparent gulf between the persona and the political, the private and the public. And these films help us to do that: we can see the experiences of women uniting to express anger, and to fight oppression.
To see red isn't to waste energy It's to state that women are no longer prepared to be intimidated Our anger is the first positive step towards bringing about change.
Christine McIndoe