Complications abound in the vast sexual landscape of all those who are girlie in some way or other. Millennia of repression, medical study, mythology and obsession have added layer upon layer of meaning to every facet of women’s sexuality; and as sexual beings located in this context, all of us have a relationship to this legacy. As a result, we are steeped in cultural beliefs, histories and mythologies about women’s sexuality that impact our desires no matter our gender or attractions. Creepy Dirty Girlie includes both direct and indirect examinations of dark and queer aspects of women’s sexuality not often seen in our commodity-driven media. We see desires that are unresolved, elude a single meaning, and extract pleasure where it has often been denied. Some filmmakers approach this subject with reverence and others with a light touch. But like the story of the blind monks examining an elephant, each perspective adds to our understanding and simultaneously takes us further from any singular ideas or final definitions. Viewers will be treated to explicit images including various sex acts, fetishes, menstrual blood, nightmarish weddings, pissing in public, excessive make-up, gender bending, food, death, decay, household chores and pornography. You know, girlie stuff.
Curated by the Festival Programming Committee. TRT: 73 min.
November 21, 2009
10 PM
Carnaval InesqueCível
(unforgeTTable carniVal)
Pedro Severien
2007, Brazil, video, color, sound, 6 min.
A woman encounters perils all around, starting with an alcoholic husband. A sensuous adventure begins with a shot and the kiss of another woman. She escapes through the streets, clubs and beaches, avoiding monstrous dolls, bizarre masks, drunkenness, fake heroes and villains, a fashion parade, men drinking gasoline, and waterfalls of urine.
proJecT b*mbi
Kristen Galvin
2007, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min.
Project B*mbi contains three classic scenes from the disparate genres of animated feature, pornography, and epic drama. Scenes were reframed, re-cut, and restructured for specific formal and textual juxtapositions and permutations. Debbie Does Dallas, Bambi and The Deer Hunter are layered upon each other with no new material, yet with a new critical perspective on all three.
one useless prick
Emma Blackwood & Paul Blackwood
2004, Uk, video, color, sound, 7 min.
In between cigarettes and compulsive cleaning, a woman named Phyllis Gash receives heartbreaking news about a sex toy. Animation and musical interludes provide insight into her private world, as do letters exchanged with Fuckhead Twad.
120 secondi
Philrouge
2008, Italy, video, color, sound, 2 min.
120 Secondi wordlessly captures two brilliant moments of intense desire, bondage and fear between women, one older and one younger.
kip masker
Maria Petschnig
2007, Austria/USA, video, color, sound, 4 min.
Kip Masker is made up of barely moving stills of a body wrapped and squeezed in clothing. The wrapping distorts the body to sometimes seem unfamiliar and unrecognizable and sometimes seem like a puppet or a doll. The film questions the body itself and touches on the borders of a formal/abstract perspective.
lash
Elka Kerkhofs
2008, Australia, video, color, sound, 6 min.
Lovers unite and are parted in past lives in this visually stunning animated short. Touch is the catalyst for their journey through time and for repeated persecutions in conservative religious societies. The otherworldly animation combines traditional pixilation techniques, rotoscoping and live action performance with the more traditional hand drawn backgrounds.
pop
Heather Wodrich & Sadie Lune
2009, USA, video, color, sound, 10 min.
A feminist riff on some of Andy Warhol’s early films, with split screens and disjointed music suggesting Chelsea Girls, and a direct tribute to Blow Job in a long shot of a woman’s face while she is getting head. And speaking of feminism in the sexual avant-garde of the late 20th century, there is also a delightful self-examination with a hand-held mirror and an Annie Sprinkle-style close-up of a star’s cervix.
someTimes you fighT for The world,
someTimes you fighT for yourself
Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz
2004, Germany, video, color, sound, 5 min.
Starring a gender-queer duo miming the words to the song “Her Story” from the band The Flying Lizards, the lush garden dramatization serves to enhance the critique contained in lyrics like, “I blame our books/I blame the tv/I blame top twenty for my jealousy.”
hidden
Angeliki Tsotsoni
2008, Greece, video, color, sound, 4 min.
Hidden transforms a woman-on-woman fetish scene into pure color and shape, where simple red lines and textures finally yield to hoods, gasmasks and hoses.
To all The boys i’Ve loVed before
Ariel Smith
2008, Canada, video, B&W, sound, 5 min.
While waiting for the phone to ring, a woman applies make-up, bakes a cake and eats it in celebration of herself.
golden diamonds
Julián Vargas
2008, USA, video, color, sound, 3 min.
Augusto and Rosetta Guerrero, both played by Julián Vargas, demonstrate their love and affection for golden high-heeled shoes, reflecting the charm and power held by a classic fetish object.
sTrokes
Mika Kiburz
2007, USA, video, B&W, silent, 2 min.
A rhythmic exploration of the space between the artist and the art, the pair of lovers, and the film edit. Quick cuts and silence evoke a fleeting intimacy.
hey f*** face
Amber Dawn
2008, Canada, video, B&W, sound, 5 min.
Hey F*** Face is part two of a three-part series of short video poems that explore the puzzling and often hazardous task of being human. Medical specimens, gender bending Christian clergy and kinky sex are just a few of the topics elucidated by the narrator. Originally shot on black and white Super-8 film, Hey F*** Face was created as part of the Project 8 Boot Camp, 2008.
my dead brain
Sarah Stuve & PJ Linden
2008, USA, video, color, sound, 9 min.
My Dead Brain illustrates the societal teachings that reside deep within the mind of its heroine, including cultural icons of women and iconic institutions like fitness and marriage. Traveling through time and consciousness, one identity shifts into another as archetypal images appear and reappear in different guises. The heroine plumbs the depths of her own mind to find a way through to images and feelings inaccessible to logic and reason.