4th. International Women's Film Festival 1993The subversive Power of Laughter Introduction:
Gender Relationships and Female Humour - as Portrayed on Film
It's high time that the theme of gender relations was tackled in an upfront and innovative way (though this is not to deny the benefits of the serious problematics approach). Over the last few years, more and more women filmmakers and audiovisual artists have been resorting to the perspectives of distance, irony, cock-snooting and savage wit in order to comment on gender roles. Their aim: to unmask the standard notions of "femininity", "new femininity" and "masculinity" as the social constructs that they are.
Caricatures with Camera and Computer
The Frauenfilmfestival: The Birthplace of a New Humour? We saw this Festival as a springboard for an investigation into the cultural and social specifics of wit and humour, as a chance for experimentation with anarchic fringe cabaret and as an opportunity - in conjunction with an analytic look at mass entertainment comedy (TV etc.) - to pose the question: Is the (uninhibited) laughter of women a provocation per se? Which areas and which themes are best suited to the ironic perspectives inherent in art production?
This combination of works from throughout Europe, the Americas, Australia, China and Japan will open up new angles not just on similarities and
differences in the attitude taken by women working with film to contemporary gender relations but also on the cultural and social characteristics of wit and
humour. These themes have been underpinned by introductions, discussions, seminars and workshops.
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Linked themes the Festival had been addressing: Caricaturing society - parody and political satire Female (survival) experts in the art of living Other types of laughter -- wit and humour in other cultures
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Caricaturing society - parody and political satire Although laughter - particularly in the form of racist and sexist jokes - often serves to legitimate existing power relations, resistance is usually not far away: carnivalist actions (known but rare in the women's movement), subversive ideas smuggled in via comedy and satirical proposals for different kinds of utopia.
Films:
Frostschutzmittel
Lennä Lempi (Fly, my Love)
Quadratisch, Praktisch, Gut...
Melken und Saugen
Sexa-Pill
In Praxi
Bio-Graphics
Geige, Pferd und ein bisschen nervös
Der ungläubige
Udel (Schicksal)
Body Beautiful
Möchte jemand einen Keks ?
Negative Man
Lotto Texas
Grabowski, Haus des Lebens
Peep Show
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The laughter of the sexes The films presented in this block unashamedly continue the battle of the sexes but in a totally revamped way: the roles of victim and victimiser are inverted, alienated and toyed with.
Films:
Hauptstrasse 260
The Weatherhouse
Pickelporno
Elsa
Pa-Ma-Triarchat
Geliebte Mörderin
Olga-Die Heilung
Bar Jeder Frau
Die Grosse Liebe
Atlantic Rhapsody
Die Stille um Christine M
Brennende Betten
Danzon
Sugarblues
Im Kreise der Lieben
Knock Out
Sirup
Full of Grace
Barmherzige Schwestern
Emra Waheda la takfi
A Period Of Piece
Liebe und Anarchie
Film o Niczym
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Female (survival) experts in the art of living How do women manage to survive life with such wit and humour -- lives which occasionally take a tragic course? How do they align themselves within or outside existing stereotypes of "woman"? This block examines everyday personal survival strategies.Laughter is at once a means of relief, compensation and liberation: one of the many ruses of the powerless.
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Other types of laughter - wit and humor in other cultures Laughter reveals disparity -- the differences between the sexes, between the powerful and the powerless, between generations, between societal systems. What might well be excellent material for a joke in a certain culture might equally well be cause for deep offence in another society -- or, at the very least, a breach of good taste. Jokes about religion, (still) considered here in Germany more or less acceptable, create uproar in the USA whereas Japanese humour probably leaves the Germans cold. Ironic points made in a Latin-American film are probably missed on other continents.
Films:
Freud flyttar Hemifran (Freud leaves the house)
Reci, Reci, Reci, (Words, Words, Words)
Beijing Ni Zao (Good Morning, Peking)
Emraa Waheda la takfi
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Home Stories: kinflicks The nuclear family - the central vehicle of socialisation -has often been exposed to the full brunt of ironic attack. Against the background of that awful patterned wallpaper, the bric-ý-brac of childhood and the compulsive repetition of never-changing ritual, the "circle of loved ones" is unmasked as a vicious circle.
Films:
Oranges are not the only Fruit
Schoon Genoeg - Royal Flush
Die Mitreisenden
Billi
Family Turns
Gloria
Knock Out- To tette og en bade Hette
Sugar Blues
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Limits and taboos Style and content of the works in this block have drawn on the noir aspects of film comedy -- on black humour, on the grotesque, on the absurdity of life and death, on involuntary humour, on laughter that sticks in your throat.
Films:
Headrome
Idole mio Black Holes/ Heavenly Bodies
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Cable Spaghetti - Media Satire The media in the mirror of distortion: Edith Zimmerman (based on German TV's real-life Crimewatch presenter Eduard Zimmermann) hunting mysterious women criminals; an ironic look at the laborious work of a female sound technician; an experimental video version of James Bond.
Films:
Le Televisiun (The Television)
Ich
Backstage
James Bonk In Matt Blackfinger
Pump It Up!
Aktenzeichen XX - Ungelöst
Das Nummerngirl
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Lesbian Film Program The lesbian film program is composed of different videos dealing with the different living realities from European-, orth- and South American- or Asian points of view. Besides that the first and up to now only film dealing with the life of Lesbians in the former USSR has had it's world premiére.
Films:
Spin Cycle
Exposurecan 1990
Sex and the Sandinistas
Kush Special Films: Lesbian Video-Cabinet
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Historical Comedy Films The greatest comedians - or so the film histories and film retrospectives would have us believe - were men. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy are all hailed as the stars of slapstick and comedy, as the masters of comic character and as outstanding individuals in themselves who were able to lend something unmistakable to any film they appeared in -- stamping the storyboard with their own inimitable style. But did you know that the early cinema in Europe and the USA also afforded its star actresses the chance to consult and co-script? Above all, the character parts available in film comedy meant that a whole array of non-gender-specific, anarchic women's roles were there for the taking by actresses of the calibre of Pola Negri, Ossi Oswalda, Asta Nielsen and Dorrit Weixler. And nor were they slow to give contours to these parts. Even when this fertile phase of the cinema history had come to an end, women were still "allowed" - in the talkie comedies of Hollywood directors Lubitsch, Hawks and Capra, for instance - to be that which they were denied in other genres: working women, independent, zany, talkative and rebellious (until, of course, they were married off at the happy end). They could behave badly or pursue a career without having to renounce the man of their dreams. They could take a lover, smash crockery, scream hysterically or - like Mae West - pass obscene remarks. A series of historical movies and two workshops will be presenting actresses who garnished these comedies and the female roles in them with seditious wit, whose eccentricity drove their directors and producers to near despair and who turned that space in front of the camera into their very own stage and platform.
Films:
Das rosa Pantöffelchen
Ich möchte kein Mann sein
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