I just returned from my annual weekend in Telluride with my family seeing 15 amazing films. My mom started the Rocky Mountain Women's Film Festival in my hometown, Colorado Springs, after going to the Telluride Film Festival for the first time. Since then it has become a set-in-stone tradition for us, a little jolt of inspiration and art that we experience every Labor Day.
These were the films that I believe have particular feminist resonance from this year's festival, so keep your eyes peeled for them:
American Violet
So often when you see "civil rights" movies, they are set in the time of Jim Crow, Martin and Malcolm. This amazing film--based on a true story--is set in our very own decade. Dee Roberts, a single mom from a tiny town in Texas, is arrested on bogus drug charges--designed to pad the racist district attorney's arrest record. The ACLU gets involved and the rest is history. Dee Roberts and her four kids were actually in Telluride. It always takes your breath away to see a genuine heroine after watching a film like this.
I was especially excited about this film, because an old friend of mine--Malcolm Barrett--stole the show. He and I used to do spoken word poetry together in college and now he's undoubtedly on his way to being a critically-acclaimed actor. Go Malcolm!
On a less encouraging note, this asshole district attorney is still serving in Texas. When the film has its nationwide release, I'll post again about what we can all do to express our absolute outrage that this jerk is still in office.
Everlasting Moments
This Swedish film is a true epic and a frightening look into just how difficult working class women's lives were at the turn of the century. The main character struggles through years of child birthing and rearing, an abusive, alcoholic husband, and poverty with a sort of gritty grace; her salvation is in her discovery of photography.
I was particularly struck by Maria Heiskanen's--the main actor's--capacity to perform the main character as both tough as nails, and frustratingly stuck and permissive to her husband. It beautifully encapsulated women's complex lives and identities at the time.
Happy Go Lucky
This Mike Leigh film provides viewers with a sort of Jesus story featuring a quirky, British school teacher in her 20s named Poppy. As she smiles and stumbles happily through life, one gets the sense that Poppy's limitless capacity to empathize and find joy in every situation is a template for "the good life." Of course her lack of boundaries is the tension for growth in the film.
I can't wait for everyone to see this totally original, totally hilarious film. Not only does Poppy's approach to life serve as a reminder to all us of us that, hell, life is pretty damn good, but she's a total feminist heroine--unwavering when her sister tells her that she needs to sober up and start making babies, kind and fair to all those that cross her path, and the sort of girl who stays up all night with her crew of girls, dancing in cowgirl boots, and still gets up the next morning to try out the art project she's going to present in her elementary school classroom the following week.
Hunger
This was actually one of the most moving films I've seen in years. It is based on the 1981 IRA hunger strike in Ireland, led by Bobby Sands, but writ large it is about ideology and protest, flesh and activism, the oppressor and the oppressed. The visceral images of these men's bodies hitting the concrete floor of the prisons, wasting away in protest was one of the most compelling portrayals of the ways in which bodies serve as tools of ideology and masculinity becomes poisoned that I have ever seen.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Telluride Film Festival Feminist Round-Up.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/9079
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
I didn't ever expect to see a movie starring Mikael Persbrandt be reviewed here. Something new every day! :)
No real substantive comment to add, other than that my criminal law professor forms the basis of one of the characters in "American Violet," and David Moore (the good attorney) is an alumnus of my alma mater. Very interesting story, and I'm glad it's being told.