The Thinking (Wo)man’s Sundance

Video Shorts Segue Women Into Director’s Seat

New York – From silver screen sirens to indie breakout roles, women have always maintained a strong presence in the world of the moving image – that is, at least, on camera. Despite the various mediums that exist today for film and video imagery, the off-camera role of director remains decidedly male terrain. However, for 92 minutes one audience received a glimpse as to how the industry would look if populated, instead, by a slew of Sophia Coppolas.
This year’s International Video Shorts Screening Festival, which features female directors, displayed 22 video shorts out of 66 pieces sent from the around the world, said Sheryl Mousley, curator of film at the Minneapolis-based Walker Art Center. Mousely screened all the submissions for the Feb. 18 festival, held at Barnard College and sponsored by The Women’s Caucus for Art.

The selected shorts were arranged across four categories, including children -- no surprise there -- to identity, memory and place. Unexpected, however, was that just three shorts were featured under the children category, indicating women directors have a lot more on their minds than motherhood. In fact, some of the most evocative pieces in this year’s festival were found in the identity and place categories.
Martha Gorzycki played with the ubiquitous image of the American flag in “Unfurling.” Amid all the entries, this particular short stood out as type of modern artwork than digital short. The flag in Gorzycki’s near two-and-a-half-minute piece is comprised of commerce signs, bar codes, animated cars, windmills and other images strung together, in patterns – creating an American flag comprised of layers which exude rhythms and has a pulse. At the same time, this piece is also a deconstruction of an extremely powerful object, for various reasons, the world over and should find a home in a MoMa-like institution.

Agoraphobia, the notions of limit, and marriage were among other topics explored during the festival. And while it’s safe to say it was inevitable that the Iraq War II and the Sept. 11 attacks would be explored, Donna Stack delivered these themes in an especially tactful piece called “Ten 00:10:00.”

This ten-minute short, comprised of one-minute clips that play in slow motion, include footage taken from these two violent events, skillfully woven together with eight other clips from man-made and natural events (the 2006 India Ocean Tsunami, for example). Yet, there is no sound to this short. The muting of such a crucial element produced visible reactions in the room. The audience was moved by footage ranging from high-tech bombs being released mid-flight, to the heat sensory camera that captured human “targets” being taken out in a US military raid. But it was the silent footage of the abuse of prisoners at the Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, which produced audible gasps by the crowd.

And if it’s no surprise that sex and violence sell in America, then director Chelsea Tonelli Knight skillfully repackaged it into a form that did surprise, utilizing a seemingly innocuous tale of an Italian female traveler.

In the eight minute short, “Standing on the Beach in Rimini,” the unseen female narrates three stories from her travels across the Adriatic Sea. One involves meeting a mother in the former Yugoslavia, who, as she fiddles around her kitchen and fusses with her outdated stove, drops this bomb into the conversation -- that two of her three sons were murdered and the community fingers local Muslims for the crime.
But it’s the female Italian’s retelling of a sexual episode involving three strangers in an unfamiliar city that touched a raw nerve with the audience.

Recalling drinking and some hash smoking with these male strangers, our soft spoken narrator reveals she’s unclear as how and why she had sex with all three men one that evening. Perhaps it’s her very blunt description of the factors that lead to her entanglement which created the connection with the audience. As the traveler relates her confusion, in a flat voice, seemingly devoid of emotion, the audience grew completed muted and still. It appeared that many were recalling their own individual wounds from sexual exploitation and as the tales from Knight’s character eventually rolled from the beach in Rimini out to sea, only the sound of the heat being pumped into the college auditorium was heard for several moments.

To be sure, the festival did not disappoint, delivering the ups and downs an audience needs out of an edgy event. That’s because not every short was as polished as the above mentioned, or, in the case of Sarah Kanouse’s “Chasing Billy Caldwell,” even coherent due to poor sound mixing. But the festival is the thinking (wo)man’s Sundance; for example, despite its technical flaw, Kanouse’s short was pleasing for her premise. The just over seven minute short traced the life of Billy Caldwell, a 19th Century Indian-Canadian settler, by using the street and business signs found in an affluent Chicago neighborhood that tap his name.

This mixing of the up-and-comers, with those who should be well on their way to broader recognition, is what makes this international festival truly cutting edge.

The Women’s Caucus for Art, nationally based organization, sized up video shorts as an opportunity for women to chip away at the gender imbalance when it comes to directing. The 4th running of the International Video Shorts Screening was the premiere event for the organization’s 35th Anniversary Celebration in New York City.

Colleen O’Connor Grant - writer/ FCW SOCIETY MEMBER