HER EXPANSIVE SELF: Five Films by Women Exploring Identity and Multiplicity | IN-PERSON (1/18)
HER EXPANSIVE SELF: Five Films by Women Exploring Identity and Multiplicity | IN-PERSON (1/18)
Chicago Filmmakers (map) | Saturday January 18, 2025 | 6:00 PM
Join Chicago Filmmakers for the first screening in our brand new PICTURE RESTART SERIES: 16mm FILMS FROM THE PICTURE START COLLECTION titled, HER EXPANSIVE SELF: Five Films by Women Exploring Identity and Multiplicity!
To kick off our year-long Picture Restart series, we’re showcasing the work of six filmmakers who explore questions of identity and multiplicity, performance and gaze, self and other selves across five short films. These brief portraits of wild women are bursting at the seams with multiple, contradictory selves, a revolt against the flattened, constructed definitions of gender the television screams out at them. Embracing glitched possibilities long before the digital, these films defy categorization as they oscillate between multiple pathways towards liberation.
“The glitch creates a fissure within which new possibilities of being and becoming manifest. This failure to function within the confines of a society that fails us is a pointed and necessary refusal.” (Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism)
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Chicago Filmmakers does not deny admission to those who do not have the ability to make a donation. Please email coop [at] chicagofilmmakers.org to inquire about free admission.
Lineup:
1. On the Threshold of Liberty - Heidi Tikka, 1992, 12 mins
A poetic montage deconstructing the relationship between self, language and image. Close-up shots of a woman smoking, a television screen and other scenes are accompanied by an intimate voice over; Heidi Tikka questions the Freudian notion of the split subject by replacing it with her vision of an endlessly layered, multiple and rhythmic process. On the Threshold of Liberty is greatly philosophical but also explicitly sensual, operating on the affective, rather than cognitive level. (Synopsis by Heidi Tikka)
2. Bust-Up - Cathy Cook, 1988, 7 mins
Teatime will never be the same! This tickling thriller about an afternoon tea features Holly Brown, a visionary in the Milwaukee queer club scene of the 1980’s. Holly spontaneously transforms into several female personas that startle and entertain her surprised guest. Her characters obsessively play havoc with the formalities of etiquette, pedigree and hospitality while challenging sex roles and stereotypes. (Synopsis by Cathy Cook)
3. Another Great Day - Jo Bonney & Ruth Peyser, 1980, 6 mins
This film depicts a day in the life of a housewife as she routinely performs her daily chores; TV, radio, and pulp novels form her world of fantasy. She moves in this world of distorted values, ineffectual, uncomprehending, only able to recognize her own despair. (Synopsis by Ruth Peyser)
4. Ruins Within - Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, 1992, 10 mins
A poetic, transcultural fever dream about belly dancers and male spectators in which mirrors and buildings being demolished are boldly made to rhyme with one another. (Synopsis by Chicago Reader)
5. Meshes of the Afternoon - Maya Deren, 1943 (1959 sound version), 14 mins
This enormously influential and powerful work features Maya Deren in the central role, attuned to her unconscious mind and caught in a web of dream events that spill over into reality. Symbolic objects, such as a key and a knife, recur throughout the film; events are open-ended and interrupted. Deren explained that she wanted “to put on film the feeling which a human being experiences about an incident, rather than to record the incident accurately.” (Synopsis by MoMA)
Total Runtime: 49 Mins