Women and Documentary Film

HARD TO PIN WOMEN’S DOCUMENTARY DOWN I want to first say that the more I reflected on this subject the more I realized that it was really hard to cut this down to 1.5 hours. I hope in this short time to be able to bring up some characteristics of women and documentary film. But the world in itself is large and demands a festival of its own. At any festival there is work by women --but not all work can be called women’s documentary. Many women do not even want to have their work described as such. So I will be talking about a specific kind of women’s documentary with classic work by notable filmmakers which are essential viewing.

DOCUMENTARY FILM IS FOR WOMEN Documentary film has been a specific forum for women in which to critique the power structure, and the binary way in which women are left outside of the male gaze in film. It has been burgeoning since the second wave of the women’s movement in the Western world and is now used by women globally. Embracing the film medium for women, has required a sort of bisexuality-- learning how to express ideas in film language principally shaped by men, and learning to speak as women. Documentary film as opposed to the budget required for a narrative film has also been a comparatively more affordable route for women. I would like to look today at some historical and recent work in documentary film and the different ways in which women use the medium.Since no one creates anything out of the blue or in a vacuum, a short history of documentary film and how women fit in is useful.

BRITISH DOCUMENTARY MOVEMENT INSPIRES WOMEN We can trace the influences of women documentary filmmakers of the 1970’s to the British documentary movement of the 1920’s whose aim was to shed light on social problems. The roots of this vision still remains as a particular way of making documentary film today. John Grierson who coined the term documentary and was instrumental in developing the British movement stressed the educational value of documentary rather than the aesthetic. His sisters Ruby and Marion also worked to further this aim. In the 1970’s, The London Women’s Film Coop an independent group of filmmakers continued in this vein, stressing independence from the use of a male voice over in documentary work and the development of a form of women speaking.

WOMEN’S CINEMA AS COUNTER CINEMA Claire Johnston, one of the members of the London Women’s film Coop urged the formation of a Women’s Counter Cinema that worked more specifically to establish a women’s voice in film. These documentaries of the 70’s were agitational, citing the need for social change and the spirit of this is a hallmark of women working in documentary. There are of course documentary films made by women which do not fit this category. So it is important to point out that documentaries of this kind have a certain level of awareness.

AGITATIONAL DOCUMENTARIES The documentaries of the 70’s were agitational, citing the need for social change-- a feature which continues today. Take Pratibha Parmar, a filmmaker from the UK with Indian heritage and her film Warrior Marks, a documentary about female genital mutilation made in 1993 together with Alice Walker. Parmar is a prolific filmmakers with Indian heritage who also recently did a film on Jodie Foster: Jodie an Icon (1996) and why she serves as a role model for lesbian women even though she has not openly come out as a lesbian. An earlier film she made was Khush (1991) about being gay and lesbian in India where homosexuality is illegal.

Parmar , involved in political and social issues involving women of color and lesbians and this activist position can be seen carrying forward the traditions of the 1970 agitational documentaries.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DISCUSSION AFTER SCREENINGS It is important to stress also that when provocative women’s documentaries are shown that discussions afterwards are equally important. At one such screening of Warrior Marks in San Francisco, some of the men in the audience said they could empathize with female genital mutilation because of their own circumcision They were booed at to be quiet and give women space for their reaction and the situation became very charged.

Audiences generally leave the theater when the film is over, usually before the credits. Because these are documentaries about aspects of culture which need to be addressed, however uncomfortable, they fill an important need and audience discussion is very important. Without special film screenings which profile work by women this work goes largely unseen and consequently discussions about the need for change goes unrecognized.

SHOCKING TRUTH, SWEDISH AGITATIONAL DOCUMENTARY SHOCKING TRUTH, a documentary which is an indictment against the public broadcasting of pornographic films by TV 1000 and Canal Plus is an example of how just one film with the appropriate discussion channels can influence public opinion. Perhaps the strongest point being that these cable channels show abusive pornography and are not subject to censorship. In the aftermath , paradoxically the pornographic film buyer for TV 1000 quit, and sales for both channels went up. What is interesting about the film was that it was a documentary about a Swedish women who had worked in the pornographic film industry and her awareness afterwards of the reality of the industry. Again, this is just one public forum.

A notable filmmaker in Sweden who works in this style is Maj Wechselman who has been very active in making documentaries. Her latest film , Speak My Sisters is about women in South Africa. There are also films which generate invaluable discussion, but unfortunately are forbidden in their own country of origin .And example of this is Stories of Honour and Shame, by Antonia Caccia from the UK (1996) about the repression of Islamic women and the claustrophobic atmosphere of life behind the scenes in Gaza.

CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY: MAYA DEREN, HAITIAN FOOTAGE Arguing for the creative side of documentary film, In the 1950’s filmmaker Maya Deren from the USA, the first woman to win the prize for amateur film at Cannes in 1946 , made a documentary on Haitian Voudoun. Deren had a lot to say about narrative film and documentary film which was beginning to have pre-established rules for form in the 40’s. We can say that she initiated an important discussion about blurred boundaries-- the fine line between fact and fiction.

Deren began making films during World War II when documentaries where made with cameras attached to fighter planes, a practice she called morally repulsive. This a creative documentary because it involved the creative use of documentary. In ethnographic circles this is considered un-scientific, specifically the use of slow motion. Deren received the first Guggenheim fellowship for creative work in motion pictures and traveled to Haiti to document the dances of Haiti. What she discovered upon arrival were that these were intrinsic parts of ritual and that the standard editing of material that is used in documentary film would alter their ritual intentions. We can say that Deren was a feminist ethnographer because of challenge to traditional white male anthropologists that discounted the importance of personal information and getting involved with one’s subject area.She also challenged them by daring the film to put her gaze on a male dominated territory.

Deren argued that ‘if we accept the proposition that even the selected placing of the camera is an exercise of conscious creativity, then there is no such thing as a documentary film--in the sense of an objective rendition of reality’. She explained that the raw material of film--such as camera angles, lenses filtering and lighting-- are re-combined not in an imitation of their original and natural integrity but into a new whole to thus create a new reality'.(An Angram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, 1946)

Over 20,000 feet of footage were never edited into a film-- so in this way, Deren maintained her position that this film should be seen in its entirely rather than stitched together in a narrative. After her death, her footage was made into a traditional documentary--as no one would touch it otherwise and sponsor it-- with the customary voice-over and ‘National Geographic’ travelogue voice. It can be interesting to watch this footage with the sound Deren intended and with the male voice over supplied after her death. It is interesting to see this film without this intrusive voice over for a sense of what Deren tried to accomplish with her footage.Over and over it is written that the film was unfinished because it was unedited, which as you may notice is a contradiction to the obvious finished sequences in her film.

HOW TO GET THE FILMS! Many documentary films by women filmmakers debut in Europe at a festival in Paris called Créteil International Women's Film Festival (www.cinefemmes.wanadoo.fr) which has been in existence for 22 years.This years festival starts next Friday and will feature films made by women in the Mediterranean by women all over the world. In Europe, there is a women’s distribution company in London, called Cinenova (www.Cinenova.org.uk). And in the US is Women Make Movies, (www.wmm.com) a distribution company which has over 400 films made by women.

I was moderator of a panel discussion at the Svenska Kvinnorsfilmförbund Film Festival November 1998 called Femmedia, closely following Stockholm Film Festival, which generally shows very few films by women. Distributors for Folkets Bio and Stockholm Film Festival director Git Schenius said they do not attend this festival to preview or buy films. All of Prahbar’s films have debuted there as well as important documentaries made by women all over the world.

STORY RETOLD IN DOCUMENTARY One common theme to women’s documentaries are histories of forgotten women, or women marginalized within history.At Créteil in 1997, the Rembrandt public heart award went to former Bay Area resident and avant garde filmmaker Barbara Hammer for her documentary The Female Closet (1997) on three women artists spanning one hundred years some of whose lives were closeted and best kept secrets in the dubious interest of historical preservation. Swedish filmmaker Christina Olofsson recently made a documentary. I rollerna tre on Mai Zetterling featuring three of her actresses: Bibi Andersson Harriet Andersson and Gunnel Lindblom who visit Zetterling's home in southern France. Zetterling who left Sweden after the lukewarm response to films made in the late 60’s and made a successfull career in England as director.

The Audience Award for Best Documentary at Créteil International Women’s Film Festival in 1996 was Paris was a Woman Directed by Andrea Weiss and Greta Schiller UK (1995). The film explores the community of women’s artists and writers that lived on the left bank in the 1920’s, a period of time in which most histories chronicle the achievements of men at the time. This particular scene using rare footage explores the lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, her partner.

REALISM IN DOCUMENTARIES AND NARRATIVES It is interesting to what happens to a narrative film which follows the release of a documentary on the same subject. First of all, the facts disappear. Boys Don’t Cry directed by Kimberly Pierce, based on the life of Brandon Teena. The documentary The Brandon Teena Story was shown in Paris at the Cineffable Lesbian film festival last year to a women only crowd, a film which awoke a lot of feelings. On Swedish TV at the European Film Awards in December last year, the moderator referred to Boys Don't Cry as the story of a woman who is unsure about her identity and dresses like a man. Such an understanding of the film can be explained because as a narrative film, the truths raised in the documentary became second place. Filmmaker said she wanted to take the story in a different direction-- in fact the only African American character is written out of the script--and replaced by a white woman. Certainly the documentary had more to do with the fact that Brandon Teena wanted to be seen as a man, and to point to the injustice done to him because he could not afford a sex change operation. So documentary, or social situations can and are distorted when made into narrative film. And the important discussion which accompany films are absent.The Brandon Teena Story by Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir ( 1998 ) featured at this festival and showing tonight (was shown last year to a women only crowd and awoke a lot of discussion on the injustice of the murders.

CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY : FACTS AND FICTION There is a blurred boundary between facts and fiction. A example which demonstrate this are Murder and Murder, by prolific avant-garde filmmaker Yvonne Rainer ( 1997) a film about a lesbian couple, one of which is diagnosed with breast cancer. The filmmaker was also diagnosed herself and the film becomes a blurred boundary of fact and fiction. A banner of text flashes under the images about statistics on breast cancer. Then Rainer, as narrative tells the history of lesbians in UK courts. Rainer who has been active making films since the 1970’s and was recently guest of Dansens Hus in 1997 made Murder and Murder , a film which mixes documentation with a fiction story which can be seen as another example of women’s work.

CONCLUSION BLURRED BOUNDARIES A Day in the Life of a Bull-Dyke by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan from Canada, 1995 Another example of the blurring of borders is this film which won the public prize at Cineffable in Paris. This document about a woman who identifies as woman and working class men-- and is shunned by both is a message pounded home with humor. It is the opposite of agitational or historical documentary yet is a truth telling of reality.

Diversity in the themes of women’s documentaries is widespread-- whether inciting collective action, demanding wages in a strike, pointing out the atrocities of the war machine, looking back into history or going into forbidden fields.

Email: mjsull@algonet.se