In a reel revolution: who has the power?

A Reel Revolution: Celebrating Women in Cinema and the Creative Industries,
Sleight of Hand @ Exeter Phoenix

Sleight of hand implies an element of magic perhaps: an illusion? And so, the morning starts, because according to the informed and insightful address by Dr Helen Hanson, the greatest illusion today, is that women in the commercial film industry are growing to a greater percentage. We are not!

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Dr Hanson’s enriching context on female filmmakers, Alice Guy-Blache’s 600+ films in the early 1900s and the trailblazing films of Lois Weber in 1920s Hollywood, made herstory. Yet, suddenly, and maybe not so magically, these women vanish as the male film industry and big business took over the screens.

So, where and how, does power play out in 2024 in independent female films? This unfolded as we watched shorts by female filmmakers:

Power over us

Safe (Debbie Howard)

‘…there is no hope, there is no safe place’ says director/writer Debbie Howard. A simple wait at a bus stop one dark and rainy night, menacingly morphs into Boundaries being broken and a woman’s right to be safe, threatened.

Empathetically crafted, Howard allows the audience to inhabit her protagonist’s terrifying powerlessness against a man and realise that they might indeed be the only rescuer she will ever know, because sometimes, we are simply, not safe.

Trust (Melanie Light)

Disempowering the patriarchy is something Melanie Light is passionate about. Certainly, her choice of a slightly heightened naturalism in Trust, allows for great comment of both the personal and political rights of a women and her body. The central character, betrayed and overpowered to conform, her voice literally gagged, sends out a loud message of lack of choice and personal freedom for women and the importance to reclaim their power.

Power within us

It’s Nothing (Anna Maguire)

The complex duality of anorexia and bulimia psychosis is made effectively accessible in Nothing, with the inner and outer ‘parts’ of the same women played by two female actors. The power to retain control over hard to manage feelings of powerlessness via food, movingly accelerates into a real fight for life, where a decision not to hide her eating disorder is overridden by a decision not to hide from life anymore and be, something.

I Don’t Need Adult Conversation (Vika Evodkimenko)

Vika Evdokimenko rips off her socially compliant, ideal motherhood mask, only to find she appears now to be a beast, a goddess, a naughty, angry mummy: a human!

The power to be an authentic and vulnerable woman is creatively explored in this docu-fiction as we all breathe a sigh of relief that we don’t have to be the ideal woman. Sometimes we need to go back to primal needs and express them. Mother or not, this film holds open a brave space that allows female imperfection and the power to be who you truly are.

Power of Passion

Alice (Laura Scrivano)

Sarah Snook slips her tongue around the rhythmic lyrics from Noel Cowards song Alice is at it again whist fingering the locks that bind her… until she is free. Director Laura Scrivano teases and tests, holding in, then releasing… and with it the right to feel and act upon, female sexual desire: taking the lid off, female sexual shame.

Like Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Grey, that Snook has performed solo recently, it’s the hidden self, the true self, that is the key to that lock and the release of self-empowerment for Alice.

Punk Power

The Cavern Club: Introducing Seizure Salad (Luke Chadwick, Eddie Falvey and Dominic Deane)

Exeter female punk band Seizure Salad has no token female front singer dressing to entice a male gaze, just 100%, female drums, bass, rhythm guitar AND lead singer fronting the future at Exeter’s Cavern. Exciting to hear raw and risk-taking female musicians, totally owning both the stage and themselves

And so to end… Power Point

The point of power they say, is always in the single moment and certainly Sleight of Hand provided some enormously powerful moments in this great morning of female film.

If there is a next time, I’d love to see an even more diverse mix of creative female and female identifying voices, breaking down stereotypes and building up a new understanding of feminism and what and who feminists are and look like. Here’s to a wider lens: action!