She-ness and Cinema
"Girlfriends: An Ovular Peek into She-ness and Cinema”
Last year Experiments in Cinema produced our first yearbook that was an unexpected success (see http://www.amazon.com/Undependently-Yours-Imagining-Beyond-
Carpet/dp/1329005139). For that text, writers, curators, artists and programmers submitted essays that considered the value of small, experimental film fe
stivals from a wide variety of perspectives (the book is still available at Shop EIC on this website!).
For those of you less familiar with Experiments in Cinema, ours is an annual celebration of international, undependent media that takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We are currently celebrating our 11th anniversary and v11.4 will take place April 5–10, 2016. We screen approximately 100 films from 35 countries, host workshops, special lectures and presentations and have a new-ish artist- in-residence program.
This year the topic of our yearbook will be an open ended exploration into cinematic “she-ness.” The title of the book is “Girlfriends: An Ovular Peak into She-ness and Cinema.” The focus of the text has its origins in several places.
1. Over the years we have come to realize (with enthusiasm) that the membership of Basement Films (the non-profit that produces Experiments in Cinema... see www.basementfilms.org) consists mostly of women.
2. It seems that each year, kinda organically, our Experiments in Cinema international film festival features many works made by women (each year more than 50% of the films we screen were produced by women).
3. We recently discovered that one of the great supporters and historians of womens films, Ariel Dougherty (co-founder of Women Make Movies), lives just a few hours from Basement Films world headquarters. As such, in addition to her contribution to our book, she will also be one of our festivals featured speakers.
4. The expression “ovular” comes from Experiments in Cinema’s dear friend, Caryn Cline who has been an artist in residence and workshop teacher at our festival. This year, in addition to her contribution to the yearbook she is curating a program of ovular films for EIC.
5. One of Basement Films guiding texts is an essay titled Women With The Movie Camera Redux: Revisiting The Position Of Women In The
Production Classroom written by Jennifer Proctor, River E. Branch and Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson (Jump Cut issue #53).
Look for our new yearbook in April (available at our festival and at Shop EIC on this website) which will include essays and artwork by numerous people—it should be a fun and informative look into she-ness and cinema.
