MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE WOMEN by Joyce Marcel

DUMMERSTON, Vt. - No woman is ordinary. We all have remarkable stories to tell. But some of us have extraordinary stories. Just wait until you see "20 Seconds of Joy" by Jens Hoffman.

The film is one of 27 being shown at this year's Women's Film Festival, now in its 18th year as a fundraiser for the Women's Crisis Center. The festival will run from from March 13 to March 22.

"20 Seconds" opens with Norwegian Karina Hollekim standing on top of a mountain and looking straight down into a fjord. She's making jokes about the importance of tucking her jacket into her pants. Just as you're wondering what she's talking about, she casually goes to the edge of the cliff and jumps off. (That's the part where I screamed.) She doesn't jump for suicide; she jumps for fun.

The sport is called BASE jumping (Building, Antenna, Span or Earth - the four categories of jumping). And the lovely Karina lives to free-fall and soar through the air. After she opens her chute, she lands with a face full of wide-eyed ecstasy.
Karina sometimes jumps from Alps and skis down. She jumps from towers and bridges. She jumps wearing a suit shaped like a butterfly, which gives her wings. She jumps in Switzerland, the U.S. and Mali.

And when she crashes into rock at 100 miles an hour and shatters both her legs, you're along for the ride because she's filming the jump.

"Yes I am scared, of course I am scared; I am human," she told an interviewer. "The difference is that I like it. I want to have that feeling.... You have to accept the fact that this might kill you. I think I have broken almost every bone in my body. I have lost a lot of friends along the way... But if pleasure is higher than the risk, then go for the jump."

Another remarkable woman on film is the painter Alice Neel. A brilliant portraitist, she spent decades painting in a room in her New York apartment - in obscurity, because abstract expressionists ruled the land. Only late in life did she receive the recognition and acclaim she deserved. The film was made by her grandson, Andrew Neel.

Neel was a free spirit, a bohemian, a piece of work, a terrible mother - both her sons (of different fathers) - tell stories about their abuse at her hands. But they also speak of their love for her.

As you watch Neel paint or see the paintings - often next to the people they represent - it's hard not to see every person as an Alice Neel painting. (If you don't believe me, check out aliceneel.com.) She might not have been mother of the year, or of the decade, and you might want to throttle her for her self-absorption and obsession with painting, but she knew what she wanted and she doggedly kept going, ultimately being recognized as one of the greatest painters of the 20th Century. She died in 1984.

Hawaiian politician Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927-2002) also left something precious behind - Title IX, the bill that opened athletics to women. Mink was a tiny, determined oriental woman - the first "woman of color" in the U.S. Congress - and a dogged fighter for progressive causes. In "Patsy Mink: Ahead of the majority," a 2008 documentary by Kim Bassford, we see her fighting the good fight, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, but always loving the battle.

And in "A Sense of Wonder," a 2008 film by Christopher Monger, the actress Kaiulani Lee performs a one-woman play she wrote about Rachel Carson at the end of her life. "Silent Spring" had been written, and Carson was enjoying the acclaim as well as the fight against the chemical companies. But she was also suffering with the cancer that soon will kill her. Shot at Carson's coastal home in Maine and using much of her own writing as dialog, you are made speechless by her detailed intelligence, her love of nature and her beautiful soul. I spent much of this film wishing that it was Carson herself speaking, that it was a documentary rather than a fiction, but it is enough that we have her words so beautifully portrayed.

There are other remarkable women to be met at the festival. There's a dreadfully arty and disorganized bio of the rocker Patti Smith, for example, which is, come to think of it, just as arty and disorganized as she is. But oh! When she sits down with a guitar, can she ever sing!

There are also films about the great injustices of the day - about rape as politics, about poverty, sweatshops and all the blood-boiling, outrageous rest. All manner of indignity is heaped upon women, and all manner of brave women fight against it.

There's even a film about the history of vibrators, but I'll get to that next week.

Surprise always rules at this festival. There are always films you've never heard of that stay with you for the rest of your life. Now is the time to meet remarkable women. Prepare to fall in love.

Joyce Marcel is a journalist whose first collection of columns, "A Thousand Words or Less," can be ordered from her website, joycemarcel.com. She can be reached at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.

Reprinted from the Brttleboro Reformer, March 4, 2009