DAY TWO: ART MADE; ART MAKING

By Joyce Marcel



Sorry, I was zonked when I wrote yesterday, so I forgot to explain that when Sister Jane, in "The Sermons of Sister Jane," was talking about sex as being a God-given, life-affirming gift, she was explaining why she didn't believe in the Virgin birth. After all, I think she said, why would God deny this precious gift - sexual intimacy - to the mother of His son?
That said, let's move on.
Yesterday, I also said that one of the problems with things like women's film festivals is that the emphasis is usually on the women and not on the films - or at least the film as art. "Enemies of Happiness," the Afghanistan film, is a good example. Great idea, great person at the center of the story, great relevance - but terrible film making.
So I was delighted - no, enchanted - to encounter the exquisite "Time to Die," written and directed by Dorota Kedriezawska of Poland in black-and-white.
This is a work of fiction, made in 2007, which tells the story of a 92-year-old old woman, Aniela, played by the actress Danuta Szaflarska, who is living in a large and stately old house which, thanks to the end of the Communist regime, she now occupies alone.
The film tells how Aniela, caught by scheming neighbors and her ungrateful son, at first decides to die, and then comes up with a scheme of her own.
The pacing of film is slow, ever so slow. Smoke rises in the air, candles burn, and the camera focuses deeply on Szaflarska's beautiful, aged, lined face and age-spotted, graceful hands. Every frame is lush with detail - a million leaves on the trees, a million wrinkles on her face - until you are absolutely drunk with the generosity all this ravishing beauty and the painterly light that illuminates it.
The most original concept: half of the time, you are identifying not with Aniela, but instead experiencing her through the expressive face of her dog, Philadelphia. According to IMDb, "the dog was so popular to the first audiences, that they demanded (and got) a special "Canine Award" at the 32nd Polish Film Awards (where actress Danuta Szaflarska had also won Best Actress)."
There were only 20 or so people in the Latchis's downstairs theater when I saw the film, but it's being replayed today at 4 p.m.
This is a stunning, moving film that affects you the way a great piece of music does. Absolutely the best fictional film I've seen so far at the festival. (Actually, it's the only fictional film I've seen so far.)
I think I'm going to say, "Best film in festival" more than once.

The next film I saw was a polemic called "The Motherhood Manifesto," which has at its aim public policy changes to allow more family leave time and to, eventually, bring about universal health care. We're a country that touts its "family values," says the film, but we screw the family at every turn.
Yes.
The film is by Laura Pacheco and narrated by Mary Steenburgen.
Since every other developed country on our planet (and many countries less developed) (actually, most countries) has universal health care, or single-payer national health insurance, or some other kind of national health insurance, it's hard to understand why our country doesn't. (Except that insurance is about 16 percent, I believe, of the nation's economy - an economy that isn't doing too well right now, as you may have heard. And so we may not want to screw with it any more than we have to.)
In any case, we need a national health care system, so I have no problem with that part of the film.
Mothers need time to bond with their babies. Yes. Everybody is working too many hours and children are shortchanged. Yes. Poorer people, especially single mothers, are the hardest hit. Yes. Children spend multiple hours a day connected to electronic equipment (text messaging, television, Internet, everything) and may be losing sight of real life. Yes. Kids see 1,000 murders a year on TV. Wow.
It's hard to argue with all that.
To me, the film appears to be part of a larger movement to either create "mothers" (or parents) as a protected class, or to carve out for them a larger slice of a rapidly diminishing economic pie.
The Web site Momrising.org spells it out: The goal is to bring about "family friendly social and workplace policies."
In the panel discussion afterward, a British woman asked why Americans were so afraid of speaking up for their rights in family matters. She mentioned that in England, with socialized medicine, you can leave your job and still be covered. Here, we stick in jobs we hate just for the medical insurance.
And so it comes full circle.
Frankly, most of us are lucky if we even have jobs (see economy, above). In an uber-capitalist society run by fat-cat billionaires for the exclusive benefit of fat-cat billionaires, workers have no rights at all.
Why don't working people vote their pocketbooks? Why don't they unionize, for example?
Well, as long as Republicans can scare people with tales of "the homosexual agenda" or with immigrants as demons who are coming to take their jobs, their homes and rape their children, people can be
duped into voting against their economic interests. Fools and damned fools. As H. L. Mencken once said, ""No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
And if that fails, give them Britney Spears.


"Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women" by Rachel Talbot, is a great film with a misleading name.
It's the story of six female Jewish American comedians - how's that for a specialized identity? - Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner and playwright Wendy Wasserstein. It's hosted by successful comics Judy Gold, Jackie Hoffman, Cory Kahaney, and Jessica Kirson, who sit around a table in Katz's Delicatessen ("Send a salami to your boy in the army") and talk about these women's careers and being female, Jewish and funny all at the same time.
But why "Making Trouble?" There have always been female Jewish (Jewish female? Which modifier comes first?) comics - in vaudeville, in radio, on the stage, in television and in film. In fact, there have always been funny Jewish women.
(Also funny women in every culture and country, but that's not the issue here.)
Does the title imply that if a woman is funny, she's a troublemaker? That's just silly.
I took a copy of this film down to Florida and watched it with my 90-year-old mother. We were both enchanted - after all, it's our heritage, too. But when I saw it again in the packed Hooker-Dunham theater, which rang with laughter, it was doubly wonderful.
Watch this film and be entertained. The energy and talent of Molly Picon - actress, musician, comic, acrobat, what can't she do? And she did it for something like seven decades! I remember watching her on television in the Fifties. The sly wisdom and clowning of elegant Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice, whose Jewish accent was put on for the stage. The sexy Red Hot Mama Sophie Tucker, who was a hooker before she was a star. Then the more modern women, like the great Joan Rivers, who would kill another comic for a turn on stage (she claims that younger comics like Sarah Silverman are taking food from her mouth). Ot innocent, devilishly wicked and adorable Gilda Radner. And the wonderful and funny playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who died much too young.
I found this on the Web site of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and it says it better than I can: "These are women whose comedy defied cultural expectations and changed the rules. Get ready to duck when the zingers fly and guffaw at this hilarious, insightful documentary--an exhilarating mix of contemporary performance, interviews and rare archival footage. What is it that makes funny Jewish women so funny...and so Jewish? Is it a nose wrinkled just so, accompanied by a devilishly sexy grin or a jolting and sarcastic punch line? Is it the acerbic humor of generations of immigrant and first-generation women who fought for a place in America with their brains and their wit, and at the same time needed to make a living? Making Trouble celebrates three generations who, for all of the reasons above, successfully went from vaudeville and the Yiddish theater to Broadway, from Ziegfeld's Follies to Saturday Night Live."
Lauren Antler, one of the producers of the film, talked with the audience afterward. In answer to a comment by Ann Stokes, who said that she wanted more footage of the women, and that she was particularly disturbed by all the men talking in the early scenes, Antler said that archival footage is very expensive. I thought that was interesting. I'd like to see a lot more footage of all these funny women, too.
It's playing again next Sunday at 8:30 p.m.

"What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann," by Steven Cantor, is about making art. It's so much about making art that Cantor gets lost and the movie, as well as the world inside it, is dominated by Mann, the photographer who became famous for her 1992 nude pictures of her children.
"It never occurred to me to leave home to make art," she says.
Luminously lovely herself, with wide blue eyes that seem to go on to the horizon, and totally self-obsessed and obsessed by images, Mann shoots her children, her husband, her dogs, her chickens, her horses, her trees and - hold on - decomposing bodies at a forensic sight. The bodies and some other photographs, including bones from the body of one of her pet greyhounds, which she dug up after it had partly decomposed, were part of an exhibit recently at the Corcoran Museum in D.C.
"I love mummified skin," she says. "It's so beautiful. It looks like fabric."
The photographs are beautiful, truly. As beautiful as they are weird. "There might be some people upset by these pictures," she says. And later, "But it reminds us to embrace life."

DAY ONE: "You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of Spring"

You can cut the flower, but you cannot stop the coming of Spring, Malalai Joya of Afghanistan,


Review by Joyce Marcel


Women were whirling around in my head when I went to sleep last night, iron women and fearless women and funny women and intense women and sardonic, down-to-earth women and definitely holy women. They were the women I met in the three films that opened last night's Women's Film Festival.

It's the 17th year of the festival, which supports the Women's Crisis Center, which is now in its 30th year - and I'll say this again, damn it to hell, that that after all these years we still have men beating up, controlling and abusing women and children, and we still need safe houses for their victims.

Victim is the word that always terrifies me about these festivals. How many abused women are we going to see in these documentaries, how much outrage are we going to be asked to feel, how badly will our emotions be manipulated?

The other question I go in with is will there be a balance between the art of film - physical beauty, arresting images, spectacular shots - and the boring hand-held-camera shoot. Is it all going to be documentaries, or will this be the year the selection committee goes for art as well as outrage?

Stay tuned and we'll find the answers to these questions - as well as the answers to a number of questions we're not even thinking of yet.

The best film opened the show. "Iron Ladies of Liberia" is a riot, a lesson in good government, an introduction to a number of remarkable women, and an object lesson in female leadership done right.

At the center of this film, by Daniel Junge and Saitta Scott Johnson, is Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who won a national election and took over the country of Liberia after the dictator and troublemaker Charles Taylor was arrested and removed for trial in an international court.

At the time, Liberia was just coming out of 14 years of civil war and chaos - "It stole my childhood," said filmmaker Johnson. The country's waters were all polluted. No one had electricity. The infrastructure was trashed. Ninety percent of the people were unemployed. Corruption in high places was rampant. The international debt to the IMF was in the millions of dollars.

And into this mess of man-made messes comes a divorced 70-year-old grandmother to try and clean it up. A divorced 70-year-old grandmother with, among other things, a Master's from Harvard, a lot of government experience, and a little jail time.

She installed a number of women to run the government - the finance minister, the chief of police. (The chief was my favorite character. A big woman with a sense of humor, she inherited a police force without uniforms, telephones or even guns. When the first shipment of small arms came in from Nigeria, she said, "They make me feel like a natural woman.")
The film follows Old Ma, or Oh Ma, or Ma, as she is variously called, during her first year in office. The best scene came when the dispersed army took to the streets to demand back pay. These men, killers all, were agitating in front of the government house when Johnson came down.

She pushed aside her security and met one-on-one with the leader. Then she invited most of the men inside, to talk.
She disarmed them by agreeing that they deserved whatever back pay they were due. She wryly admitted that the government didn't have the money to pay them their pensions. And then she turned the tables on them. "The people you displaced in the villages, the people you killed or left homeless or beat up - the government has to think about caring for them, too. Don't you agree?"

The ex-soldiers, properly cowed, agreed to moderate their demands and eschew violence in the future.
Respecting your opponent, closely listening to him, agreeing to the rightness of some of his demands, then hitting him with the other side - Old Ma illustrated a new way in which a woman can lead through truth and communication. It was a lovely scene.

The next best scenes - and they're not "scenes" in the usual sense, because they really happened - were the ones in which Johnson tries to ameliorate the country's unspeakable foreign debt. Getting nowhere with the Americans. the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, lo and behold, Old Ma invites in the Chinese. After a formal visit from China's president, the U.S. is a little more eager to listen.

Johnson has her makeup artist do her up for the big meeting at the White House with George W. Bush. At first Bush is excited to be with her, but when she tells him she wants him to lift the debt, he stutters and retreats into babble about "helping you fulfill your dreams." The look Ma gives him is priceless.

But a little later, Condi Rice announces that America is forgiving the country's entire debt. Now Liberia can get down to business. In the last scene, as the people are celebrating Johnson's first year in office, we see her dancing in the street.
Great woman. Great movie.

Lerna, who was sitting next to me knitting socks before the films began, turned when the film ended and said, "We need her here to clean everything up."
Amen, sister!

After the film, Windham County Senator Jeanette White spoke. She said that the country that has the most women in power is - wait for it - Rwanda. Part of that is because a lot of the men are dead. But it's also because women got involved out of a felt need to "take care of the children." Not by wiping their bottoms, necessarily, but by preparing a humane future for them.

People in the audience seemed to want to discuss why America is so far behind in having women in power. Some of the possible reasons offered: we're a capitalist society, and women aren't leaders of corporations (see Sister Jane below); women are infantalized; women are turned into sex symbols; we haven't yet felt a need to "take care of the children"; women wait to be asked while men just go for it; you lose your privacy when you're in politics; women aren't good at raising money for themselves...


White said we have to begin creating a culture where women can be seen as doing anything they want. Again in my humble opinion, I thought we started doing that in 1976. But what do I know? White mentioned Gaye Symington as Speaker of the Vermont House, Nancy Polosi in Washington, and good old Hillary Clinton as women starting to make women in power visible.
Then she mentioned something about too much testosterone floating around, which just about sums up the whole point of the film festival, doesn't it?


The evening showing was packed. Two films were on the agenda. The first, "Enemies of Happiness" by Eva Mulvad and Vores Lykkes Fjender, was a Danish film with subtitles about Afghanistan's "most famous woman," the outspoken 27-year-old Malalai Joya. It follows her as she runs for a seat in parliament, troubleshoots for families in her neighborhood, and avoids being killed. Being an outspoken woman demanding rights for all women in Afghanistan might make your shelf life timed in minutes, and I admit I kept expecting the bomb to go off. But in the end, Joya takes her place in the legislature.
After the film, which was definitely one of those dark, hand-held numbers where not even the spectacular beauty of the countryside could make visually interesting what was on the screen, it was announced that Joya has once again been thrown out of the legislature.

Joya is brave beyond belief, and anyone who thinks wearing a burka or selling women into marriage for dowry is a righteous way of living is, in my humble opinion, brain dead. That may not be politically correct or culturally diverse, but let's face it, a lot of cultures leave a lot to be desired, and Afghanistan is about as macho as you can get. More power to Joya, but it's going to be a long haul.

And yet, and yet...

The New York Times this week ran a letter to the editor that quoted two things from Kipling, who knew a thing or two about the region. In a poem, Kipling said, "When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,/And the women come out to cut up what remains,/Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains/An' go to your Gawd like a soldier." OK, not the most pleasant imagery, but notice the part where "the women come out to cut up what remains." Burka schmurka, the women of Afghanistan have always been known as the fiercest of fighters. Joya stands in a long line of poet-soldiers, and it was a pleasure to know her and to wish her well.

The other thing Kipling said about Afghanistan? And remember, he wrote it in the last half of the 19th Century - "Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old."

Listen and learn, George Bush. Listen and learn.

After the first film, a lot of women got up to stretch and take a break. After all, the seats in the Hooker-Dunham Theater are hard, hard, hard. Hard. Did I mention hard?

Someone asked if we needed a break. Then a strong male voice shouted out, "Keep them moving along." And damn if the woman who asked the question didn't tell the projectionist to start the second movie.
"Where the hell are we?" I said. "What's the point of this festival?"

Then I left for a bathroom break, but someone else must have caught the irony of it, because when I came back they had not yet started the next film.

The third movie of the night was just pure fun. "The Sermons of Sister Jane: Believing the Unbelievable" by Allie Light and Irving Saraf, introduced us to Sister Jane Kelly, a nun for 55 years who blew the whistle on a sex and robbery scandal in her parish. Witty, smart and nobody's fool, she then reexamined the Catholic Church and came to some interesting conclusions. The most important was that the church was exactly like a corporation - hierarchical, with men in charge, after only money and power, protecting its own, keeping all secrets and scandals hidden.

About abortion: Jesus wouldn't have wanted women turned into baby machines. And he would have approved of sex, the most intimate way people can be together and support each other. Homosexuality is just a fact of life, not a chosen lifestyle, so get on with it. Even some popes have been gay. And priests don't have to be celibate - celibacy was just a Middle Ages dodge to keep married priests from leaving their property to their families instead of the church. She even found one pope who ordered all the wives of priests to be captured and sold into slavery. Nice guy.

Sister Jane believes that women should be ordained, and -she was only half-kidding here - that she should be pope. She's got a point.

In 2003, Sister Jane wrote a book: "Taught to Believe the Unbelievable: A New Vision of Hope for the Catholic Church and Society." It's out now in paperback.

She works now with Plowshares, serving the poor.


And that was the first night. Stay tuned for more. And for God's sake, comment and discuss.

Out of Struggle, Art by Joyce Marcel

Out of Struggle, Art
By JOYCE MARCEL

Thursday, March 6
DUMMERSTON, Vermont

Here we are again at the crossroads of art and social change, having the opportunity to watch good and great films about the lives of women in support of the Women's Crisis Center.

Every time the Women's Film Festival comes around, I ask why we need a separate category for "women's" films?

Isn't this a magical era? We have a woman as a viable candidate for president of the United States. We've come a long way, baby, so isn't it fish on a bicycle time now? Can't we just agree that all films are stories and all stories are "human" (Except when they're about animals -- like that rat chef in "Ratatouille" -- and even then, humans define the narrative.)

I'm not talking here about the difference between romantic "chick flicks" and "men's" films about blondes with big bazookas and blowing things up.

When I was young and fervently feminist, I was dumb enough to think that once domestic and sexual abuse was recognized for what it was -- anger, violence, control, power, hate -- once it was brought out into the light of day and named, it would disappear like a vestigial part of the body politic.

Instead, the once-radical idea of safe houses for
Advertisement women has become an accepted and necessary resource for most cities and towns. And physical and mental abuse has become ever more prevalent -- the murder rates alone are astounding.

For the rest of Joyce's article click here to go to the Brattleboro Reformer.