Feminist Film Manifestos
Feminist Film Manifestos IX
Riot Grrrl: girls to the front!
Audiovisuals
Free with pre-booking
This annual cycle of the Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones de Barcelona brings together films that, from different points of view, have cinematographically shaped the debates dominated by different forms of feminism from the mid-20th century up to the present day.
"BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines that speak to US, that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways (...) BECAUSE I believe, with my wholeheartmindbody, that girls constitute a revolutionary soul force that can and will change the world for real".
Riot Grrrl Manifesto
Fanzine Bikini Kill no. 2 (1992)
The 1990s saw the emergence of the Riot Grrrl movement, born out of a growl of rage and a rebellion made up of creators who'd been expelled and excluded from the underground movement. The works by these artists emerged with particular force in music and self-publishing with strongly politicised and collectively produced creations. However, the movement barely touched cinema, a medium considered by these creators to be elitist, meritocratic and masculinised. Nevertheless, some female auteurs devoted themselves to creating debauched filmographies that embraced the energies of punk and mocked the institution of cinema. The Riot Grrrl film movement draws on the rebelliousness of filmmakers who use the avant-garde to push the boundaries of conventional cinematographic language and imagine new ones. In turn, the movement's influence continues to be felt in many current creations - but what's the panorama like for feminist amateur filmmaking today? Is it still roaring with rage?
SESSION 1: Friday, 12 January 2024, 7pm
Sedmikrásky (Daisies), Věra Chytilová, Checoslovaquia, 1966, 75', VOSC
Marie I and Marie II live and act unapologetically in the face of the rigid ways in which different powers express themselves. The decisions they take in their lives reveal the hypocrisy of anachronistic morals that are often passed off as unquestionable. In the light of these principles, both protagonists experience a series of absurd situations that, although unconnected, act to reveal arbitrariness and authoritarianism. Thirty years before the Riot Grrrl movement was born, Vera Chytilová created a mise en scène full of visual effects, non-conformism and provocation that played very coherently with disrupting the conventions of language and the disappearance of the logical categories of linear continuity.
SESSION 2: Saturday, 13 January 2024, 6 pm
Mary Jane's Not a Virgin Anymore, Sarah Jacobson, United States, 1998, 98', VOSC
When the faculty at Bard College told her she would never become a filmmaker, Sarah Jacobson, a leader of the Riot Grrrl movement in the United States, was convinced her destiny was precisely to become one. In 1996 she embarked on her first feature film, accompanied by her group of friends, a camera, a sound recorder, a microphone and four spotlights. Thus was born Mary Jane's not a Virgin Anymore, a coming-of-age film about a well-to-do young woman who's about to graduate from high school and spends most of her time working at an alternative cinema in the post-punk scene. This is a surprising film, with a script full of reflections on the demystification of sex and the need for self-knowledge, as well as alliances between young women and other dissidents of the sex-gender system. The complex universe of Mary Jane is completed with a critique of education as an institution, of the cinematic canon and the meritocracy within the industry.
SESSION 3: Sunday, 14 January 2024, 6 pm
Short films, 62'
The filmographies of Riot Grrrl cineastes were bolstered by making short films, which were more affordable and compatible with their precarious lives than longer films. These creations vary widely in terms of their nature, being filmed as a high school project, together with a group of friends or in the intimacy of teenage bedrooms. Nevertheless, together they make up a wild, untamed archive covering diverse geographies without any kind of evolutionary narrative. There's a furious passion behind the discourse of the pieces in this archive: a tension against normativity, adult power, the canon and institution that's shared by their creators.
Super 8 Girl Games, Ursula Pürrer, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Àustria, 1985, 3', VO
Ein Schlauchboot und Austern, Ursula Pürrer, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Àustria, 1985, 3', VOSC
Zarte Knöpfe Ursula Pürrer, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Àustria, 1985, 5', VO
Girl Power Sadie Benning, Estats Units, 1992, 15', VOSC,
Lessons in Baby Dyke Theory, Theo Cuthand, Canadà, 1995, 3', VOSC
Road Movie Or What I Learned in a Buick Station Wagon, Sarah Jacobson, Estats Units, 1992, 10', VOSC
A Herstory of Women Filmmakers, Kelly Gallagher, Estats Units, 2009, 15', VOSC
You Are a Lesbian Vampire, Theo Cuthand, Canadà, 2008, 3', VOSC
Ellas dan el golpe, María Cañas, Espanya, 2012, 4', VO
Las niñas Peta Zetas, Nani Miras, Espanya, 2013, 1', VO
Directors: Vera Chytilová, Sarah Jacobson, Ursula Pürrer, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Theo Cuthand, Kelly Gallagher, María Cañas, Nani Miras, Sadie Benning
This activity is part of Feminist Film Manifestos