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Feminist Film Manifestos

Feminist Film Manifestos VII

Memories of the future. Feminist science fiction

Audiovisuals

Free with pre-booking

What happens when we rethink the present by means of imaginary futures? What emerges when we look at the present through the eyes of a stranger? What worlds do we construct when we imagine based on desire?

Since its early days, science fiction has been a meeting point for feminisms that have experimented with the political and transformative potential of speculation by devising utopian futures, leaving space for other worlds and beings, using alienation to encourage us to think about time and memory, revolutionising narratives not only in terms of their content but also their form.

In this seventh edition of the Feminist Film Manifestos, organised in collaboration with Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones, we present a programme based on the paradox of imagining memories of the future. A selection of feminist science fiction pieces, a journey (from the 70s up to the present) that shows how feminism has approached, played with, appropriated and passed through this genre.

 

SESSION 1: Thursday, 11 November, 19.00

Invisible Adversaries, Valie Export, Austria, 1977, 110'.

Anna is an artist obsessed with the invasion of alien doppelgangers bent on total destruction. Her schizophrenia is reflected in the juxtaposition of long shots with violently edited montages that contrast private space with public space, black and white with colour, still photographs with video. After a devastating quarrel with her lover, Anna uses her body as a map and paints red dots on herself. Watching this film, viewers realise how seldom, if ever before, the details of sexual intimacy have been shown on film from a woman's point of view.

 

SESSION 2: Friday, 12 November, 19.00

Flaming Ears, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Ursula Pürrer, Dietmar Schipek, Austria, 1991, 84'.

A story of love and revenge and an anti-romantic plea for love in its many forms. The film's set in the year 2700 in the city of Asche and follows the lives of three women: Volley, Nun and Spy. Spy is a comic book artist who meets Volley, a pyromaniac who burns what Spy had been working on. Seeking revenge, Spy goes to the lesbian club where Volley performs every night. Before she can enter, Spy gets into a fight and is left wounded, lying in the street. She's found by Nun, an amoral alien in a red latex dress with a penchant for reptiles. Nun is also Volley's lover. Flaming Ears disrupts narrative conventions (in fact, the story is a thread rather than the backbone of the film) and takes a witty approach to the genre of film, with interesting visual splendour.

 

SESSION 3: Saturday, 13 November, 19.00

In Vitro, Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind, Palestine, 2019, 27', VOSE

Set after an ecological disaster, a large bunker beneath the biblical city of Bethlehem has become a vast vegetable garden. With seeds collected in the days before the disaster, a group of male and female scientists are preparing to plant them. In the hospital wing of the underground shelter the garden's founder, 70-year-old Dunia, is lying on her deathbed when Alia, her successor, visits her. Alia was born underground and has never seen the city she's destined to rebuild. The conversation between these two scientists quickly evolves into an intimate dialogue about memory, exile and nostalgia.

Otolith I, The Otolith Group, United Kingdom, 2003, 22'.

Otolith I links three historical moments: a possible mutant future in the 22nd century, the state of fear in the early 21st century, and the post-independence era of the mid-20th century. A narrator speaks to the audience from a dangerous future that situates the present as a historical ruin. This strategy allows Dr. Usha Adebaran Sagar, a fictional narrator who resides in a permanent state of weightlessness, to speculate on the evolution of humankind through an analysis of the archives of her female ancestors: the 21st-century researcher Anjalika Sagar and Mrs. Anasuya Gyan Chand, Anjalika's grandmother and a 20th-century Hindu feminist.

Afronauts, Nuotama Bodomo, Zambia, 2014, 14'.

It's the 16th of July, 1969 and the USA is preparing to launch Apollo 11. Thousands of miles away, the Zambian Space Academy hopes to beat America by sending the first astronaut to the moon.

Time Travel Experiments, Black Quantum Futurism, United States, 2017, 9'.

In this guided meditation the audience is asked to choose a memory and think about it in order to experience it again, placing it in the past, present and future. Through this exercise, Black Quantum Futurism offers an understanding of memory and experience as neither static nor fixed, but rather as a narrative that actively avoids adherence to a linear concept of time.

I like tomorrow, Jennifer Reeder, Nancy Andrews, United States, 2021, 12'.

A sci-fi musical comedy that combines live action and animation. This hybrid short is set on an orbiting space station where a lone female astronaut seeks to resolve a love triangle between her past, present and her own future. Each of the female protagonists, all played by the same actress, has a different but significant relationship with "space".

This activity is part of Feminist Film Manifestos

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