Daisies. (Or Sedmikrásky, if you're pedantic.) A Czech film from the 60s. Apparently it's About Things, but really, I just enjoyed watching it. It's totally avant-garde, which can go either way with me: basically, I quite enjoy avant-garde films when they avoid tediousness, the great plague of movies that are About Things, avant-garde or otherwise. Like, this movie is like the opposite of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, another flick I had to watch for both of my college classes on women directors and feminist film theory.
Yes, I took the class twice -- once freshman year at Smith College, and once senior year, after transferring to Georgetown. The second time, I went in with a bit more of an open mind -- which may come as a shock to my Prof. G, my senior year teacher. The thing is, I was expecting freshman year to see Clueless and K19: The Widowmaker and, you know, Penny Marshall movies. I had it in mind that we'd be seeing the influence that women have wielded in Hollywood, talking about why there weren't more of us, that kind of thing. Instead, lots of avant-garde movies and lots of psychoanalytic theory. This was my very first exposure to film studies, so I was a little overwhelmed. Also I thought most of the theory we read was unbearably stupid. (Even 12 years and a Master's degree later, I still think so, which is probably why I don't have a PhD.)
The second time around, I mostly took it because I figured it would be easy -- I'd seen have the screenings and done half the readings on the syllabus in freshman year, because apparently this is how everybody teaches that class, at every school. I've got to say, one of my few regrets about not going into teaching is that I never get the chance to create a syllabus for Women Directors that has Penny Marshall and Amy Heckerling and Kathryn Bigelow.
(Prof. G made sure the class wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, and bless her for it. She is the only person in my academic career -- which included a "Performance & Culture" concentration at Georgetown that was all film, and an MA in "Media & Cultural Studies" at U Wisconsin-Madison -- to actually teach me cinematic textual analysis. And she thought my analysis of the genre blending and consequent psychosexual tensions in Near Dark was awesome. I should've followed her advice and done Screen Studies up in New York. Alas.)
But anyway. My point is, the "canon" of "women directors" movies is limited and largely unbearable, as a viewer. But there are a few gems that are rarely seen outside of those kinds of classes -- and there's probably some cause and effect there, but anyway -- that I highly recommend to people who want to see a movie instead of a political screed. Daughters of the Dust, The Ballad of Little Jo, Meshes of the Afternoon, Daises -- all are actual films before they are political statements. There's politics in there, certainly, but implicit in stories (as the political always is in life, at least when it really matters).
Daisies was my favorite, and it came up in my last post because it ends with the most fabulous, strangely appetizing food fight in cinema history. Up until then, though, it has lots of arresting, beautiful, absurd imagery. You'll want to go to Czechoslovakia in the 60s, which was certainly not as awesome as it looks in this movie. Anyway: come for the sensory experience, stay for the feminist discourse. It's a good time.
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