Directed by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen • Drama • With Dinah Stabb, Merdelle Jordine, Rhiannon Tise • 1977 • 92 minutes
Laura Mulvey, author of the seminal essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, helped to establish feminist film theory as a legitimate field of study. With Peter Wollen, she directed one of the most visually stimulating, theoretically rigorous films to emerge from the 1970s. RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX is a landmark fusion of feminism and formal experimentation that seeks to create a non-sexist film language. Its title figure, the legendary creature of antiquity, terrorized Thebes and self-destructed only after Oedipus correctly answered her riddle. Invoking and challenging traditional interpretations of the Oedipus story as a movement from matriarchal culture to patriarchal order, the film also probes representation in film itself. The central narrative section, about Louise, a middle-class woman, and her four-year-old daughter Ana, is an inquiry into the arbitrary nature of conventional film techniques that captures Louise's struggles with motherhood in a patriarchal society.
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Devil in the Flesh (Marco Bellocchio)
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Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, w/ M...
Directed by Kelly Reichardt • Drama • With Michelle Williams, Walter Dalton, Will Oldham, John Robinson, Larry Fessenden, Will Patton • 2008 • 80 minutes
Proving why she is one of the most highly-regarded auteurs of current cinema, Kelly Reichardt's (OLD JOY) subtle storytelling technique uses a...
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La Yuma
Directed by Florence Jaugey • Drama • With Alma Blanco • 2011 • 91 minutes
Nicaragua’s first full-length feature in 20 years, La Yuma tells the story of a young woman who dreams of transcending her bleak life in the slums of Managua by becoming a boxer. Looking beyond the meager possibilities th...
