This year's Third Eye section takes a ladies perspective, and the directors of the films shown in the section, like body snatchers, free their protagonists from the usual patterns of looking at female corporeality and sexuality. They kidnap female bodies from stereotypical scripts and roles: a helpless victim, a predatory femme fatale or a dominant superheroine. It will be a new and refreshing perspective.
The students who come to my class are closely related to all the unrepentant girls who are too interested in their bodies, sex and pleasure, Kathy Acker wrote in 1992, you can learn a lot from them, how to have pleasure and how cool the feminine body is. We devote this year's Third Eye to all incorrigible girls who are "too" interested in and diligently explore the issues of female pleasure – a section dedicated to female views and female voices in the cinema. A place of meeting and dialogue between cinema and feminist theory and practice.
Pleasure, dir. Ninja Thyberg
There will be a lot of nudity, hedonism, fantasy, some obscenity and experiments, choreography of bodies in various shapes and configurations. Lots of fun and positive sexuality negotiated from the patriarchal world. But also questions about boundaries, shame or the consequences of decisions made, and the price to be paid for breaking out of the bourgeois mainstream. And is it really necessary, because maybe it's not that high a price, while demonization is another way to discipline naughty women and, under the guise of caring, there is plain slut shaming.
How do bodies look through a woman's gaze? We will look at the form erotic scenes take in the lens of women. Do they differ in portraying nudity and intimacy and how? Where is the line between eroticism and pornography and can pornography be produced on women's terms? How do images of cinematic bodies and sexual practices affect real-life relationships? Finally, how do women show their sexuality and direct their lust in the real and digital world, in amateur movies, social media and your own bedrooms? To paraphrase Peaches' classic text, "I am only double A, but thinking triple X."
A female gaze that undermines the ubiquitous male perspective – in the most general sense - means a work created from a female point of view and with feminist sensitivity. However, it is too simplistic to assume that all films made by women are automatically feminist and that they convey a female perspective.
The very definition of the female gaze is difficult. Is the female gaze a reverse of the famous male gaze (a concept created by Laura Mulvey in the famous 1975 essay "Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema") or is it based on different mechanics? It is difficult to make a simple change from a male viewer to the female observer, because female attitudes and behaviors are developed under the constant tutelage and observation of men. A woman is watched and watches at the same time because she is testing herself all the time. Men observe women. Women see each other as objects of observation. I saw him looking at me - this sentence is the quintessence of the female condition of being watched by men.
Feminist critics of a generation younger than Mulvey argue that interception of the male gaze by a woman cancels it. Susan Bowers calls it the Medusa Effect. The author of the book "Medusa and the Female Gaze" believes that the figure of Medusa is a symbol of female power and female sexual freedom. Medusa is an interesting female type of monster because it challenges patriarchal culture by expressing sexuality and domination over men. Not only does her look literally kill, but her eyes represent an invisible type of force. When a woman sees that she is the object of a man's gaze and returns it, she rejects her own objectification, argues Bowers.
The Medusa effect takes place in Pleasure, the phenomenal debut by Ninja Thyberg, where we see the backstage of pornography through the eyes of starlet Bella Cherry. The camera shows exactly what Bella sees while shooting the most hard core scenes. This does not change their brutality, but gives her agency. On the set of a pornographic film, her body becomes an object in the hands of men, but it is impossible to remove her gaze.
Bliss, dir. Henrika Kull
Henrika Kull's drama Bliss takes place in a similar place, where sex is a service and the female body is a commodity. A director who has been exploring the phenomenon of sex work for years, directly shows its physical dimension. Without allusions, sensationalism or building an aura of mystery or danger, as is usually the case in the cinema. The lack of clichés in showing sex also stems from its presentation from the point of view of women working in the industry, as opposed to that of men – their actual or potential clients or at least curious voyeurs. Thyberg and Kull also show that drawing looks is a privilege - and mastering bait tactics is a skill. In porn and sex work, what we reluctantly admit is exposed: how much the female body is a currency in the capitalist market, and how much its market value is based on the number of glances it draws.
In Fucking With Nobody, Hannaleena Hauru looks at how the phenomenon of femininity is negotiated on social media. It can be a source of emancipation, but it can also have a dark aspect – the exploitation of the body in the spirit of consumer capitalism. She shows how, step-by-step, she directs a romantic script in a perverse film about building intimacy, privacy settings in relationships and the meanders of feminism. Hauru multiplies points of view, because the female gaze works both ways. The key is the principle of reciprocity, writes Ginette Vincendeau, a feminist gesture is an equal power relationship between the person presented and the person representing. The voice is more important than the duel of looks. When women can talk about their bodies in films, and they are not only watched by men, it turns out that the representations of bodies are not about bodies, but about the experiences and emotions associated with them.
How does a woman look when she looks at a woman, and how when she looks at herself? What is the pleasure of seeing yourself in each other? Katrina Daschner in Hiding in the Lights, where she "queers" the famous novel Dream Story by Viennese provocateur Arthur Schnitzler (which also inspired Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut), turns the text into a cinematic spectacle in which everything is erotically charged: from architectural details, through curtain fabrics and wallpaper motifs, to naked and clothed skin.
My Dog Is Sick, dir. Sapna Bhavnani
The fantasy is directed by the protagonists of the films All Eyes off Me by Hadas Ben Aroya and My Dog Is Sick by Sapna Bhavnani – both want to explore their sexuality, experience more and test different roles. They are ready to try anything, but are unable to predict how these experiences will affect them. Introspection and fantasies is a look inside the female body, examining its affects and desires. The question of the female gaze is also the question of what we see when we look. When do we look away? And when do we close our eyes?
Ewa Szabłowska, curator
The matron of the Third Eye section is G'rls Room.
