Girls On Film

Ladyfest unleashes the screen queens.

If you think women have it bad in the world of music, try peeking over the fence at the movie business. According to a much-quoted San Diego State study, women account for only 4 percent of the industry’s directors, and as documented by a wide-ranging Salon article last year, even those women who do get to make their own movies can spend years putting together the financing for even the most modestly budgeted follow-up. And yes, it happens to men too, but consider this: When was the last time you heard of a woman jumping from commercials or an indie sleeper hit to a $60-million studio picture?

Perhaps the best testament to the films that women continue to make despite the odds is the fact that the two dozen or so entries in Ladyfest's film component have virtually nothing in common. From Diane Bonder's If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now, a wry meditation on small-town life, to Anna Biller's A Visit from the Incubus, a Technicolored pioneer fantasy that's equal parts Paint Your Wagon and Dracula, the films of Ladyfest encompass an impressive range of styles. (Thankfully, the range of quality is significantly narrower.)

The Ladyfilms are divided into four themes, with a separate Painted Bride screening for Katherine Sender, Myra Bazell and Joe'l Ludovich's Cradle, a creepy performance piece where topless dancers (no, not like that) enmesh themselves in a landscape of cardboard spikes. (Bonus rock 'n' roll connection: Audio editing credit goes to Pernice Brother Thom Monahan.) "Marking Our Territory" includes Das Neue Monster, new work from Go-Go Rama Mama's Kate McCabe, who turns in a surreal short about a female Frankenstein confronted with her own reflection; Caitlin Horsmon's VOX, which marries audio of two women discussing their experiences with abortion to four-part images of vacant cityscapes; and Maggie Hadleigh-West's anti-catcalling War Zone, which is so overbearing it ends up reversing some of its own points.

A Visit from the Incubus, part of "Cat Burglar Culture," camps up the Western with the story of a saloon songstress who's bedeviled by a randy demon. But while the half-hour film's brightly painted sets are eye-catching, the rest isn't nearly so well-constructed; satire dissolves into a free-for-all, and by the time the incubus is belting out show tunes, you may find yourself heading for the swinging doors. Sarah Skapin's shorts, which run only a few minutes each, attack the same issues of representation with greater wit and acuity (though the best, 4 U Britney, is saved for the "Feeling Frisky" program below). Even then, backing three of them up against each other isn't such a great idea: Fitting Marcel Duchamp's words into Britney Spears' mouth via carefully manipulated footage seems like a pretty clever move, but once you've seen the Sex and the City ladies quoting Andy Warhol and Anna Nicole Smith analyzing the carnivalesque, it starts to seem more like a gimmick than a method. Winning out over the highbrow competition is Leahtard's Routine, a winning low-budget short set to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy," in which a benumbed record-store clerk enjoys a fantasy of dance and destruction. Four minutes of pure joy.

"Cute, Cuddly, Clawed" highlights the resonant If You Lived Here , which melds (apparently fictional) clips from a small-town newspaper with Wiseman-esque shots of semi-urban Massachusetts. A section labeled "View 2: Vernacular" opens with shots of strip malls and chain stores, and shots of empty streets are accompanied by a newspaper account of an ordinance designed to ban "gatherings [of people] with no clear purpose" -- i.e., teenagers.

"Feeling Frisky" includes a handful of shorts, but the main attraction is Becky Goldberg's eye-opening Hot and Bothered -- Feminist Pornography, which takes a look inside the world of girl-for-girl smut. Though it includes a regrettable (if necessary) money-shot montage, most of the movie focuses on women like porn actress-turned-director Nina Hartley, who takes control behind and in front of the camera, at one point delivering a lecture on sexual self-empowerment while sitting squarely atop a stiff one. The proprietors and stars of SIR productions, whose Hard Love/How to Fuck in High Heels knocked 'em on their backs at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, talk about the threadbare economics of lesbian porn (that's porn for lesbians; sorry, fellas), and a buyer for blowfish.com relates how her female-focused concern went from an apartment corner to a million-dollar business. More than just helping women get off (not that there's anything wrong with that), the women of Hot and Bothered want to broaden women's sexual experience even when they're not in front of the VCR. Tristan Taormino, for one, blends sex work with sex theory, co-directing a film based on her book, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. It is, she says, "like Our Bodies, Ourselves, but specifically for your ass." Goldberg will conduct a Q&A after the screening.

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