Ousmane Sembene's "Black Girl"

Mbissine Thérèse Diop, the star of Black Girl.

Films were meant to be seen on a large screen, and the new, stunning print of the late Ousmane Sembene's Black Girl (1966) is a case in point. This classic film, an indictment of French neocolonialism, has not been available for many years. Shot from an African-Senegalese perspective, it also represents a rare movie from the point-of-view of a woman of color. Read my review here: http://www.filmjournal.com/reviews/film-review-black-girl. Also, a link to my 2004 interview with the filmmaker for his last film, Mooladé (2004) is here: http://www.filmjournal.com/sembene-ousmane

Laura Bispuri's "Sworn Virgin" Opening This Weekend

Iconic Italian filmmaker Paolo Taviani (Caesar Must Die) and Laura Bispuri at a luncheon during the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.

Laura Bispuri's sublime quest film, "Sworn Virgin," opens this weekend in New York City.

The textures of Sworn Virgin, glacial mountains and rivers, adamantine canyons, or the slick, tiled ledges of a public pool, and the worn surfaces of a city apartment, are all so palpable that the quest of its unusual protagonist actually resides in the progression from the first of these to the last. Hana’s (Alba Rohrwacher) Albanian-Kanun roots, a culture that dates back to the Middle Ages, and is as unyielding as the rocky peaks of her remote village, compel her at a tender age to relinquish her feminine identity. In a somber flashback, Hana becomes Mark, a “sworn virgin,” a woman who lives as a celibate man. 

Now, she herds goats, smokes, and drinks raki with her male companions, and lives alone in a sparsely furnished cabin. When the film opens, Hana-Mark is free, having escaped the arranged marriage she would have endured living as a woman. She wields a gun, and need not worry, as the village women do, that the bullet given to their husbands by their fathers as a wedding day gift, may be used with impunity against them. Orphaned as a girl, as many heroes are, Hana-Mark lives by the oath she swore before the village’s male elders and Gjergi (Bruno Shllaku), her stepfather and benefactor, to whom she feels a great debt.

As Bispuri’s accomplished first feature unfolds, winter takes hold and Hana-Mark is snowbound. Trapped in her wooden cabin, she tosses and turns on a narrow bed, yearning for the touch of another human being. She soon realizes that her life must change yet again. Convention demands a journey: Hana-Mark crosses a river that will forever sever her from the land that has, up until now, defined her. Literally and figuratively adrift, she travels to Italy to see Lila (Flonja Kodheli), her step-sister, Gjergi’s daughter. The last time the two were together, Hana-Mark pointed a rifle at Lila as she ran down the beach with Stjefen (Luan Jaha), the man she married. Lila was “promised” to another man, and it was Hana-Mark’s duty to shoot her in order to protect their family’s honor.

Sworn Virgin is inspired by a novel of the same title by Albanian writer Elvira Dones. Her protagonist, Hana, is a college student who abandons her studies in order to care for her dying uncle. He lives in a village that follows Kanun tradition, so the unmarried Hana must become a sworn virgin. After her uncle dies, she travels to America to visit her cousin Lila. Like the novel, Sworn Virgin begins in the present, although in Italy rather than America, with flashbacks to Hana-Mark’s childhood spent with Lila and her family, and to her life as a sworn virgin. Bispuri’s contrasting and atmospheric settings, inspired by Dones’s use of geography or environment as a metaphor for her protagonist’s state-of-mind, moves from the frozen, sparsely populated mountains to water, and then to warmer climes and a densely populated city. Like all quests, it is a journey of the heart.

As Bispuri illustrates, sworn virgins are not often lesbians; in fact, the Albanian word translates as “he-she,” an identification of gender, not of sexuality. The tradition still exists in several Serbo-Croatian countries. Girls are sometimes compelled to become sworn virgins so that they may work outside the home and support families in which there are no boys, or to preserve the line of inheritance because women and girls do not own and cannot inherit property under Kanun law. It is this unusual circumstance, in which a woman rejects one patriarchal code that reduces her to chattel, so that she may become a working and contributing member of a patriarchal society, that makes Sworn Virgin a sublime metaphor for a woman’s lifelong quest for individuation. When the film opens, Hana-Mark is in her early thirties, having lived as a sworn virgin for fourteen years.

Since sworn virgins take a vow of celibacy, the threat for men of female sexuality is neutralized, as is the persistent challenge women represent to the myth of male superiority, the foundation of patriarchal societies. Sworn virgins are a fabricated third gender whose promise of celibacy to their male elders includes the acknowledgment that these overseers may murder them if they break their oath. Hana-Mark is compelled to reexamine her former identity, her assumed and unexpressed sexuality, in order to live authentically. On a metaphorical level, as Bispuri eloquently illustrates throughout the film, sworn virgins represent the predicament of all women living in patriarchal societies: if women wish to be contributing members of society, and the equal of men, they must censure their sexuality as Hana does, or at least not use it to their advantage—regardless of their sexual preferences.

If Bispuri’s hero is unusual, Sworn Virgin is nevertheless a classic quest movie, and a rare example of a quintessentially feminine journey. Below is my interview with the filmmaker, which took place at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2015.

I feel that you made this film for all of us women who feel that we have two identities, two halves we have to continually reconcile.

Laura Bispuri: Yes, and maybe more than two lives.

Tribeca Filmmaker Interviews

Jenny Gage, director of the documentary "All This Panic"

See my Tribeca Film Festival coverage under "Feature Articles, Print/Online" (to the left of this column), which consists of interviews with the directors of three documentaries, "All This Panic," "Pistol Shrimps," and "Southwest of Salem."

A New Review of My Book

My book is reviewed in the current issue of Cineaste, now on newsstands. The review begins: ". . . Maria Garcia combines her work as a film critic and scholar with her expertise in gender studies and offers a provocative contribution to the male-dominated field of film theory. With examples culled from a disparate array of genres and national cinemas, Garcia veers away from the Freudian paradigm that serves as the basis for much feminist film theory and instead draws heavily from Jungian psychology as a departure point for her ideas about identity and the self . . ." Later, the reviewer writes: "A purely Jungian approach to film interpretation, with evaluations of archetypes and paths to individuation, is, of course, not novel; a careful study of the hero's journey through a feminist lens, predicated on Jungian thought, however, feels innovative and inspired, capable of stimulating new and deeper understandings of familiar tales."

A Man To Remember During Black History Month

Race, a new biopic about Olympic athlete Jesse Owens, will be opening in theaters this weekend. The African-American track and field star won a record-breaking four gold medals in a single Olympiad—the controversial 1936 games in Berlin. My interview with Race director Stephen Hopkins was just posted on Biography.com:  http://www.biography.com/news/jesse-owens-movie-race-interview.

My Book Trailer

I did not know what a book trailer was until a friend sent me one for a novel she was reading. I thought: What fun! Readers get to see the author, and to hear her voice. Very few authors of "scholarly books" make a book trailer, but it seemed like such a good idea: introduce myself and summarize "Cinematic Quests for Identity" in 2 minutes. (That's a writing challenge.) I hope you will watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiVZIxrkbvI

Closing in on Oscar Night . . .

If you have ever wondered how a production designer’s drawings express the vision of the film director, or what a re-recording mixer does, or the nature of the relationship between composers and film directors, click on the links to the left, “About Film Production.” All three articles contain interviews with past Oscar winners, and will give you a greater appreciation for the diverse group of artists that contribute to the making of a motion picture. (I have updated the links so that they may now be read on Film Journal International’s website instead of on Heistbox.) BTW, If you are a fan of short films, please use the links under “Film Reviews (Online)” to read my reviews of this year’s Oscar-nominated Live Action and Documentary shorts. They are playing in theaters across the country this week, and will likely be available on iTunes later this year.

A Lesson Plan: Just in Time for the Spring Semester

Professors of film, literature into film, literature, and mythology, I have written a lesson plan that will take your class through several weeks of the upcoming semester. Click on "Features" on my book page: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442246973. The lesson plan is classroom-tested! I have been a part-time instructor/lecturer of writing, film and lit classes for over two decades.

Remembering Janis

Janis as she appeared in her high school yearbook.

In my Biography.com article about Janis Joplin, I imagine some of the things she might have been remembered for had she lived longer. You can read it here: http://www.biography.com/news/janis-joplin-biography-facts

NYFF Interview with Nanni Moretti for "Mia Madre"

Film director Margherita (Margherita Buy) and her actor Barry Huggins (John Turturro) have an on-set discussion about his inability to remember his lines in Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre to be released this March. 

I have just added a link to my Ambassador Magazine interview (in "Feature Articles") with Italian writer-director Nanni Moretti. I spoke with Mr. Moretti about his semi-autobiographical movie at the New York Film Festival last October.

Mia Madre is shot from the point-of-view of an Italian film director, portrayed by Margherita Buy, who is in the midst of making a large-budget movie when she learns that her mother is dying of heart disease. Mr. Moretti plays her brother Giovanni, and John Turturro has a supporting role as an American actor in Margherita's film. In my interview with Mr. Moretti, he is quite candid about the fact that he wishes he had been more like his character, the devoted son Giovanni, when he discovered his own mother was dying during the making of We Have a Pope (2011). Mia Madre will be in theaters in March.

Brief Clips of My Bluestockings Bookstore Reading

I have just posted clips of my Bluestockings presentation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgO_OQG4JSg In this reading (on October 14th), I discussed the conventions of the female quest for identity in The Silence of the Lambs and The Secret of Roan Inish, emphasizing my feminist reading of heroic journeys. Among the topics I touch upon are: disorientation at the start of the quest; the hero's self-sacrifice; and why many cinematic quests are action films. At a trim 6 1/2 minutes, it is a good intro to some of the key ideas in my book, Cinematic Quests for Identity: The Hero's Encounter with the Beast (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). I hope you will take a look!

Sarah Gavron's "Suffragette"

Factory workers and British suffragettes Maud (Carey Mulligan) and Violet (Anne-Marie Duff) in a still from Suffragette.

In theaters now, Suffragette is that rare narrative film made from the point-of-view of a working class woman, in this case one living in early 20th century Britain. You can read my interview with the director, Sarah Gavron, here: http://www.filmjournal.com/features/demanding-be-heard-sarah-gavron%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98suffragette%E2%80%99-dramatizes-british-women%E2%80%99s-fight-vote

My review of Suffragette also appears in Film Journal International: http://www.filmjournal.com/reviews/film-review-suffragette

Patricio Guzmán's The Pearl Button: In Theaters this Weekend

A still from "The Pearl Button" of the Humboldt Current, which marks an area of low salinity ocean that flows along the west coast of South America and that marks a unique ecosystem. (Courtesy of distributor, Kino Lorber Pictures).

If there were a poet laureate of Chile’s Atacama Desert, it would be documentary filmmaker Patricio Guzmán. In Nostalgia for the Light (2011), Guzmán probed that high, arid land, famous for its observatories, and its spectacular views of the Milky Way, for evidence of crimes that are the subject of all of his documentaries. They were committed during the sixteen years of dictator Augusto Pinochet’s regime. In his latest documentary, The Pearl Button, the writer-director becomes the bard of oceans, and in his sublime narrative voice, ruminates on their depths as the repository for human history.

The Pearl Button is comprised of several storylines that arise from that quotidian object. One button represents the only piece of evidence in a murder case that will never be brought to trial. It was discovered off the Pacific coast of Chile, not far from the Atacama Trench, annealed to a railroad tie. These wooden ties weighed down the bodies of Pinochet-era victims dropped from helicopters. Guzmán re-enacts that chilling crime and imagines the body and mind of the “disappeared” person now flowing in oceanic memory, along with countless others who suffered the same fate. 

Writer-director Patricio Guzman on his epic voyage along Chile's Pacific coast during production of his sublime documentary, "The Pearl Button." (Courtesy of Kino Lorber Pictures.)

During production on The Pearl Button, the 74 year old writer-director embarked on a sea journey along Chile’s 2,600-mile coastline, mostly inaccessible by land or air. Along the way, he discovered another narrative thread: the story of Jemmy Button, an indigenous 19th-century man who was paid one pearl button to travel to England in order to be “civilized.” Button later returned to his coastal community, among many other nomadic aboriginal locations in what is now Southern Chile and its archipelago. Europeans eventually decimated the native peoples, although some escaped. Guzmán speaks to a few of their descendants, including the last Kawésqar speaker. Once ocean nomads, they are now prevented by the Chilean government from putting to sea in their traditional canoes.

At Bluestockings Book Store

Me at Bluestockings Bookstore on October 14th, discussing chapters from my book, Cinematic Quests for Identity.

Having the opportunity to do readings is definitely the best thing about writing a book. Last night, at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York City, I had a terrific audience of movie lovers, some of whom stayed afterward to talk about Jonathan Demme's "The Silence of the Lambs" and John Sayles's "The Secret of Roan Inish," and to tell me how much these quest movies meant to them. One woman shared a story about Howard Shore, Demme's composer, and another wondered why people continually embark on quests. (It's a lifelong struggle for those who wish to live the "examined life.") Thank you, Bluestockings staff and customers for a very special evening! (And to Pete and Brian for topping it off with baseball and nachos.)Please check back early next week for video clips from the reading.

My Bluestockings Bookstore Reading

Please attend if you are in New York City! You can see a full-size version of this invitation by going to "Upcoming Events" on my Facebook page. The "reading," which is a presentation on the quest in The Silence of the Lambs and The Secret of Roan Inish, is on Wednesday, October 14th at 7 PM, at Bluestockings Bookstore, http://bluestockings.com/