Club Des Femmes

Club des Femmes proudly presents Dirty Diaries

2011-12-13T06:10:00.000-08:00

Dear femmes and friends des femmes

Forget the festive season! It's all about New Year. It's definitely the time of year to tuck up in the cinema with friends. So why not join us on January 13th at the Horse Hospital to take advantage of a rare UK screening of Mia Engberg's Dirty Diaries? The screening is our contribution to the wonderful London Short Film Festival.

Here's some information about the film. We hope to see you there and hope you're all fine and dandy,

Sarah and Selina

Dirty Diaries
Swedishfilmmaker/producer Mia Engberg portrays people living on the outskirtsof society: skinheads; transsexuals; punk kids. In 2001, she was atthe centre of international festival interest with her first Swedishlesbian erotic film Selma & Sofie, which was made by an all female crew.

Her newest project, Dirty Diaries,is a diverse collection of twelve queer feminist porn shorts. With thehelp of the Swedish Film Institute, Engberg commissioned twelvefilmmakers to create erotic films – the way they like it. On their releasein 2009, the films gained notoriety, especially because the project waspublicly funded. The shorts oscillate between soft and hardcore, queerand hetero, and creatively play with porno stereotypes.

So what do women want and what does feminist porn made by women looklike? Engberg and her friends show us their films – their livescelebrating, investigating and playing with (as Caitlin Moran writes inher recent book How To Be A Woman) ‘free-range’ porn.
www.dirtydiaries.se

Friday 13 January: 19:30 The Horse Hospital

Price: £5 advance, £6 on the door. Booking link available on the Horse Hospital website.

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Je, Tu, Il, Elle

2011-03-29T02:18:00.000-07:00

Club Des Femmes
presents
JE TU IL ELLE + LA DUCHA
9 April 2011: 16:00 - 19:00

The funding cuts at at this year's LLGFF have mobilised the community. Club Des Femmes is proud to be taking part in Fringe! The London Gay Film Fest: a weekend of parties, screenings, talks and performance.

In times of change what better way to think about the future of film with a rare chance of to see the ground-breaking debut feature by Club Des Femmes' heroine: Chantal Akerman? In her provocative debut, Akerman stars as an aimless young woman who leaves self-imposed isolation to embark on a road trip. With its famous real-time carnal encounter and its daring minimalism, JE TU IL ELLE is Akerman's most sexually audacious film.

JE TU IL ELLE
Dir. Chantal Akerman, France, 1976, 90 mins, French with English subtitles.
With Chantal Akerman, Niels Arestrup, Claire Wauthion

screening with

LA DUCHA
Dir. Maria José San Martín, Chile, 2010, 10 mins, Spanish with English subtitles
A couple spend their last morning together in the bathroom. One of them is about to leave the country. The other has decided to stay. But who will take care of the cat? Winner of the DAAD short film prize at the Berlinale 2011.

Tickets now on sale here:
The Aubin Cinema
64-66 Redchurch Street
London

www.clubdesfemmes.com
www.fringefilmfest.com
www.aubincinema.com

Club Des Femmes and Spinster take New Berlin

2011-01-03T03:52:00.000-08:00

Club Des Femmes and Spinster take New Berlin
14 January 2011, Rio Cinema, Dalston
Proceedings begin at 23.30

Join us for this exclusive night of music and film dedicated to all spinsters, misfits, malcontents and miss-behaviours. Club Des Femmes and Spinster link arms in the twilight hours to deliver a double drop of nostalgic, wistful folky-pop and feminist filmmaking.

The night kicks off with..
SPINSTER
Spinster are Sadie Lee, vocals and electric ukulele; Em Fitzgerald, bass; classically-trained pianist Kathy Gledhill on keyboards and Lea Andrews - former front-woman of indie band Spy 51, on drums and backing vocals.
Legendary blogger Joe Pop describes them as 'like Cockney Rebel and the Shangri-la's shoplifting in Biba then going round to the Velvet Underground's house to raid their parents' drinks cabinet, before beating up the Partridge Family at the school gates'.

Followed by..
EINE FLEXIBLE FRAU (The Drifter)
Dir. Tatjana Turanskyj, Germany 2010, 97 mins, German with English subtitles
Berlin. The beginning of the 21st century. A woman under the influence. Greta, an outcast architect, drinks and drifts through the so-called New Berlin. Her journey reveals a city of wastelands and brand new town houses. Torn between the pressure to conform and the spirit of revolution, Greta navigates the modern landscapes of globalized capitalism and post-feminism.

After, join us for a night cap at..
Dalston Superstore
117 Kingsland Road E8 2PB

To book tickets: www.riocinemaonline.org.uk

This event is hosted by LSFF. Check out their other great programmes too here.

A Star is Born

2009-12-28T05:11:00.000-08:00

Club des Femmes
presents
A Star is Born
In the age of X Factor and Xbox, Club des Femmes celebrates the amateur.
Do you remember a time of singing into your hairbrush and wanting to be a contender? As our contribution to this year's wonderful LSFF, Club des Femmes explores the pure urge to perform.

9 January 2010
ICA 15:30 CINEMA 1
ICA, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH.
Box Office: 020 7930 3647

Film Programme
Human Radio
Director: Miranda Pennell. UK 2002, 9 mins
People dance in private moments of personal abandon, across London in the summer of 2001.

I Am Crazy And You're Not Wrong
Director: Anne McGuire. USA 1997, 11 mins
Ann McGuire portrays a Kennedy-era singer performing in a space where theatre meets television. McGuire's Garlandesque gestures provide both a sense of tragedy and humour.

The Week Elvis Died
Director: Carol Morley, UK, 1997, 16 mins
England in 1977. Karen aged 10 is bullied at school by Julie and her gang. All she has for comfort are her descant recorder, her pet rabbit Elvis and her adoration of top disc jockey Tony Blackburn.

Drum Room
Director: Miranda Pennell. UK 2007, 15 mins
The empty spaces of an ambiguous building open-up to reveal a group of aspiring musicians as they play together, alone.

Intrepidissima
Director. Marta Balleto-Coll. Spain. 1992. 7 mins
A cathartic triumph for every little tomboy who’s ever been forced to go shopping for dresses when she’d rather be conducting an imaginary orchestra through the Brandenburg Concerto Number 3 in her attic.

PLUS
live pop-up performance by Hall of Mirrors' Jessica Spencer

Maidens in Uniform

2009-11-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

Dear femmes and friends des femmes,

We love Romy Schneider.

So we're very proud to announce that we've teamed up with the Goethe-Institut London for our next exciting event: A Maidens in Uniform double bill on 29 November at Curzon Soho.

Information about the screening is pasted below, along with details of all the other Romy Schneider films being screened at this year's German Film Festival. Hope to see you there.

And if you're feeling like this isn't enough excitement, why not visit us in Berlin at this November's Britspotting where we're hosting a Vivienne Dick retrospective? If you haven't ever seen Vivienne's films, it's time to buy a plane ticket.

Love and respect,

Sarah & Selina

FRI 20 NOV – SUN 29 NOV, CINÉ LUMIÈRE & CURZON SOHO
TRIBUTE TO ROMY SCHNEIDER

On the occasion of the forthcoming UK release of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno in November and of a major exhibition opening at the Museum für Film und Fernsehen in Berlin in December, Ciné lumière, Club des Femmes, German Films, and Goethe-Institut London present Tribute to Romy Schneider. Beginning with Bertrand Tavernier’s Death Watch, Ciné lumière will show six films, including Visconti’s epic Ludwig, between Friday, 20 November and Wednesday, 25 November. On Saturday, 28 November the season continues with Sissi at the Curzon Soho as part of the 12th Festival of German Films. A rare double bill of the 1931 and 1958 versions of Maidens in Uniform, introduced by author Ali Smith, concludes the season on Sunday, 29 November.

Born in 1938 in Vienna, Romy Schneider was propelled into stardom as a young ‘Sissi’ and became one of Europe’s most popular and critically acclaimed actresses. Initially totally identified with the role of the young and naïve Austrian Empress, she managed to reinvent herself when she left Austria and Germany behind and moved to France. Longing to cast off her teenage image and be accepted as a serious actor, she seized the chance to work with directors such as Luchino Visconti, Orson Welles, Henri-Georges Clouzot, and later on with Claude Chabrol, Claude Miller, or Claude Sautet, with whom she made five films. She played alongside some of France’s greatest male stars including Jean-Louis Trintignant, Lino Ventura, Philippe Noiret, Yves Montand, and repeatedly with Michel Piccoli. The public often paid more attention to the turmoil in her private life, her relationship with Alain Delon and particularly the death of her son, than to her professional achievements. With the constant media attention on her life it was tempting for her as well as her audiences to blur the lines between her private self and the characters she played: strong, resilient women, who were also vulnerable, affectionate and joyful, or sometimes despairing and weary. Her iconic smooth face expressed it all with just the subtlest change. By the time she died of heart failure in 1982 she had won the prestigious César award twice and performed in more than 60 films.

All films are shown in English or with English subtitles except Death Watch, which is shown in English with French subtitles.

VENUES:

Ciné lumière
17 Queensberry Place
London SW7 2DT
BOX OFFICE 020 70731350
www.institut-francais.org.uk

Curzon Soho
99 Shaftesbury Avenue
London, W1D 5DY
BOX OFFICE 0871 703 3988
www.curzoncinemas.com

SCREENINGS AT CINÉ LUMIÈRE, FRIDAY 20 – WEDNESDAY 25 NOVEMBER

Friday, 20 November, 8.40pm, Ciné lumière
La Mort en direct (Death Watch)
Diagnosed with a terminal disease, Katherine sells the TV rights to her death, but then hides, just to be unwittingly filmed by the one person she trusts. Tavernier considered Schneider, whose privacy had constantly been invaded by the media, as ideal for the role. Set in the near future, the film is surprisingly prophetic in the way it foreshadows reality TV and CCTV, also reflecting on film as voyeurism and simulacrum. Harvey Keitel co-stars, his camera-eyes fixed on his target, en route between a dystopian Glasgow and Land’s End.
France/FRG/UK. 1980, 128 mins. Directed by Bertrand Tavernier. With Romy Schneider, Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton, Max von Sydow. English with French subtitles.

Saturday, 21 November, 6.15pm, Ciné lumière
Ludwig
Visconti, who had given Schneider decisive roles in theatre and film upon her arrival in France, casts her once more as Elisabeth of Austria, Ludwig’s cousin, as if to finally bring the Sissi chapter to a close. In this operatic and luxurious portrait of the ‘Mad’ King, shot on location inBavaria and Austria, she plays the mature Empress, who has gained relative freedom in spite of marriage and office. Ludwig adores her but knowing that he must not love her, she is empress enough to steer him towards her sister.
Italy/France/FR. 1972, 220mins with one interval. Directed by Luchino Visconti. With Romy Schneider, Helmut Berger, Trevor Howard, Silvana Mangano. Italian with English subtitles

Sunday, 22 November, 2pm, Ciné lumière (Sunday French Classics)
Le Train (The Last Train)
As the Germans invade France during WWII, Julien and his family flee south, but become separated. On a train with other refugees Julien meets Anna, a German Jew, and falls in love. Once they are safe, Julien sets off to find his wife and children. When he sees Anna again, it is in the presence of the Gestapo. Anna’s upright and emotional character appealed to Schneider, who viewed the film as a personal statement on Germany’s failure to deal with its Nazi past. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon.
France/Italy. 1973, 101mins. Directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre. With Romy Schneider, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Maurice Biraud, Paul Amiot. English only.

Sunday, 22 November, 4.05pm, Ciné lumière
Les Choses de la vie (The Things of Life)
Pierre has an accident and as he is lying by the side of the road, his half-conscious mind takes him back to the people and things he loved. Schneider’s first collaboration with Sautet and Piccoli, whom she both liked very much and would work with repeatedly, was a key film in her career. It consolidated her place in French cinema and coined her image as the modern independent woman, who like Hélène in this film, commits to her love and won’t accept a lover’s flight into nostalgia and indecision.
France/Italy 1969. 89mins. Directed by Claude Sautet. With Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider, Lea Massari, Gérard Lartigau. French with English subtitles.

Monday, 23 November, 8.40pm, Ciné lumière
La Piscine (The Swimming Pool)
While on holiday near St Tropez the couple Marianne and Jean-Paul enjoy lazing and making love around the pool. Things take a chillier turn when Marianne’s former lover appears with his teenage daughter. Delon suggested Schneider for the part of Marianne. The on-screen re-union of the former dream couple stirred many rumours and adds to the tension of this taut psychological drama, which also stars Delon’sPlein Soleil partner Maurice Ronet and a very young Jane Birkin. Lavishly photographed and here shown from a new print it is just the right film for November.
Italy/France 1969, 102mins. Directed by Jacques Deray. With Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin. French with English subtitles.

Tuesday, 24 November, 8.40pm, Ciné lumière
L'Important c'est d'aimer (The Most Important Thing: Love)
In a César-winning role that shows Schneider at her most vulnerable and fragile, but also at her most angry and cynical she plays a world-weary actress amidst a crowd of desperate artists, freaks, and gangsters. Bound to her escapist husband, she resists the love of a melancholy photographer who secretly pays a large sum of money to get her into a proper, yet ill-fated stage play. Zulawski’s first film outside Poland is a fierce, cacophonous, yet tender melodrama, which also stars Klaus Kinski in one of his best performances.
France 1974 / 75, 109mins. Directed by Andrzej Zulawski. With Romy Schneider, Fabio Testi, Jacques Dutronc, Klaus Kinski. French with English subtitles.

Wednesday, 25 November, 3pm, Ciné lumière
L'Enfer de Henri-Georges Clouzot (Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno)
In 1964 Henri-Georges Clouzot cast Schneider for his highly experimental film L’Enfer about a man’s obsessive jealousy. New visual effects were tested for months and Schneider, at times locked away for days with Clouzot and the camera team, would be covered in blue paint, olive oil or sequins. But the project had to be abandoned; the images, said to be amazing, were forgotten until brought back to life for this new film. A mixture of original, reconstruction and ‘making-of’, it is also a visual ode to the young and daring Romy Schneider.
France 1964 / 2009, 94mins. Directed by H.G. Clouzot, Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea. With Romy Schneider, Serge Reggiani, Bérénice Bejo, Jacques Gamblin. French with English subtitles.

SCREENINGS AS PART OF THE 12TH FESTIVAL OF GERMAN FILMS, CURZON SOHO, SATURDAY 28 + SUNDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2009

Saturday, 28 November, 1.30pm, 12th Festival of German Films, Curzon Soho
Sissi
In true fairy-tale fashion, young Sissi, the daughter of Duke Max of Bavaria, accidentally meets and so charms the Emperor of Austria that he marries her and she becomes Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Followed by two sequels, and even a US version, the film was also a fairy-tale success for Romy Schneider and Karlheinz Böhm. With its excellent cast, beautiful nature scenes and lavish court settings, it makes a unique spectacle.
Austria 1955, 102mins. Directed by Ernst Marischka. With Romy Schneider, Karlheinz Böhm, Magda Schneider, Gustav Knuth. German with English subtitles.
Introduced by Professor Erica Carter, Warwick University.

MAIDENS IN UNIFORM DOUBLE BILL
Continuing their investigation into queer fandom and crushes and in honour of Romy Schneider, Club Des Femmes is delighted to co-present with the Goethe-Institut London a rare double bill of Maidens in Uniform (1931 and 1958 versions).
Writer Ali Smith will introduce each screening.

Synopsis for both films: Prussia 1910. After the death of her mother Manuela is taken to a boarding school for aristocratic girls. Sensitive and shy, she finds it difficult to adapt to the harsh Prussian discipline imposed by the school. Only one teacher, Fräulein von Bernburg, seems sympathetic to the girls. When Manuela, drunken with success and a little too much punch after peforming in the school play, openly declares her love for her teacher, the matron is outraged and her harsh punishment almost leads to catastrophe.

Sunday, 29 November, 3.30pm, 12th Festival of German Films, Curzon Soho
Maidens in Uniform (Mädchen in Uniform) 1931 by Leontine Sagan
Based on the play Yesterday and Today by Christa Winslow, the story was first made into an internationally successful film in 1931. Directed by Leontine Sagan, it starred an all-female cast and was cooperatively produced with cast and crew sharing the profits. Critics praised it as a highlight of late Weimar cinema but it was prohibited by the Nazis and only resurfaced with the rise of the feminist movement in the 70s, when its lesbian content moved more into focus as opposed to its reading as a primarily anti-authoritarian film.
Germany 1931, 88mins. Directed by Leontine Sagan. With Hertha Thiele, Dorothea Wieck, Emilie Unda. German with English subtitles.

Sunday, 29 November, 5.45pm, 12th Festival of German Films, Curzon Soho
Maidens in Uniform (Mädchen in Uniform) 1958 by Géza von Radványi with Romy Schneider
Released in 1958, the remake by male director Géza von Radványi was also very popular and for Schneider it was a personal breakthrough. She easily identified with Manuela’s character having spent several years in a boarding school herself and having felt the pressures of early stardom. But more importantly she was part of an excellent ensemble that included Therese Giehse, one of Germany’s greatest stage actresses, as well as the younger but equally well-respected Lili Palmer. Schneider shared a kissing scene with Palmer that caused a minor scandal in orderly post-war Germany. For Schneider however there was nothing frivolous about the film or the role. For the first time she felt like a serious actress, exulted and empowered as Manuela was by her part in the film’s pivotal stage play.
FRG 1958, 95mins. Directed by Géza von Radványi. Romy Schneider, Lilli Palmer, Therese Giehse, Christine Kaufmann, Sabine Sinjen.German with English subtitles.

2009-09-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

CLUB DES FEMMES

present

WHY HAVE THERE BEEN NO GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS?

“Why have there been no great women artists?” This is how the critic Linda Nochlin famously opened the debate about the way canonical thinking defined and still defines Western art history. For Nochlin, in 1971, in a line of art A-listers that stretched from Michelangelo to Andy Warhol, women artists were notable by their absence.

Nearly forty years on in our post-feminist age, Club des Femmes considers the role of the woman artist and wonders if the debate has ever gone away? Come with us and revisit the seventies, the debate is just starting: it’s time to engage.

PROGRAMME:

LIGHT READING
Director: Lis Rhodes. UK, 1978, 20 mins, 16mm
LIGHT READING begins in darkness as a woman's voice is heard over a blank screen. She speaks of her search for a voice: of presence and absence, of experience and history. Her voice continues until the images appear on the screen and then it is silent. In the final section of the film she begins again - reading the images as these are moved and re-placed, describing the piecing together of the film as she tries to piece together the strands of her story. 'She watched herself being looked at She looked at herself being watched but she could not perceive herself as the subject of the sentence ...' (Lis Rhodes).

SEMIOTICS OF THE KITCHEN
Director: Martha Rosler. USA, 1975, 6 mins, video
Martha Rosler is an important contemporary artist and feminist who uses photography, performance, writing and video to deconstruct cultural reality. Avoiding a pedantic stance, Rosler characteristically lays out visual and verbal information in a manner that allows the contradictions to gradually emerge, so that the audience can discern these disjunctions for themselves.

SHULIE
Director: Elisabeth Subrin. USA, 1997, 36 mins, video
A cinematic doppelganger without precedent, Elisabeth Subrin's Shulie uncannily and systematically bends time and cinematic code alike, projecting the viewer 30 years into the past to rediscover a woman out of time and time out of joint- and in Subrin's words, 'to investigate the mythos and residue of the late 1960s.' Staging an extended act of homage as well as a playful, provocative confounding of filmic propriety, Subrin and her creative collaborator Kim Soss resurrect a little-known 1967 documentary portrait of a young Chicago art student who a few years later would become a notable figure in Second Wave feminism and the author of the radical 1970 manifesto, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. Reflecting on her life and times, Shulie functions as a prism for refracting questions of gender, race and class that resonate in our era as in hers, while through painstaking mediation, Subrin makes manifest the eternal return of film. - Mark MacElhatten and Gavin Smith, curators, Views from the Avant Garde. 35th New York Film Festival

Screenings

LIVERPOOL: Friday 25 September, 2pm
AND Festival, The Box, Fact, 88 Wood St, L1 4DQ, Liverpool
£7/£5

LONDON: Tuesday 29 September, 6.30pm
Goldsmith's, University of London
Small Hall Cinema, Richard Hoggart Building (main building)
www.gold.ac.uk/campus-map/
£3

2009-05-09T03:53:00.000-07:00

CLUB DES FEMMES
presents
A Swinging Summertime Special

It’s time to revisit sixties London: a time when everything was swinging.
Or was it?
Club des Femmes presents two classics of lesbian cinema: films which, pre- and post decriminalization, bookend the decade and offer a queer consciousness audience a chance to critique mainstream culture and its version of (a newly visible) lesbian culture.

Sunday 28th June 2.30pm, Curzon Soho
THE WORLD TEN TIMES OVER
Director: Wolf Rilla. 1963, 93 mins
Wolf Rilla, fresh from shooting The Village of the Damned, delivers quite possibly the first British lesbian film. Two nightclub hostesses Ginnie (June Ritchie) and Billa (Sylvia Syms) are in love. At a time when female emancipation and sexual freedom was heavily regulated (the film suffered at the censors), it is Syms who delivers a powerhouse performance as the older woman disgusted with her job and unable to set herself free.

Screening as part of 2009 Story of London

Sunday 5th July 3pm, Curzon Soho
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE
Director: Robert Aldrich. 1968, 138 mins
‘The story of three consenting adults in the privacy of their own home’.
Already controversial by the time it reached cinemas because of its X-rated sex scene the film failed at the box office but remains an era-defining cult classic. The Killing of Sister George gave audiences a rare glimpse of London lesbian culture.
Boo the baddies!
Cheer the goodies!
It’s time to revisit the eternal lesbian love triangle. Susannah York, Coral Brown, Beryl Reid: you are this summer’s Club des Femmes’ dykesploitation heroines.

Booking:
Curzon Soho, 93 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 5DY
Box Office: 0871 7033 988
Website: www.curzoncinemas.com

EXTRA EXTRA! As a special Pride extra The Killing of Sister George screening will also feature a tribute to the infamous Gateways Club. We want your memories! If you enjoyed the delights of the Gateways Club will you send us your memories? We'll publish everyone's recollections online and share our favourites at the screening. Can you describe a great night there? Who broke your heart? Who lit your cigarette? Is it time to tell all? Please contact us (femmes@clubdesfemmes.com) if you want to take part.

See you later in the month, Sarah & Selina

POUT
LGBT Cinema during Pride London 28th June – 6th July
To celebrate this year’s Pride London, Peccadillo Pictures, Verve Pictures, ICA, Club Des Femmes, Curzon Cinemas and Pride London have teamed up to form POUT, bringing you the very best in queer cinema during Pride week. Catering to every taste and persuasion, classic historical dramas such as BEFORE STONEWALL and THE CELLULOID CLOSET will court controversy alongside British cult classics THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE and cult-in-the-making GREEK PETE. Heart-warming crowd pleasers LOST AND DELIRIOUS and SUMMERSTORM round out a programme that aims to bring a variety of entertaining and thought-provoking LGBT cinema to a modern gay audience.
Full programme here

.

Winter Wonderland

2009-02-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends des Femmes

It was great to see so many of you at the ICA for our Body of Work event. If you're feeling nostalgic check out the reviews in this month's Electric Sheep and in Little White Lies.

We'll be back soon with new plans. Selina's just off to the Berlin Film Festival to find new work and I'm shoveling the snow at home. Something good will come of this.

Keep warm,

Sarah & Selina

Body of Work

2008-12-12T10:02:00.000-08:00

January 17th 2009, ICA, London, SPECIAL EVENT

In an age when commodification has almost completely silenced any political discussion of the casual use of female nudity, Club des Femmes revisits some of the seminal film works made by women artists using the female form.

BODY OF WORK is part of the London Short Film Festival 9-18 January 2009

BODY OF WORK: PROGRAMME 1

ICA, Cinema 2, 2.30pm

ALMOST OUT

Director: Jayne Parker. UK, 1984, 90 mins

'Almost Out' is a confrontation/statement with fragments of dialogue between a mother, daughter and a cameraman" - J.P.

The gap between intention and expression is explored as the camera isolates parts of the body, and the women speak of how the image relates to themselves and their body image. Parker says at one point, 'I want to please my mother, that is what this film is about!' Her mother looks at her naked body on the monitor and talks about how she feels being produced as an image. There ensues a brutal but caring talk between mother and daughter which is disturbing, sad and breathtakingly intense.

BODY OF WORK: PROGRAMME 2

ICA, Cinema 1, 6.30 pm

A survey of ground-breaking works, made against the backdrop of feminist discussion of body politics, that properly interrogate what the female body means, how the body is viewed societally, how much the body communicates meaning and ultimately ask: how much do our bodies express our selves?

Film Programme:

TAP AND TOUCH CINEMA

Director: VALIE EXPORT. Germany, 1968, 2 mins

"The cinema has shrunk somewhat - only two hands fit inside it. To see (i.e. feel, touch) the film, the viewer (user) has to stretch his hands through the entrance to the cinema. At last the curtain which formerly rose only for the eyes now rises for both hands. The tactile recption is the opposite of the deceit of voyeurism." – VALIE EXPORT

VITAL STATISTICS OF A CITIZEN, SIMPLY OBTAINED

Director: Martha Rosler. USA, 1977, 40 mins

Taking aim at the social standardisation enforced on women's bodies, Rosler critiques the politics of 'objective' or scientific evaluation that result in the de-personalisation, objectfication and colonisation of women. Just to whom are these statistics vital? They are vital to a society which circumscribes the behaviour and roles of women.

IMPONDERABILIA

Directors: Marina Abramovich/Ulay. The Netherlands, 1977, 10 mins

"Naked we stand opposite each other in the museum entrance. The public entering the museum has to turn sideways to move through the limited space between us. Everyone wanting to get past has to choose which one of us to face" – Marina Abramovich

Director: Jayne Parker. UK, 1989, 13 mins

"I bring into the open all the things I have taken in that are not mine and thereby make room for something new. I make an external order out of an internal tangle." – Jayne Parker

MEASURES OF DISTANCE

Director: Mona Hatoum. UK, 1988, 16 mins

Hatoum explores how degrees of proximity and separation can be conveyed by employing both concrete examples (her mother taking a shower), and more formal abstractions (text, paper, voices, a trip to Beirut).

Body of Work is generously supported by Peccadillo Pictures.

Thank you LUX, VDB, Montevideo, Amsterdam and Charim Gallery, Vienna

Coming soon.. Finn's Girl, released January 19th by Peccadillo Pictures

Summertime Special

2008-06-20T04:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends des femmes

We're just recovering from our fabulous night with Barbara Hammer and planning what to do next.

We'll be back in the autumn with some new adventures but in the meantime have a great summer,

Sarah & Selina

Spring is coming and so are we

2008-01-31T08:53:00.000-08:00

Dear friends des femmes

Our latest news!

May
We've chosen Barbara Hammer's Lover Other as our film for Out at The Pictures at BFI Southbank. Come and join us on May 23rd (NFT2, 18:10). In Lover Other Barbara Hammer engages with the pioneering lives of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: lesbians who created some of the most striking photographic images of the 20th century.

Coming soon..
We hope to be returning to the Curzon Soho in June for our 2nd Club Des Femmes extravaganza. Watch this space ...

And finally why not read about us and women's film in the wonderful Electric Sheep magazine?

More soon,

Sarah & Selina

2007-12-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends des Femmes,

We’re back.

This time the London Short Film Festival are our hosts (thank you Philip and Kate, you both rock!) and the ICA will be our venue. Ladies and Gentleman, girls and boys, Club Des Femmes is delighted to present…

Discipline & Anarchy: a Celebration of Kathy Acker

Discipline & Anarchy: a Club Des Femmes celebration of American experimental novelist, prose stylist, essayist, and sex-positive feminist, Kathy Acker. The world hasn't quite caught up with Acker. Her death ten years ago cut short a dazzling career of radical thought and aesthetic experimental adventure. A beat visionary, she put anarchic energy back into thought and writing.

For one day only, Club Des Femmes pays tribute with a rare screening of her scripted feature film Variety plus a night of films in the spirit of her pioneering work, accompanied by readings from her writing.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Love and peace

Sarah & Selina

Date:
12th January 2008 @ the London Short Film Festival

Venue:
Institute Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH
Box Office: 020 7930 3647/ Switchboard: 020 7930 0493

Discipline & Anarchy: Programme

ICA, Screen 1, 4.00pm
Variety
Dir: Bette Gordon 1982 35mm 103mins
Described by the LA Times as 'a feminist Vertigo', Variety tells the sexually-charged tale of a woman's journey of self discovery. Controversial for its time, Acker's script upends feminist ideology by showing a woman who
finds self-expression through an interest in pornography. Bette Gordon's powerful film is helped along by an impressive array of talent. Nan Goldin acts, Tom DiCillo films, Spalding Gray makes obscene phone calls and John Lurie scores the film to give it its unique sensual appeal.

ICA, Screen 1, 8.30pm
Sex-positive: a night of film and fiction
Sit back and let Club Des Femmes take you on an Acker trip. Film in the spirit of Acker's writing will be accompanied by readings from her work by Ali Smith and Kathleen Bryson

Fuses
Dir: Carolee Schneemann 1964-67, 25 mins
A ground-breaking silent film of collaged and painted sequences of lovemaking between Schneemann and her then partner, composer James Tenney.

Baby Doll
Dir: Tessa Hughes-Freeland 1982 5 mins
'A doc-portrait of two Go Go dancers, revealing their experience of how it is on their side of the dollars.' - T.H-F.

Random Acts of Intimacy
Dir: Clio Barnard 1998 15mins. Starring Isla Fisher and Sara Stockbridge.
Truth and fiction collude in a collage of romanticised and possibly fabricated memories of impulsive, passionate random acts of intimacy.

Nymphomania
Dir Tessa Hughes-Freeland 1994 9 mins
The archetypal personification of female sexuality is joyously revised in this beautifully shot parody of Pan and his dancing Nymph.

Darling International
Dir Jennifer Reeves & MM Serra 1999 22 mins
A viscerally erotic sadomasochistic exploration of the sexual fantasies of a NY metal worker.

--------------------------------------

Kathy Acker

In the mid '70s Kathy Acker met artist Carolee Schneemann, a pioneer of work around the expressive female body. Schneemann had already made Fuses, a film of herself and a partner making love, and in 1975 she performed one of her most famous pieces, Interior Scroll, in which, standing naked, she pulled a 36-inch strip of paper from her vagina and read it aloud. Acker was still unpublished at the time, writing pamphlets and distributing them to a mailing list of a few hundred people, Schneemann among them, and in Schneemann Acker found a kindred spirit, someone else who used lived erotic experience as a territory of inquiry. In the '70s, such an inquiry (for women, at least) was thought trivial or obscene.

For twenty years, from Schneemann to Spice Girls, Acker questioned the politics of female desire and the territory of the body. She used her own physical being – spiky or bleach-blond hair, tattoos (before they were fashionable) – as a means of enquiry. She was the embodiment of a new fin de siècle woman, a mortal Tank Girl, a question mark on the landscape of cold war conservatism. Her heroines are adventurers, sexual pioneers surfing the landscape of literature and culture, negotiating the politics of power and desire with swashbuckling bravery. They struggle with dependence on two things they can't trust: language and love.

More like Genet than Nin, Acker wrote with punkish piracy, plagiarised texts and upset convention in an artful attempt to re-see the world and point out the fictive basis of culture and the unreliability of authority.

She was a true literary radical. We are only now, ten years after her untimely death, coming to terms with the exciting, avant-garde nature of her work.

2007-10-16T05:54:00.000-07:00

Su Friedrich

“Provocative, entertaining, and intriguing”. - Variety

Last week, I went to see a Su Friedrich programme at the Arsenal in Berlin. They screened three of her shorts, Rules of the Road (1993), The Head of A Pin (2004) and Seeing Red (2005). Su Friedrich was at the screening to introduce her films which was great - for although her films are intensely personal, she never puts herself in front of the camera. She is as you expect – a very funny, drole New Yorker with a mass a curly grey hair.

One of her most recent shorts Seeing Red (2005) concerning the onset of middle-age, the colour red and a melody is screening at the London Film Festival on Saturday 27th October in a short film programme called The ‘I’ and the ‘We’. This is definitely worth checking out. Friedrich has directed and produced over eighteen 16mm film and videos; she is a leading figure in independent lesbian/feminist experimental filmmaking. Although most of her work has been shot on film and in black and white, her somewhat (reluctant) move into video and colour has been a very interesting transition. She spoke about the way she was now able to record time and use colour where previously this was not an option.

“Whenever I set out to make a film, my primary motive is to create an emotionally charged, or resonant, experience – to work with stories from my own life that I feel the need to examine closely, and that I think are shared by many people” Su Friedrich

Outcast Films have recently put out 5 compilation DVDs of her work.

Alternatively you can wait and see her work playing at Club des Femmes in the not too distant future!

More soon

Selina

2007-09-17T09:45:00.000-07:00

18th September 2007

Dear Friends of Femmes,

On this day, last year, our very dearest friend Brixton tragically died. So we want to mark today in remembrance of her life and her wonderful mischief and laughter.

"I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple, garlands from window to
window, golden chains from star to star, and I dance"
- Arthur Rimbaud.

Brixton Brady

3rd April 1965-18th September 2006

Love and peace

Selina & Sarah

2007-07-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

Club des Femmes's Summertime Special: we are launched

Thank you to everybody who came along to Summer Camp for Girls, our 1st Club des Femmes last month – all 250 of you! It was great to screen such cool films and meet so many interesting people in the audience. Even our party turned into a kind of art action. A big thank you to everybody who supported us: despite the threat of bombs and Wimbledon Ladies Final it was very exciting to feel so much good will.

Right now we're working on a brand new plan and will be back later in the year with another forward-looking event, so please don’t touch that dial. More details soon..

We're also appearing in January at next year's Halloween London Short Film Festival. Halloween give a good name to short film. It's really worth checking out their appearances over the next months at the summer festivals.

In the meantime, if you've stumbled across this site by chance and would like to be a Friend des Femmes and subscribe for free to our monthly newsletter or would simply like to be in touch – please email les femmes and you'll be added to our little black book.

Back soon

Sarah & Selina

2007-05-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

presents

SUMMER CAMP FOR GIRLS

Welcome to Club des Femmes's Summer Camp for Girls, a shaded, leafy space in the hot glare of contemporary conservatism. At Summer Camp this year relive the freedom of punk as Club des Femmes revisits Vivienne Dick, Sadie Benning, Lizzie Borden - filmmakers who defined a new world order and gave back to girls the Power of Camp. Why not also pull up a log and light up the campfire to celebrate our annual investigations into recent women's filmmaking. Or feeling curious about Dykesploitation? This year's spotlight falls on Kristy McNichol.

Booking: www.curzoncinemas.com

SUMMER CAMP FOR GIRLS: 24TH JUNE – 1 JULY 2007

BORN IN FLAMES + STATEN ISLAND
Sunday 24 June 14.15, Curzon Soho
Two classics to kick off an action-packed week of Club des Femmes and a rare good opportunity to feel the force of these ground-breaking films.

BORN IN FLAMES
Director: Lizzie Borden, 1983, 90 mins
A sci-fi tale of feminist activism, set 10 years after a socialist revolution. Pirate radio is the modus operandi to gain control of the state run media. It’s militant, punk, hip-hop and funny. Not to be missed.
+
STATEN ISLAND
Director: Vivienne Dick, 1978, 5 mins
Pat Place plays a creature who lives in an old abandoned barge on a rubbish strewn beach. The mood is post-apocalyptic and the music of Telstar mixed with domestic kitchen clatter.

THE LIVES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN
Tuesday 26 June 18.30, Renoir
Club des Femmes is proud to show that feminism is alive and well in this programme of old and new shorts from around the world.

RAISING A RESISTER
Director: Emma Hedditch, 2003, 15 mins
What are the conditions for self confidence, self-consciousness? How do you raise a girl, or even encourage girls to be brave and defiant?

STRONG WOMEN
Director: Jayne Parker, 2000, 15 mins Two contrasting portraits of magnificently strong women: champion body builder Andrulla Blanchette and trapeze artist Vicki Amedume. Strength displayed and strength employed.

SEM TITULO
Director: Celia Domingues, 2002, 5 mins
Private and public spaces are explored in this feminist investigation into
Portugual's past and present histories.

RADIONICA
Director: Margareta Kern, 2005, 11 mins
Radionica reflects a life inside a flat in Bosnia, where a made-to-measure business is run by the artist’s mother. It reflects on the intimate nature of conversations between women while getting their clothes made, and on the slippage between the private space of home and the public space of work. Here, both those spaces converge to create a curious theatre of fashion, gossip, glamour, friendship, politics and coffee.

THE JUDY SPOTS
Director: Sadie Benning, 1995, 15 mins
Five uproarious animated short videos introduce Judy, a paper maché puppet, who drifts through the world as life happens to her.

THE CONTEMPORARY UNSPEAKABLE: TWO FILMS BY VIVIENNE DICK
Friday 29th June 18.00, Curzon Soho

It's 1978 and Vivienne Dick captures New York new wave with an eye for the immediate and a questioning of the performance of femininity. Aided by her trusty sidekicks Lydia Lunch and Pat Place these films stand as testimony to a scene which revolutionised film and music and challenged the conservative stasis of the Cold War World.

GUERRILLERE TALKS
Director: Vivienne Dick, 1978, 28 mins.
Dick's first film consists of eight unedited rolls of super-8 sound footage each of which is a sort of Warholian screen test for Dick's female subjects.
+
SHE HAD HER GUN ALL READY
Director: Vivienne Dick. 1978, 28 mins With Lydia Lunch and Pat Place.
Set in the Lower East Side, NYC, this is a film about unequal power between two people (of any gender), or the repressive side of a person in conflict with the sexual powerful side.

+ immediately after the screening, come with us and dance our way into a better future in the Curzon Soho bar - with records played by Jules Nurrish and The Librarian.

This event is sponsored by ICO

SADIE BENNING: 2 PIXELVISION VIDEOS
Saturday 30th June 18.00, Curzon Soho
Rarely screened in the UK, Sadie Benning's dyke punk videos are intimate revelations into the dreams, desires, fears and fantasies of a young girl in the process of defining (her)self, sexuality and identity.

FLAT IS BEAUTIFUL
Director: Sadie Benning, 1998, 50 mins
An experimental, live-action cartoon narrative using masks, animation, subtitles, drawings, and dramatic scenes to investigate the psychic life of an androgynous eleven year-old girl.
+
GERMAN SONG
Director: Sadie Benning, 1995, 5 mins
Disengaged youth and grey afternoons - featuring the hard-edged music of Come, an alternative band from Boston.

This programme is sponsored by Peccaddillo Pictures

DYKESPLOITATION: TRASH WE LOVE TO KEEP!
Sunday 1 July 14.15, Curzon Soho

LESBIAN ICON #1: KRISTY MCNICHOL
Sit back and enjoy the guilty pleasure of this rarely screened lesbian cult classic. This is our heart-felt homage to the greatness that is Kristy McNichol.

LITTLE DARLINGS
Director: Ronald F Maxwell, 1980, 96mins with Kristy McNichol, Tatum O'Neal, Matt Dillon
2 teenagers from opposite sides of the tracks compete to see who will be the first to loose their virginity whilst at camp one summer.
+
KRISTY
Director: Stephanie Gray, 2003, 7 mins
Kristy McNichol - the only working class tomboy in cinema. Shot off the screen in Super-8, hand-processed, and transferred to video, we are shown glitches and skips to scrutinize Kristy's face and elusive sexuality - as well as the filmmaker's own obsession.

Where are we?:

Curzon Soho
99 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 5DY
Box office 0870 756 4620

Renoir
Brunswick Centre, London, WC1N 1AW
Box office 0870 506 927

W: www.curzoncinemas.com