Still from Claire Edmondson’s music video for “The Sweetest Kill”
The music video for Broken Social Scene’s single “The Sweetest Kill” stars Bijou Philips, a woman with a cult following of her own. With her wavy, unkempt hair, minimal makeup, and a white doily of a dress on her slight frame, she is far from atypical of the pretty but seemingly unintimidating sirens in the indie scene. She wanders through the garden and prepares a drink for her male companion while lip-synching to the melancholic tune. Together, the couple embarks on a dreamy dance around the living room, leaning against each other as they slowly sway.
And then, about 90 seconds in, the mood shifts. Without missing a beat, the man goes unconscious, sliding to the floor; the woman drags him onto a tarp on the living room floor, and goes to get an axe. The camera spares no detail as she cuts through his flesh, dismembering him piece by piece, eventually burying him in the garden as she bathes in the dirt. There is no context beyond the gruesomeness of what is happening within the video. Watching it on a large screen only magnifies its grisly aspects, forcing the viewer to flinch while daring them to look away. As the woman takes a saw and slowly grinds through his elbow, there is a nauseous groan throughout the crowd. “That’s disgusting,” I hear somebody not-so-subtly whisper behind me.
“The Sweetest Kill” was the third video aired during last week’s “Girls on Film,” part of TIFF’s Packaged Goods series. Packaged Goods bills itself as a “series surveying the world of commercial, music video, and web content filmmaking,” as each installment in the series acts as a mini-film-festival curated around a theme. While the videos in Packaged Goods‘ next installment “The Art of the Edit” (screening in August) are grouped together due to similar content, “Girls on Film” was based around the filmmakers, not the films themselves. Every short featured last week was directed by a woman; along with the quality of the films, that was the only criteria they needed to fulfill.
Browsing a few movie magazines and websites before the event, the names that tended to come up when searching for “female film director” included the likes of Sofia Coppola and Miranda July. It seemed that the conception of movies made by women (at least amongst the demographic that could be lamentably described as “hip twentysomethings”) were films with heroines who are white and wide-eyed, dealing with the struggles of growing up female and their burgeoning sexuality. The films might venture into the sensual, and might even set to make the audience uncomfortable with their deconstruction of their female characters’ struggles, but always filmed in an aesthetically pleasing style.
This isn’t to dismiss these movies or filmmakers — surely, my own DVD collection reflects that I am not one to shirk away from a type. But to assume that the gamut of female filmmakers stay within the pretty and the dreamlike is to ignore the raunchy (Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High) or the horrific (Mary Harron’s American Psycho). There are the Oscar winners like Kathryn Bigelow and the cult figures like Karyn Kusama. Female directors can be good or bad or run through a variety of genres; in other words, female directors are just, well, directors.
This sentiment was shared by Rae Ann Fera, Packaged Goods‘ curator and programmer. “I believe in looking at this work as great creative work and not ascribing a moniker,” she said when introducing the evening. However, her belief that it is necessary to spend an evening focusing on women in film was, in her words, to call BS on the fact that only five percent of Hollywood films are made by women. She described the films to be shown as “just great work that happens to be by women.”
Watching the films, I tried to pick out a common thread amongst them; some had a sartorial emphasis, existing as commercials for fashion houses or carefully styled music videos. Others were heartwarming and sentimental, including a few PSAs with a liberal bent, espousing the ways of environmentalism or self-esteem. And then there were the purely conceptual, the satirical features, and a short film about making seltzer water. To watch this series without any knowledge of the context behind it, one would be hard-pressed to understand why these particular films were being shown alongside one another. The aforementioned Broken Social Scene video was followed by the adorably chipper “The Children Are Bored on Sunday,” Autumn de Wilde’s campaign video for eyeglasses designer Oliver Peoples.
Afterwards, four of the directors were present to engage in a panel discussion with Fera. Claire Edmondson of the Broken Social Scene video was there, as was Kathi Prosser (Dove’s “Growing Up”), Yael Staav (Hallmark’s “Give and Get”), and Aleysa Young (Environmental Defense Fund’s “Try to Look Pretty Without Poisoning Yourself”). While all the women came to directing from different backgrounds (such as casting and styling), there were common experiences most could relate to. Talk of being pigeonholed into creating commercials for certain products — tampons, yogurt, and diapers among them — brought out of a collective groan. Likewise, beer and car commercials tend to get assigned to men. Edmondson brought up the visceral reaction to her violent music video. “What I’m doing with my work is what men do,” she stated, bringing up TV’s Dexter as an example. Prosser discussed her early insecurities of being cast as a bitch when acting decisively on the set, something which she had to learn to overcome.
“I’m just trying to get work done,” added Staav, a sentiment that was shared amongst the women. This summed up the tone of the discussion; none of the earlier complaints voiced came out as defeatist so much as they were matter of fact. These were women who had convictions about their capabilities, treating filmmaking as both a passion and as a job, something that needed to be approached head-on. The films they produce are their currency; the reactions they may provoke with their gender is just pocket change.
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Anna Fitzpatrick is the web editor at WORN Fashion Journal. Follow her on Twitter at @bananafitz.
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