Madcat Women's Film and Video Festival
In Caroline Blair's The Day I Shot President Kennedy, a slightly insane waitress named Della says, "Mr. Bad Luck's got us two tickets on the Eternity Express, only I got dibs on the window seat." This comment sums up the droll pleasures of Madcat, billed as San Francisco's first international women's film fest in five years. With more than 30 mostly experimental shorts and one new feature from Australia, the festival includes everything from claymation lesbianism (Andrea Stoops' witty Adam, 1996) to fairy tales (Monica Pellizzari's Rabbit on the Moon, 1988) to meditative takes on relationships between women and their mothers (Jacqueline Turnure's poetic The Silence Between, 1994) and grandmothers (Holen Kahn's ambitious A Housewife's Lot Is Not a Happy One -- With Apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan, 1995). "Women artists" (odious term!) moving in on the sacred male territory of cartooning is the subject of an animation program devoted to the pioneering work of Emily and Faith Hubley. Lynne Sachs is one of many filmmakers who will appear in person; her Which Way Is East: Notebooks From Vietnam (1994) is a subtle reminder that Vietnam has a complex existence apart from the war. Diane Nerwin's Under the Skin Game brilliantly intermingles images of crash-test dummies, Garbo's lesbian kiss from Queen Christina, and clinical shots of the contraceptive implant Norplant in a sweeping analysis of race, sex, and class oppression. Barbara Hammer takes a more personal approach toward some of these issues in the playful, imaginative Tender Fictions (1996). In a typical scene, she shows a cat clawing at an object we can't quite distinguish -- which turns out to be a hard penis! This process offers a simple strategy for dealing with censorship and a right-wing NEA: Disguise the shocking image before you reveal it. Madcat's lone feature, Fistful of Flies (Monica Pellizzari, 1996) grapples with the same issues seen throughout the festival -- identity, empowerment -- in its exhilarating treatment of three generations of Italo-Australian women struggling for independence.
-- Gary Morris
The Madcat Women's Film and Video Festival runs Friday through Sunday, March 21-23, at the Roxie, 16th Street & Valencia. See Reps Etc, Page 70, for a complete schedule.
