Last week I happened across a piece about the Best Actress race for the upcoming Academy Award Ceremony and the author talked about how the Actress race is always much shallower than the male version as though it were just an accepted fact, and when it comes to Hollywood cinema, he’s absolutely right. Yearly, people complain about which male lead got left in the cold (back when I gave a shit, I rung my hands for poor Sam Rockwell in Moon), while the snubs in the women’s category is met with general indifference to seemingly interchangeable performances by mostly the same small group of leading ladies. Everything’s so ho-hum that no one minds when someone like Emma Thompson doesn’t get nominated for Saving Mr. Banks (Hancock, 2013). But it’s because of these infographics, these outbursts by my favorite lady cinephiles on Twitter, and the renewed focus on feminist criticism (shout out to the amazing Cleo Journal) that I started putting more thought to seeking out women in cinema. I even read ‘From Reverence to Rape’. Well, half of it. It’s really great and I fully intend to finish it, but after a while it’s like “I wonder what this chapter is going to be about….yep…still sucks to be a girl.” It was with this focus that I discovered this year that there’s a lot of great, current cinema with females either at the helm or in the lead as a character who isn’t a fighting sex toy- the key is that these films are mostly not found in Hollywood, and I think that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Back in 2009, Kim Hye-ja gave one of my favorite performances in years in Bong Joon Ho’s Mother. I thought she was mesmerizing and it was the kind of performance that transcended the language barrier. The winner for Best Actor in a Female Lead for that year’s Oscar went to Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (Hancock, 2009). I’m not saying it’s Sandra Bullock’s fault, I dig her, but 2009 was the year I realized the Oscars are stupid and I stopped caring. Coincidentally, Kathryn Bigelow made history that same night by becoming the first woman to win the Best Director Prize, which doesn’t feel as much of a breakthrough today as it did 5 years ago. This is perhaps from only my perspective since my passion for award ceremonies officially died at the same time she won. The point was that because of Kim Hye-ja, I realized that I didn’t have to settle for what Hollywood was willing to offer it’s own women. I could look elsewhere, and relish in nuanced and layered female characters in independent and world cinema. And it was in 2014 that I realized that what women have been clamoring for – better representation in film and television – actually exists, it’s just not being officially sold to them by the American Entertainment Industrial Complex.
At this year’s Chicago International Film Festival, I got to see several films directed by and/or starring women. They dealt with complex issues like euthanasia, martyrdom, celebrity, and being a young bike messenger dealing with the regret of giving up her daughter. During a Q&A with Anna Kazejak-Dawid, who directed The Word (2014), an audience member asked if the way she portrayed technology as a vital but detrimental part of contemporary communication was purposeful. Her response: “Yes. Of course. You know, this isn’t my first film. I think I know what I’m doing at this point.” I wanted to high five her so hard. While there wasn’t any gender subtext to her answer, I couldn’t stop thinking about her answer and where women really are in cinema. They’re out there and some of them have been out there for a while.
Earlier in the year, I attended several films at the Iranian Film Festival, and nearly all of them dealt with complex and strong women at the center of their plot. Some of the movies were about gender equality like Snow On Pines (Moaadi, 2012), one of my favorite films of the year, and The Private Lives of Mr and Mrs. M (Hejazi, 2012). Rooz-e Roshan’s The Bright Day (2013) is about a woman who has one day to coerce seven witnesses to save the father of one of her students from murder charges. It’s a fantastic piece of human drama that unfolds, and if you liked the Dardenne Brothers’ Two Days, One Night (featuring another great female performance this year) you’ll probably love this too. That these films are coming out of Iran, a country identified as being suffocatingly oppressive is a testament to how prevalent women in cinema really are in a broader scope.
While I consider myself far from an oppressed minority, I do know about wanting to see “someone like me” on the screen. I’m part Japanese, a part that eventually became my identity because of classmates teasing me over my slanty eyes. Now that I’m older most people don’t even realize I’m Japanese, they just know there’s something different about me – I’ve got “a little flavor,” as I’ve been told. But while it’s only a fraction of who I am, I’ll never forget it because in the face of all the schoolyard teasing, I developed an immense pride over something that people used to make me feel lesser than. And because of that pride I longed to see Asian characters on television. We don’t have much in America. Growing up in the 80’s, our most prevalent public figure was Mr. Miyagi and I can’t tell you how many times I had people mockingly do the crane kick pose at me. For a long while I kept up with Asian casting in Hollywood. The Last Airbender (2010) whitewashing debacle springs to mind, where it seemed the only people of color left unchanged from the television show were the villains while the heroes were turned into cute white kids. Casting rumors like Justin Timberlake in a live-action Akira film would drive me crazy, and I’d even get upset about Hollywood casting Chinese people to play Japanese people in Memoirs of a Geisha (Marshall, 2005). Asians know the difference but I guess the people the studio was marketing to wasn’t us.
By the time Sandra Bullock won her Oscar, I was completely disenfranchised with Hollywood as a whole. Again it’s not her fault, I’m just using that time period as a point of reference when I officially started to revolt against the industry – or perhaps the industrialization of art in general; particularly acting since that’s what I do for a living. Actually I do lots of stuff to live, but acting is the only thing that pays me so I guess that’s what I do “for a living.” As an artist I decided early on that I was never going to wait for anyone’s permission to create. You can’t let the people with money control whether or not you get to succeed. Eventually my desire for an independence and power separate from the industrialized entertainment sector met my need of proper racial representation within said sector, and I suddenly realized that I don’t need them for that either. More importantly, I don’t want people that represent me in their movies, tv shows, or magazines. From an artistic perspective, Hollywood is where creativity goes to become tortured and killed and turned into Happy Meal toys. Why should I care if said toy is an honorable portrayal of Asian culture? The simple answer is because that industry is so influential on how we see ourselves, particularly for young people. Kids watch these bad movies and think people with turbans are terrorists and woman are only important if they’re the object of male desire. But the industry only has that influence because we give it to them constantly. Time for that to stop.
I try to live my life as a promoter – not a protester. This is probably why I don’t consider myself much of a “film critic” because I have a hard time writing about how bad things are. My wife told me once people respond better to the positive than the negative. For example, Anti-Abortion isn’t a movement people get behind but Pro-Life is. See the difference? So I try not to protest bad comic book movies, because what do I care if everyone goes to see Thor 2? Those movies existing don’t hurt me in anyway. And there’s so much cool cinema out there, that I’d rather be the guy who tells everyone how great Ernst Lubitsch movies are, rather than tell people that they’re horrible for giving a crap that Jared Leto is going to play The Joker (which, while I don’t want to admit it, upsets me even though I know it shouldn’t). Like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd, but every now and then I have a little “tyranny of evil men” leak out of me. So instead of protesting Hollywood for not employing enough women, or making enough films about women that don’t suck, I want to continue promoting all the great films that do exist and that are still being made by the most kickass gals on the planet. Perhaps if we divert attention to the places where females (or any underrepresented people) are given more prevalent roles in the filmmaking process we can break the American Entertainment Industrial Complex’s stranglehold on our identities.
Our access to content has never been more unlimited than it is right now, and the types of content available to us is infinite. Just the other day I discovered a cartoon about Miami Heat superstar Chris Bosh living a double life as an inter-dimensional warrior. That exists. It doesn’t have to be on TV or in the cinema to be valuable; you can find quality content that challenges and inspires online, the difficult part is mining through it. A couple years ago I was telling my teenage sister about Chicago’s own Chance The Rapper and played a couple of his songs for her off of YouTube. Afterwards she asked if he was a “real rapper.” I was confused because I was pretty sure he rapped three whole verses worth of raps in the video I played. When I asked what she meant, she said, “You know, is he on MTV and stuff.” This concept of what makes a “real artist” is being sold to us early on, and that’s how it works not only for artists in general but minorities. We’re telling ourselves we haven’t made it until we’re on a network TV show with paychecks signed by Disney. We need people to promote the “amateurs” and the “not real artists” who are busting their ass and creating work in dire need of an audience to discuss and debate over them. That’s where promoters come in, to serve as guides showing you where to find cool and engaging work. Indy filmmaker and actor Kentucker Audley is doing this on his website NoBudge.com, where he finds some of the best no budget filmmakers out there and attempts to expose their work to a somewhat larger audience. Some of the work there is genuinely touching and human, so check it out. I can’t say this will fix whatever societal inequalities we’re battling, but I can say that by taking control away from corporations like Disney or Viacom and taking the responsibility upon ourselves to find and promote art that entertains and challenges without reinforcing stereotypes, we’ll have one less problem on our plate.
And to put my money where my mouth is, here’s a list cinematic discoveries I made over the last year with a specific focus on the ladies (because that’s what this piece was kind of about at the beginning before the spirit took hold.)
Marion Cotillard – Re-discovered is more like it. Cotillard is partially the impetus behind this entire piece. I remember being amazed by her performance in La Vie En Rose. When Hollywood attempted to cross her over to American audiences she found herself playing roles like “Leo Dicaprio’s woman” and “Two-Dimensional Lady that at the end is actually a plot twist for Batman to deal with.” A similar issue happened to Audrey Tatou after Amelie. This year Cotillard was in at least two films that rocked my socks. One was the Dardenne Brothers’ Two Days, One Night and the other was James Gray’s The Immigrant, which the Weinstein Brothers apparently do not want to promote in any reasonable fashion – thus validating this entire piece of writing. So watch those movies and recognize her awesome acting power.
Viktoria – Maya Vitkova’s feature film debut is about a Bulgarian girl born without an umbilical cord who becomes the symbol of her country’s communist government, and then loses it all when that system collapses in 1989. Well, it’s about more than that, of course, but just know that it’s 144 minutes of some of the most beautiful cinematography you’ll find this year. I’m so excited for this director, I google her name every couple of weeks looking for news about whatever she’s doing next. Read this interview with her, where she answers questions about being a female director in a male dominated industry: http://filmmakermagazine.com/83752-interview-with-viktoria-director-maya-vitkova/#.VIJg0ovF-1Y
Mania Akbari – Akbari was in Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten (watch that) and is also a director. Her most popular feature, 20 Fingers needs to be added to your Netflix queue. Her new film that she made with Mark Cousins has been on the film festival circuit this year, but I haven’t gotten to see it in my fair city of Chicago. If the trailer is any indication it’s probably my favorite movie ever. It’s called Life May Be, and it involves the two directors communicating to each other through cinema. Relevant, no? You can check the trailer for that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixwy3TOva38
Miriam Bale – She’s a film critic and programmer, which are just as important roles in the cinematic landscape as the artists who make the films. Follow her on Twitter and multiple times a month she’ll ask a question or make a statement that challenges your perspective on cinema, race, gender, etc. I don’t know her or even agree with everything she says (how boring would that be?) but I’m pretty sure if I whittled the list of people I follow down to 10, she’d be on it. Along with Film Studies curator Catherine Grant and Sound on Sight writer Justine Smith who wrote some good pieces this year about films like Nashville and Welcome to New York. Find people who look deeper into the meaning of film instead of giving you a binary thumbs up/thumbs down review and tell the world about them. They’re drowning in the ocean and need a life preserver.
“You Must Remember This” Podcast – Karina Longworth’s podcast on little-known or forgotten stories of Hollywood’s past is addictive. I’ll often find myself learning about an interesting factoid about an old star like Gloria Grahame while sifting through wikipedia and I’ll imagine how Karina Longworth would tell it to me in her soothing tones on her slickly-produced show. Puts almost all film-related podcasts to shame.
Tallie Medel – Actor and dancer, Tallie caught some attention as the sister in the incest comedy The Unspeakable Act. If you can’t find it, go to NoBudge.com and watch her destroy every scene in the film Joy Kevin. It’s probably my favorite performance I’ve seen this year (it’s at the Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel level) and is a textbook example of an actor fearlessly exploring their impulses on the spot, in the moment, uninhibited. Check it out.
Amy Seimetz – Within a span of a week this year I watched Amy Seimetz in Shane Caruth’s Upstream Color and then watched the feature film she directed in 2012, Sun Don’t Shine, which I want to buy on DVD, but Factory 25 doesn’t seem to have that option. You can stream it at Amazon and I suggest forking over the money to do so, if that’s your thing. Besides being a well-directed piece of pulp about a couple on the run with a dead body in the trunk, it also features an exceptional performance from Kate Lyn Sheil, who I also discovered this year. Amy Seimetz’s next big project is directing the pilot episode of the television version of Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience so keep an eye out for that. Also watch The Girlfriend Experience, because it’s a good movie.
The Word – I mentioned this earlier but Anna Kazejak-Dawid’s film is a really great story about a girl who gets her boyfriend to kill another girl out of jealousy. It shows us how the way we communicate through the internet removes an element of empathy vital to human interaction. And if there’s anything teenager’s already lack it’s empathy. Kazejak-Dawid could have poked fun at these characters and their frustrating short-sightedness but she instead elicits sympathy for them, perhaps more effectively than Sophia Coppola did in The Bling Ring (which I also enjoyed a lot).
Brit Marling – Last year I decided to go see The East and sat alone in an empty theater. At one point a janitor came in and started sweeping in the back, not realizing someone had actually bought a ticket to the film. The movie is quite good and could make a good double feature with Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves (another awesome female artist who consistently makes beautiful films). Over the past year I saw Brit Marling in Sound of My Voice and learned that she is also a writer who was disappointed with the roles offered to her and decided to make her own. This year she was in I, Origins and you can check her in Babylon, a show created by Danny Boyle, which I haven’t watched so I can’t tell you if it’s worth a darn.
There’s lots of good movies out there with checking out, most of them I wrote about for Sound on Sight. I could go on listing but I think this is an okay start. It at least gives you some names to google, some films to seek out. Hopefully it’ll inspire you to promote the stuff you like too, which is ideal because personally I’m always looking for something good to watch.