Strolling through the food court of Tower City Center on Tuesday felt, in a sense, like walking through the aisles of a library – albeit a bustling, noisy library. Everywhere I looked, people were curled up with copies of the Cleveland International Film Festival schedule book, which they studied and earmarked with the intensity of cinema studies students.
It’s impossible to see every film that is showing – to do so would require a Time-Turner device like the one used by Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter books. So serious film buffs, who want to get the most out of every $12 ticket they purchase, can be overheard debating the pros and cons of all the available options.
In many ways, being at the festival takes me back to my own days as a cinema studies major – the marathon film viewings late into the night, the lengthy intellectual discussions with classmates, the eye strain that comes from reading hours of subtitles in the dark, and the way certain films changed my perspective – and helped me grow as a person.
Tuesday, in the spirit of continuing education, I watched two documentary films: !Women Art Revolution and Nénette.
!Women Art Revolution
Can you name three famous female artists? Most people struggle to name one. Throughout the history of art, women have been notoriously excluded from showing at the biggest and most reputable museums and galleries.
Director Lynn Hershman Leeson (a native Clevelander) spent just over 40 years collecting hundreds of hours of video interviews with female artists, art historians, museum curators and cultural critics and has compiled them into a fascinating, inspiring documentary about the collision of feminism and fine art.
One festival staffer told me that people have been returning for multiple screenings of !Women Art Revolution, and I can see why.
When Leeson, an artist herself, left Cleveland for Berkeley in the ’60s, she befriended a group of female artists and activists who are now credited with revolutionizing the field: Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, the Guerrilla Girls, Sheila De Bretteville, Harmony Hammond, Miranda July and Silvia Sleigh, to name a few. She filmed them talking about their craft whenever and wherever she could – in her living room, in public restrooms, etc.
With this film, Leeson gives voice and visibility to talented female artists, and her website functions as an archive, hosting additional footage and artist interviews she could not fit within the confines of the film.
Check it out and you’ll get a lesson in art history that you should have been (but probably weren’t) taught in art history 101.
Nénette
The star of this documentary by French director Nicolas Philibert is a 40-year-old orangutan named Nénette, who has lived most of her life behind a glass wall in the Parisian zoo.
Is Nénette bored? Depressed? Mourning the loss of her three deceased husbands?
As she sits stoically in her cage every day, visitors to the zoo – children, parents, school classes, people on dates – all project their own very human emotions onto her and marvel at the similarities between humans and apes.
Nénette is notoriously hard to read and is known for her ornery moods. Would she be happier in the wild? Does she enjoy her daily helpings of yogurt and tea? It’s hard to say (although the zookeepers all share their hypotheses).
This film will make you think hard about the kindness and/or cruelty of keeping wild animals in captivity, and the ways in which humans view and relate to animals.
Don’t miss the final screening of Nénette on Wednesday, March 30, at 6:00 p.m.
WATCH: An excerpt from !Women Art Revolution
