Angles: Women Working in Film and Video (1994)

poverished elementary school in the South Bronx that’s found a new lease on life, specializing in music and arts education. The students, mostly African-American, are witty and wise beyond their years, having grown up fast in one of the city’s most crime-ridden, drug-plagued areas. At St. Augustine’s School of the Arts, they confide in dedicated teachers and counselors who help the kids express themselves musically. They may not be virtuosos, but they all learn piano, voice, dance and a second instrument. The outstanding camera work deserves to win an Oscar for best documentary cinematography — if there is interview: Guita Schyfter, page 12 such a category. Mexican director Guita Schyfter’s Bride To Be/Novia que te vea traces the friendship of two Jewish girls growing up in Mexico in the 1960s. Based on the book of the same name, the film sees college-age Oshinica, with Sephardic roots in Turkey, befriend Rifke, who is of Ashkenazy background. Each of their families expects them to follow the socially acceptable route of the time: to marry a Jewish boy of the same ethnic background and social class as their own. But it doesn’t work out that way. Cultural conflicts abound, but the resolution is hopeful. Bride To Be is a well-crafted work by a first-time feature director. Friends (South Africa/Great Britain) is another film with female relationships as its central theme. Director Elaine Proctor, a native South African, also wrote the script for this moving tale of three women’s lives intersecting in turbulent Johannesburg. Buddies since college, Thorko, a black teacher; Aninka, a white archeologist; and Sophie, a white librarian and ANC activist, live together. Set during the volatile period from 1985 to 1990, Friends probes racial and political tensions that flare among the three when the struggle to abolish apartheid reaches its peak. Kerry Fox, who played author Janet Frame in Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table, gives a brilliant performance as Sophie. It would be a shame if Proctor’s film were not given wide distribution. One Nation Under God (U.S.) uses traditional documentary techniques to expose as false the notion that homosexuals can and should be “cured” of their “disease.” Co-directors/producers Francine Rzeznik and Teodoro Maniaci take a historical look at the multitude of meth Roger Dufresne photo “The Sex of the Stars/Les sexe des étoiles” ods proffered by psychiatrists, right-wing politicians and self-described Christians to convert “unhappy” gays and lesbians into heterosexuals. A parade of so-called “exgays” earnestly tell us how the willing homosexual can “recover” from their affliction with a little bit of dedication and hard work. The film effectively follows the journalistic axiom: “Let your interviewees hang themselves by their own words.” The Dark Days/Los afios oscuros (Spain) by Arantxa Lazcano’s is the story of Ixtiar, a serious 8-year-old girl growing up with a Basque nationalist father and a puritanical mother in post-war Spain. The film skillfully conveys a tense political climate from a sensitive child’s perspective played by the extraordinary Eider Amilibia. Other features by women included Ildiko Szabé’s Child Murders/Gyerekgyilkoss agok (Hungary), about a 12year-old boy who seeks revenge against his tormentors; Pilar Miré’s The Bird of Happiness/El pdjaro de la felicidad (Spain), about a woman who tries to escape the demands of her life to pursue art; and Elena Tsiplakova’s In Thee I Trust (Russia), in which a young woman gives up her baby and then goes to work in an orphanage to ease her guilt. Kathryn Presner is a filmmaker and freelance writer living in Montreal. Volume 2 Number3 @ 9