Cinema Canada (Nov 1981)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

®@ “The victims’ only hope is an indomitable self.” Holly Dale/Janis Cole’s — P4W : Prison for ». ae » The title establishes a process of humanizing, of fleshing out a formula. “P4W" is the formula, an administrative convenience, a reduction. The second part reveals the humanity behind the formula: “Prison for Women.” The film itself celebrates the humanity of the convicts in Canada’s only federal women’s prison, in Kingston, Ontario. By film end we have fulfilled the order of convict Susie’s closing song: “Look and see what you have done.” _ P4W: Prison for Women is an examination of the effects of prison upon female convicts, Co-directors Janis Cole and Holly Dale interview several inmates who were convicted of major crimes but are extremely engaging char acters. The message is two-fold: the dehumanizing horrors of incarceration and the marvels of the human spirit that still survives. The film celebrates the women’s sur vival instincts. Forced into uniformity, _they sustain their individuality by per sonalizing their cells. These are plucky gals. But the last image threatens to run out of control. The liveliest of our convicts sits cockily on a washing machine and spits out a defiant and extravagant optimism. Her wrists are taped. The quavering voice, the dreary setting, and her slightly mad spirit may lead us to read the tape as a sign of slashed wrists. But no. This gal remains hale and resolute. Cole and Dale say the wrists were taped for tennis. Although the directors see their film as being primarily about the inmates’ spirit of survival, a firm feminist voice emerges more strongly. We don’t see any men in the film, but enough men are bitterly mentioned to make the prison signify the oppression and restriction of the patriarchal macrocosm. So the only rehabilitation the convicts get is training to be a hairdresser. One lady bridles against serving three years in the laundry. Frequent complaint is made against the powerful and unsympathetic warden, a Mr. Caron. One t 36/Cinema Canada-November 1981 convict is told she upsets him because he can’t stand her impression of happiness and security. A male judge vetoeda convict’s writing to her children. The convicts complain that when a riot broke out the male guards stood aloof and apart, watching amused as the female guards struggled to curtail the riot. The male authority is not seen butit is felt — cold, commanding, compelling. More dramatically, all the crimes we hear about are directly related to the women’s oppression in a patriarchal society. One woman was sexually exploited, another habitually beaten by her two men. A third, who was sentenced to 25 years after her robber husband killed himself, seems to have been damned for standing by her man. In sum, the women’s prison becomes a powerful metaphor for a society in which menrule and repress women. The victims’ only hope is an indomitable self. And their bond. Of course, any honest and thorough film about life in a women’s prison must do something about lesbiansim. It will either skirt the issue or address it. Dale and Cole do something else. They transcend the issue of sexuality by showing — with an almost unbearable intimacy — two lovers preparing for their separation when one’s time is over. This tender, dramatic episode typifies the delicacy and discretion of the film as‘a whole. The issues are explored, but with neither coyness nor sensationalism. From this romantic relationship the film cuts to the convicts’ relationships with their children. One recalls recent meetings, after the courts forbade their communication. Another makes a videotape to send to her little girl. We get a close-up of her singing to her child. But for her telling a Peter Rabbit story we shift to a long-shot of the videotape machine and monitor. The medium and the message are much improved over what convicts used to be able to do, But the dominant impression remains of a cold, mechanical, remote interference with the warmth of human normalcy. Maurice Yacowar @ P4W : PRISON FOR WOMEN d./p. Janis Cole, Holly Dale cam. Nesya Shapiro sd. Aerlyn Weissman ed. Janis Cole & Holly Dale asst. ed. John O'Connor original mus. Susie & Kas asst. tp p. Beveverly J. Whitney p.c, Spectrum Films running time 81: 23 min. dist. Pan-Canadian Film Distributors Inc. Bonnie Sherr Klein’s Not a Love Story A Film About Pornography Not a Love Story is a sensitive and sensible survey of pornography. Bonnie Sherr Klein directed the film, with a major contribution by Linda Lee Tracey, for the National Film Board’s Studio D, founded in 1974 as a filmmaking forum for women on social issues. The film is structured on the principle of expanding range. We are-eased into the subject, then gradually confronted with an increasing sense of its scope and danger. Of our two guides, Ms. Klein is the innocent outsider becoming introduced to the porno ter rain, and Ms. Tracey the more experienced explorer, extending her understanding. Linda Lee Tracey is the former stripper who started the Tits for Tots strippers’ benefit in Montreal. In her old act, as Fonda Peters (!), Ms. Tracey played a comic insouciance against the usual straight-lace of strip. An excerpt of her act establishes the frankness of the film and introduces the topic on a note of comforting humor. But there is cold comfort from the ensuing revelations. First we are shocked by the size of the porn business. To wit: there are more hard-core peep shows in North America than there are MacDonald’s outlets. With an annual gross of $5 billion, the hard-core porn industry outgrosses the straight film and music industries combined. Those are compelling stats. , The greater shock comes from’ the kind of things shown in pornography. Klein was careful to select moderate material, within the pale, but she still shows a horrifying pattern of torture, mutilation, and violence against the female form. Very clearly, pornography cannot be excused as celebrating female beauty and natural, open sexuality. As Kate Millett puts it, “We got pornography when what we needed was eroticism.” Pornography is opposed to eroticism, not its aid and support. It slavers for the notion of torturing and dominating the female figure. Hence the recurring image of women under two kinds of related suppression : in chains and gagged. The implicit theme of this monstrous machinery is that women are objects of sadistic violation. Klein’s larger point, and the principle on which her material is organized, is that pornography exerts a pervasive influence. Obviously one is affected if one participates in the sexuality business; so Linda Lee Tracey quit. One is more grossly affected if one cashes in on the exploitation of others; hence the interviews with merchants and clients of sleeze. But Klein’s key observation is that porn damages people who never experience the thing itself. For even nonindulgers are affected by the recurring images that wash over from hard-core to soft. Worse, we all suffer the insidious habits of thought, associations, reflexes, that this dominating imagery projects. In this light, Klein sensibly includes male victims of this pornographic abuse of women. One member (so to speak) of the Men Against Male Violence Group admits that men are victimized by these} fantasies, “the male myth of perform ance, goal orientation.” In one of the most moving scenes a writer and her husband probe — to the point of tears — their battle for a reasonable sexuality in a world of subversive excess. Not a Love Story is a sober, responsible film. It achieves a balance and restraint that seem positively saintly, considering the enemy. And yet the film has aroused a furious opposition. This attack upon pornography has been censored by the Ontario Censor Board (although one uncut screening was allowed at Toronto’s Festival of Festivals). So the film suffers the irrational fate of Al Razutis’ A Message From Our Sponsor in Ontario. The porn flows on, but a thoughtful analysis of (and warning against) the porn gets censored! On other fronts, there has been some newspaper editorializing against the NFB spending taxpayers’ money on a film about pornography. To this complaint there is a simple response: go see the film. But there is no such simple answer to the irresponsible hatchet job done by _ Jay Scott, film reviewer for the Globe and Mail. Scott called the film “bourgeois, feminist fascism.” To Scott it must be feminist to include males discussing their victimization by pornography; fascist to complain about continually see‘ing one’s gender fragmented, exposed, tortured; and bourgeois to undertake critical analysis of a major social phenomenon. His real objection to the film seems to be that it omits gay porn. By that principle he would attack a western for omitting ships and a pirate film for leaving out sagebrush. All in all, Scott’s review was his worst job (and of a telling piece) since he used Altman’s A Perfect Couple as an opportunity to deride Marta Heflin’s rib-cage. Such insensitivity to the image and such disrespect for the predicament of women are astonishing in a film critic who quite often commits responsible film criticism. Even more astonishing was Scott's closing salvo, a call for the Board to censor this film for its hard-core insets. Scott’s shriek validates the film’s point about the pervasive attempt to silence completely the voice of victim women. As Susan Griffin remarks, “Pornography is filled with images of silencing women. Our silence is the way in which our status as objects is made real.” In this line of thought, women must be obscene and not heard. Not a Love Story is a search‘and a report that had to be done. It should have been made long ago and it should be seen and discussed as widely as possible. We are fortunate that the film was made by such responsible and intelligent artists. But this film is one of those delicate, afflicted roses that must be defended against the invisible worms that fly in the night, be they defenders of a sick Status quo, senseless censor boards, or wrong-headed personality-peddling col umnists. Maurice Yacowar ® NOT A LOVE STORY a. Bonnie Sherr Klein with participation of Linda Lee Tracey assoc. d./ed. Anne Henderson p, Dorothy Todd Hénaut assoc. p. Micheline Le Guillou cam. Pierre Letarte 2nd cam./asst. Susan Trow loc. sd. Yves Gendron loc. business man. Andrée Klein ad. ed. Jackie Newell asst. picture/sd. ed. Micheline Le Guillou graphics layout Gayle Thomas animation cam. Raymond Dumas original mus./mus. d. Ginette Bellavance lyrics Tina Horne vocalist Cathy Miller mus. rec. Louis Hone exec. p. Kathleen Shannon p.c. A National Film Board of Canada (Studio D) production. running time 70 min.