The Female Gaze

Nazarbazi (the play of glances) is a film about love and desire in post-revolution Iranian cinema, where depictions of intimacy and touch between women and men are prohibited. Images and text come together to manifest the unspeakable and the untouchable, and to summon the current of desire.

After the revolution in 1979, Iran prohibited the depiction of men and women touching onscreen. Since then, directors have relied on every cinematic trick in the book to mirror the ecstatic release of tension through touch – but often it is the game of glances that is enough to set a scene ablaze. Nazarbazi collages these saturated cinematic moments into a poem about love and desire in Iranian film, that also echoes our own time of physical distancing.Read More »

Synopsis:
This is the story of women at three stages of life in Iran. The first part centers on a young girl on her ninth birthday who is told that she can no longer play with the boys she had been playing with only the day before because she is now a “woman”. Told from the perspective of a nine year old “woman” who does not feel like or know what that label refers to, we see how devastatingly this affects both the girl and the boy with whom she had been friends. The second part is about a young woman who decides to enter a bicycle race against her husband’s wishes. As first the husband and then increasing numbers of men from the village ride beside her to convince her to return home, the race begins to symbolize a freedom she desperately wants from the limitations which have been placed on her. Finally, the third part shows us an old woman who has come into some money and is now free to do what she wants. The way she chooses to use this freedom, however, makes one wonder just how free she is.Read More »

Un clan de vieilles copines (qui vont aborder la cinquantaine avec beaucoup d’enfance encore) se prend les pieds dans un tapis d’un fait divers : deux d’entre elles, qui vivent ensemble, sont victimes d’un cambriolage dans leur maison de campagne. Le scénario suit l’investigation et les commentaires des différents protagonistes, conduit comme une enquête sauvage, avec le suspense de rigueur pour n’aboutir qu’à un vertige : où est la vérité, et surtout quelle est la juste cause ? Puisque chaque conduite, chaque point de vue, pavé de bonnes intentions , a son enfer de cohérence. L’événement fait exploser des sensibilités déjà exacerbées par des options de vie et des choix politiques différents, des jalousies peut-être, l’usure du temps…Read More »

Quote:
Nere-do-well Jerry Corbett finally meets and marries the right girl, Joan Prentiss. Unfortunately their wedded bliss is interrupted when Jerry’s play becomes a hit and he hooks up with the wrong woman from his past. Joan decides that turn-about is fair play and she picks another man to escort her around to various parties around New York. Eventually Jerry quits drinking and sends his girlfriend packing, just in time for Joan to take him back.Read More »

Martinique, in the early 1930s. Young José and his grandmother live in a small village. Nearly everyone works cutting cane and barely earning a living. The overseer can fine a worker for the smallest infraction. The way to advance is to do well in school. José studies hard and succeeds in an exam allowing him to attend school in the capital. With only a partial scholarship, the tuition is very costly. José and his grandmother move to Fort-de-France to make José’s studies easier…Read More »

Quote:
Reluctantly, a sulky adolescent returns to her parents’ house for yet another boring summer vacation, dabbling in desire and the art of desirability, eventually mixing reality with vision, caged fantasies with the fierce female sexuality.Read More »

A fascinating and human portrayal of a once-famous fighter pilot and loyal Stalinist named Nadezhda Petrovna. Now a 41-year-old provincial schoolmistress, she has so internalized the military ideas of service and obedience that she cannot adjust to life in peacetime.Read More »

In 1971, Ingmar Bergman made his first English-language film, THE TOUCH, starring ensemble regulars Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson, along with seventies everyman Elliott Gould. Thirty years later, Marie Losier decided to recast herself in Gould’s role, breathing new life into Bergman’s most maligned filmic endeavor.Read More »

Quote:
Sandra Larson has always been fascinated by the entire sensory experience surrounding death: its touch, smell and look. As a child, she would search out dead animals and perform ritualistic burials. As a young woman, Sandra gets a job at Wallis Funeral Home, first as a general assistant, then progressing to study to become an embalmer. At the funeral home, she begins to take her fascination with death to the next level by becoming a necrophiliac. But she also begins her first ever relationship with Matt, a medical student, with who she is totally open about her necrophilia. He finds this aspect of her compelling. He becomes all consumed with her as she is consumed with dead people. The questions become how far he will take this fascination with her to understand fully what is going through her emotional being, how far she will allow him to go, and how far can her feelings for him extend as a live being.Read More »