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7.17.09 - 8.30.09
NO SHE DIDN'T !: WOMEN EXPLOITATION AUTEURS In the 1970s and ‘80s, something funny happened on the way to the grindhouse. With women still sorely under-represented in the directorial ranks of the "New Hollywood," a number of women began working as writer-directors in the low-budget world of exploitation films. Following in the footsteps of exploitation queen Doris Wishman, filmmakers Stephanie Rothman, Amy Holden Jones, Barbara Peters and Beverly Sebastian delivered on the genre's requisite demands for sex and violence while their films each revealed distinctive, often subversive, sensibilities at work within the bounds of exploitation's commercial expectations. While transitioning into the mainstream still proved challenging for the filmmakers represented in this series, they remain, in the words of film scholar Pam Cook, "renegade outsiders" whose "influence can be felt in low-budget independent material produced by younger feminists today."
IN PERSON: Director Stephanie Rothman (Terminal Island) on July 24. Friday July 24 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
TERMINAL ISLAND
(1973) Directed by Stephanie Rothman  On Terminal Island, a brutal, feudalistic penal colony, female prisoners are treated as chattel until one woman rises up to fight back, with the help of a more egalitarian group of convicts. Here, director Stephanie Rothman mobilizes the lurid tropes of the prison flick into an action-packed counter cultural allegory of patriarchal domination and feminist revolution. IN PERSON: Director Stephanie Rothman Monday July 27 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL
(1965) Directed by Doris Wishman 
Director Doris Wishman's jazz-fueled, sex-crazed girl-on-the-run film stars Gigi Darlene as a housewife forced to flee her home and hunky hubby after accidentally killing her landlord during an attempted rape. With no one to turn to, she must depend on the kindness of strangers, all of whom, male and female, want something in return for their favors. Doris Wishman Productions. Producer: Doris Wishman. Screenwriter: Doris Wishman. Cinematographer: C. Davis Smith. Editor: Ali Bendi. Cast: Gigi Darlene, George La Rocque, Sam Stewart, Gertrude Cross, Alan Feinstein. 35mm, B/W, 71 min. ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MAN
(1966) Directed by Doris Wishman 
The future looks bright for Steve and Ann, a young, well-endowed, newly-married couple settling into their first home together. Tragedy strikes, however, when Steve falls ill and Ann must secretly become a call-girl to pay the bills. Director Doris Wishman's titillating follow-up to Bad Girls Go To Hell, Another Day, Another Man doubles as a teasing come-on for national health care. Monday August 3 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
GATOR BAIT
(1973) Directed by Beverly Sebastian 
A redneck clan is out for Cajun blood after they're led to believe that a sexy swamp thing, played by former Playboy Playmate Claudia Jennings, killed one of their own. Driven deep into the bayou as much by male sexual aggression and anxiety as revenge, the hunters quickly become the hunted in this drive-in classic. Wednesday August 5 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
BURY ME AN ANGEL
(1972) Directed by Barbara Peters  After making her directorial debut in 1970 with the lezploitation feature, Just the Two of Us, Barbara Peters made a string of films for Roger Corman's New World Pictures beginning with this female biker revenge flick. Dixie Peabody stars as Dag, a biker chick who hits the road to revenge when someone kills her boyfriend. Peters aerates the action with extended detours through dispersed pockets of California's hippie culture and performances that are almost-Bressonian in their blankness. Saturday August 8 2009, 7:30PM ( Online Ticket Sales Ended )
THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE
(1982) Directed by Amy Holden-Jones  Written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown and directed by Amy Holden Jones, The Slumber Party Massacre, was intended as a parody of the voyeuristic male fantasies at the throbbing heart of every slasher movie. While Jones still delivers on the T&A before a driller killer unleashes carnage on a bevy of unsuspecting teens, the terrorized women come to their own rescue and there's plenty of camp humor to take the edge off the gore. |