Drawing from the same well of avant-garde anti-structure as enfant terrible Jean-Luc Godard and playwright Bertolt Brecht, Sally Potter’s whip-smart The Gold Diggers is brimming with cultural and political signifiers that combine to form a singular work in the feminist countercinema space. Employing an all-female crew to shoot, compose, and design this proto-Lynchian world of romantic surrealism, the British filmmaker establishes herself as a trailblazer in this “search for the secret of [her] own transformation.” Babette Mangolte’s career-best cinematography elucidates a visual and thematic sendup of silent comedies, Depression-era musicals, and European arthouse cinema in an elegant, non-narrative ode to—and critique of—traditional Hollywood moviemaking.
35mm, b/w, sound, 89 min. Dir. Sally Potter. Production: British Film Institute Production Board; Channel Four. Distribution: BFI. Producer: Nita Amy; Donna Grey. Screenwriter: Lindsay Cooper; Rose English; Sally Potter. Cinematographer: Babette Mangolte. Editor: Sally Potter. With: Julie Christie, Colette Laffont, Hilary Westlake, David Gale, Tom Osborn.
