The Secret: Georgia Production Partnership - Southern Screen Report

In the Spotlight
By Pamela Cole
It all started with
Laura Mulvey in 1975.
If you’ve ever endured
the agony of a film
theory class, you may
remember Laura Mulvey
(in fact, it’s probably
all you remember
from that class).
That’s because Mulvey wrote about sex
and gender and voyeurism (hard-to-forget
topics) in her influential essay, “Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Her
controversial ideas about “the controlling
male gaze,” based on Freudian concepts,
have fueled academic debate in film,
sociology, psychology, women’s studies,
and gender and cultural studies.
A local filmmaking project has now
taken up that debate. “The Woman’s
Angle,” founded by Tracy Martin and Bret
Wood (the team that created Psychopathia
Sexualis) is again treading into the territory
of sexual controversy. The Woman’s
Angle is “a short film project specifically
designed for the new or established woman
director who desires an opportunity to gain
a fuller understanding and appreciation of
her voice as a filmmaker.”
DP Marc Story and director Tracy Martin on the set of Sucker
Punch, a film in The Woman’s Angle Project (Photo by Pam Cole)
“As much as I detest
singling out a group of
people for their experience
or their talent,
I started feeling like
it would be empowering
for me
as well as other
women if we
could come together
and say
‘let’s do this
together,’”
explained
Martin,
who
was one
of nine
filmmakers that
completed short films as
part of the first Woman’s Angle
project.
“I think more women would make films
if we had an environment that was more
collaborative, that allows them to move
forward,” said Martin, citing the fact that
only 16% of filmmakers (directors, executive
producers, producers, writers, cinematographers,
or editors) are women. (Source:
“The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes
Employment of Women in the Top 250
Films of 2004,” Martha M. Lauzen, Ph.D.)
Martin has produced several films including
the 2006 sensation, Psychopathia
Sexualis. She recently directed a short
(Day Trip) that appeared in the Atlanta
Film Festival.
Laura Mulvey?
It was co-founder
Wood who mentioned
Mulvey’s essay, after
Martin approached him
about wanting to start a
project for women-only
directors. In a really broad
nutshell, Mulvey says that
since most films are made
by men, they naturally
give us a male view of the
world — showing men as
more powerful, featuring
mostly male protagonists,
and focusing on stories
Page 6 May 2007 www.screenreport.com
The
Woman’s Angle
Nancy Knight
and Deirdre
Walsh (Photo by
Sherri Larsen)
that are important to men. Oh, and seeing
women mainly as sexual objects. Mulvey
says this “male gaze” is the classic perspective
of Hollywood films.
“I don’t know that I agree with everything
she says, but she makes some very
strong points that open the discussion,” said
Martin about Mulvey. The original group
of twelve women in The Woman’s Angle
discussed Mulvey’s essay and watched film
clips from the 30s and 40s that illustrated
her ideas.
“We were rolling on the floor. It was
amazing how women were portrayed in
earlier films! It’s not as obvious anymore,
but there are still plenty of movies that are
examples of her opinions,” Martin said.
It was then up to the directors to decide
on the story they wanted to tell. There were
no restrictions on theme, genre, or adhering
to Mulvey’s premise. “We encouraged directors
to either embrace or completely defy
Laura Mulvey’s opinions. I wanted this to
be just ‘what is your angle as a woman?’
To achieve that was a theme within itself,”
said Martin.
Rules of the Game
Taking a page from the successful Atlanta
Dailies Project, The Woman’s Angle
Continued on Next Page