By Roxanne Benjamin
Special to the Daiy News

This year’s AFI FEST contains a number of exceptional works either by women, about women, or that offer a uniquely feminine point of view. While the premise and style of these films varies wildly, each explores the worldview of women through universal themes that are relevant regardless of sex or gender.

Argentinean filmmaker Lilliana Paolinelli’s narrative feature PROPER EYES (POR SUS PROPIOS OJOS) serves as a perfect example of the exploration of shared themes as seen through the eyes of a female protagonist.

In the film, actress Ana Carabajal delivers a deliberate and understated performance as documentary film student Alicia, who befriends one of her film’s potential subjects, the mother of an inmate at a local jail. As the story unfurls, Alicia is alternately faced with powerlessness and empowerment in the relationship with the disturbed mother and her disillusioned son, culminating in a life-altering climax that raises intriguing questions as to the roles gender truly plays in relational power struggles.

Paolinelli employs the film-within-the-film technique to great effect, capturing the incarceration experience through the eyes of the wives and girlfriends of the prisoners on the outside. The idea for the film initially arose from a documentary on the very same subject, according to Paolinelli.

“A few years ago I directed a documentary about the wives of prisoners … On a personal level, the thought of entering a prison terrified me. It was one of the reasons why I chose to ask questions regarding prisoners from the sidelines, to their wives. This is where the strategic narrative begins … I could have risked, moreover, drawn a conclusion on how one lives incarcerated from the fantasy world of the outside, something very typical with the wives. On the contrary, since there are many films where the camera penetrates the cells making us participants in a violent masculine world, this is something I tried to avoid.”

When asked whether she felt her female protagonist was empowered or subjugated by the circumstances of the story, Paolinelli had this to say:

“I would say it is a combination of both factors…As far as power is concerned, there is a phenomenon that occurs when men are arrested, their wives experience a freedom that they never had until that moment. Historically battered women of violent fathers or husbands begin to be the deciders in the relationship. The roles change. Like Alicia warns, the women become active and the men become passive, and it is the man who has to behave in order to keep the woman. In this context is where Alicia rises above it all…”

Other filmmakers interviewed expressed similar sentiments. Emily Tang, director of A PERFECT LIFE, another narrative featuring the interwoven story of two strong female characters, sums up the idea succinctly. “I am a woman. I see the world in my own perspective, but I am not always conscious about my gender and position being a female author.”

The desire is to make great cinema, and above all the filmmakers felt it was important that their films express their own individual perspective, regardless of how it was perceived. Whether that perspective is considered overtly feminine or a result of coming through the creative sieve of a female filmmaker falls more to the category of the chicken-or-the-egg debate. You really can’t have one without the other.

This is not to say that the feminine perspective in film is by any means the exclusive territory of the woman filmmaker, however. Ali Taleb’s candid short film LOST GIRL, playing in the documentary shorts program, follows the daily life of a young Iraqi girl named Huda who is forced by war and poverty into prostitution on the streets of Jordan. Taleb has directed a number of short documentaries that actively pursue the female point of view.

Another female-centric short piece of note, the incendiary experimental film LEZZIEFLICK, adapts pornographic images of women in a unique and artistic way. The power of the images is shifted from the submissive female object of desire when the control of the image is in the hands of said ‘submissive’ object.

Filmmaker Nana Swiczinsky says, “When I started as a 20-year-old to make animated films, I still felt that I was the exception to the rule of patriarchy, and if I was just smart, tough etc. enough, my gender could be no limit. As the years passed, I slowly met the so called ‘glass ceiling’. I realized that I, too, am part of society and its rules. LEZZIEFLICK is in a way my response to these experiences.”

Signe Baumane’s animated short series TEAT BEAT OF SEX produces the same empowering effect, following the narrator’s humorous and painfully relatable adventures of discovery in the world of sex and relationships.

While the films may be lensed by women filmmakers, feature a female protagonist, or unravel an event that is exclusive to the female experience, they are nevertheless addressing themes that are universally relatable: issues of power, change, love, desire, and redemption.

Ultimately, these films should not be taken as feminine merely for the obvious reasons of physical sex, sexual orientation or even traditional ideas of gender roles—or the subsequent breaking of them. On the contrary, their feminine viewpoint is construed through something much more undemanding: The women within them are dealing with complex social, cultural, and political forces and adapting to them the best that they can.