#1 - No Master Territories

Programme

• Untitled 77A (Han Ok-hee, KR 1977, 7’)

  Han Ok-hee was a founding member of the Kaidu Club, an experimental filmmaking group initiated in 1974 by alumnae of the Ewha Womans University in Seoul. The group positioned themselves in distinct opposition to the commercialism and patriarchal thrust of mainstream cinema. Untitled 77-A is exemplary of this stance, rejecting existing industrial and representational norms to offer an experimental depiction of a woman laying claim to the role of filmmaker.

• Schmeerguntz (Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley, US 1965, 15’)

  In a dynamic, poppy montage, flashes of dirty diapers, pregnant bellies, used tampons, and vomit puncture the glossy perfection of television and magazine images. A screening of the film at a meeting of the New York Radical Women in August 1968 sparked the idea to protest the Miss America pageant the following month.

• Up Against the Wall Ms. America (Newsreel #22) (Newsreel, US 1968, 8’)

  Galvanised by the critical approach to beauty pageants seen in Schmeerguntz, the New York Radical Women authored a ten-point statement to protest the 1968 Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. They took aim at the contest’s consumerism, militarism, racism, and misogyny. Bev Grant and Karen Mitnick Liptak of the Newsreel collective, a group of leftist filmmakers committed to the production of counterinformation, documented the event. In a nod to the idea that beauty competitions are tantamount to livestock auctions, the protest included the crowning of a sheep as an alternative Miss America.

• We Aim to Please (Margot Nash & Robin Laurie, AU 1976, 13’)

  With anarchic irreverence, Robin Laurie and Margot Nash assail the conventions that govern the representation of women’s bodies and propose a radical alternative. In response to the expectation that women exist solely to satisfy male desire, the film offers visually striking images of female friendship and bodily autonomy. Jettisoning norms of avant-garde seriousness, Laurie and Nash embrace humour as a feminist weapon.

• Miss Universe in Peru (Chaski Group, PE 1982, 39')

  Two events took place simultaneously in Lima in July 1982: the Miss Universe beauty pageant and the sixth national congress of the Peruvian Peasant Confederation. With an eye for irony, the Grupo Chaski conducts interviews and refilms television broadcasts to craft a pointed indictment of the alliances between imperial and patriarchal power. Throughout, close-ups of women’s faces appear, staring defiantly into the camera, returning the gaze of an apparatus that habitually objectifies them.

• Guest: Erika Balsom

  Erika Balsom is Reader in Film Studies at King’s College London, specialising in the study of documentary and experimental cinemas. She is the author of four books, including TEN SKIES (2021) and After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video in Circulation (2017).