Women Who Shot Back Night

Cissy and Ellen live in the house of their deceased father, an anthropologist with a great interest in African religious cult objects. He also kept monkeys ('mafus') to study, with a friendly orangutan at the centre.

Unstable Cissy focuses all her attention on the monkeys in the cage and slides further and further into uncontrollable anger and aggression. Sister Elly, a gifted astronomer, tries to save what can be saved, but the spiral towards psychosis cannot be stopped...

For her second feature film (shown on 35mm), Karen Arthur took Eric Westphal's play Toi et tes nuages ​​as a starting point. The result is a visually beautifully designed horror thriller about complex family ties, jealousy, disturbing incestuous relationships and violence, arising from the darkest depths of the unconscious.

Prejudices

Koolhoven and Simons look at the women of New Hollywood who took up the challenge, as screenwriters and/or directors, and did not care about male prejudices about the alleged unsuitability of women for the brutal horror and thriller genre.

However, while Wes Craven, George A. Romero and David Cronenberg became world-famous names, those of female directors such as Karen Arthur, Stephanie Rothman (Blood Bath, The Velvet Vampire), and Barbara Peeters (Humanoids from the Deep) remained hidden for a long time.

An evening about the 'women who shot back', or as one Amsterdam film programmer once summarised: you don't need a dick to hold a camera.