Met Sally Potter is one of my greatest adventures in the summer of 2010. She is a British female director, I don’t know her name even I have admire the amazing “Orlando” for about 15years. In one of typical hot July afternoon, my dear friends calls me, “No matter what are you doing tonight, you have to come to Moma tonight, Sally Porter is here.” I wasn’t listening to my friend. I end up spent 3 night in Moma watch Sally Porter’s films, listen to her interviews and talk to her after events.
Her journeying of growing to be a female artist is very fascinating. At age sixteen, she left school to become a filmmaker. Later on she was trained as a dancer and choreographer at the London School of Contemporary Dance. Sally Potter’s work from the early 1970’s, embraced dance, performance, theatre, music and film.
As Catherine Saalfield says, “Filmmaking is the most efficient creative and satisfying form of activism”(Saalfield). Sally Porter’s films have strong voice in visual style. The best way to know her is through her films. From the glory “Orlando”, the beautiful “The Tango Lesions” and the quaky “Rage”, her characters and herself as character act for her voice.
The internationally distributed Orlando (1992) brought Potter’s work to a wider audience. In addition to two Academy Award nominations, Orlando won more than 25 international awards. The film was based on Virginia Woolf’s novel and adapted for the screen by Potter. This film is a great example to explain the theses of Writing in Light lectures, the ways in which the language of film has influenced poetry and fiction and how they share technique. In Orlando Potter visually broken up time, gender limitation on film and poetry. The film brings the novel close to audience by vivid visual language. In the movie, Orlando has some shots out of story, acts off scene to stare at audience. These nuances of framing, inflection and particularly authorial viewpoint prove that, “No concept of gendered media representation can function without a concept of Authorship.”
THE TANGO LESSON (1996) was directed by Sally Potter. She also was the leading actress of the film. Potter plays herself in this story about a filmmaker who becomes enamored of the tango—and her dance instructor. Their relationship is fraught with tension, laying bare the power dynamics between dance instructor and film director, leader and follower. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfn5_sz_B8M
Female filmmaker always been put on the hot chare of challenging men’ leading roll in society. The great line from the movie is, “I have been fallow you in the Tangle, but to make a film, you have to fallow me. “
RAGE (2009) is Potter’s latest film and the first feature ever to premiere on cell-phones.
RAGE was in competition at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009 and nominated for a WEBBY for Best Drama in 2010. This is a fiction film using documentary film style. The whole 1-hour and half film is a back stage of a fashion show. The whole movie is in one interview setting. Characters just walk in the scene and talk to camera. As Auteur theory point out, “Also social contexts shape film processes, it was the director who authored a film.” When Lily Cole introduces herself as, “My name is Lettuce, they call me Lettuce leaf… They told me to make me a big star, I have to be small.” Sally potter gives voice to those object women hidden behind the fashion industry. They are human they are scared. It’s Sally Potter’s desition to view fashion industry this way, she is the one has power to isolate the whold glory fashion show in back stage interviews.
I remember when I was asking her a typical film student question. “What advise you would like to give to a struggle film student?” She holds my hand and says, “If you know film is what you want, you have to work hard everyday, even there seems like no hope at all. Keep crawling and be happy with every little step you made. ”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.