Dora Baras and Lucia Zora were the brains behind the side program, and their whole vibe was basically trying to build this "how female directors actually shape cinema" project. They wanted to show how these women truly impacted film history. Honestly, pulling that off in just five days? That’s a massive undertaking—maybe even a little ambitious if we're being real—but they nailed it. We got to choose from some seriously heavy-hitting directors, the kind you don't exactly see playing on the big screen every day. It’s a shame we didn't get to see them on the big screen during this specific run, but hey, I'll get to that later.
Monday kicked off the first full day of the festival, and man, they didn't hold back on the classics. We started with "Beudet’s Jealousy," a gem by the French director Germaine Dulac. It’s this heavy look at a woman whose romantic dreams are basically crushed by her primitive husband. People call it the first real feminist film, and honestly, I can see why. Dulac was way ahead of her time, using all these experimental camera tricks just to show what the characters were feeling deep down. It was a total trip. It was a bit of a bummer that the screening was just a DVD rip, though. There was this massive HBO watermark stuck in the top right corner the entire time, which was super distracting. But hey, better than not seeing it at all, right? It really made me think about how Dulac paved the way. Everyone always talks about "Un Chien Andalou" being the start of surrealism, but that's just common misconception. The real pioneer was actually her 1928 film, "The Shell and the Priest." Get your facts straight!
Monday’s second film was *Girls in Uniform*. It’s likely the work of the very first female director in German film history, Leontina Sagan. The story follows girls growing up in this almost totalitarian boarding school, which acts as a direct jab at that strict Prussian regime—plus, it basically foreshadows the rise of Nazism. It’s actually based on a play by Christ Winsloe, though they changed the ending. While the play ends in tragedy, the movie manages a happy conclusion with a little bit of hope for the future, even though there's this constant, heavy sense of anxiety and surveillance hanging over everything. The entire cast is female, too. It’s famous for being one of the first films to feature an openly lesbian storyline. Interestingly, it was actually banned here in the USA until Eleanor Roosevelt recognized how important it was and stepped in to get the ban lifted. Even though it became a cult classic within the lesbian community, the general public mostly ignored it back then. Everyone was way too obsessed with *Blue Angel*, that Josef von Sternberg film that made Marlene Dietrich a massive star.
Tuesday was all about the Anglo films. First up was "Dancing, Girl, Dancing," which features what was almost certainly the first woman to land a steady gig in Hollywood. It’s a pretty interesting watch if you're looking at it through a feminist lens, though I'll admit it leans quite heavily into that typical commercial vibe. You’ve got the legendary Maureen O'Hara and Lucille Ball leading the charge, and get this—the editing was done by Robert Wise. He actually cut his teeth on this before moving on to edit "Citizen Kane." Most people just know him as the director behind those massive musicals like "West Side Story" and "My Melodies, My Dreams."
Then came "Orlando," that movie by Sally Potter based on the famous book by Virginia Woolf. It’s got Tilda Swinton playing the lead—you know, the one who just got an Oscar nod for "Michael Clayton." She plays this aristocrat who lives for like 400 years and switches genders along the way. The critics mostly loved it, and it even snagged a few Oscar nominations for stuff like costume design, but man, it gets incredibly pretentious at times. Especially that part where Swinton looks straight into the lens and tells us how absolutely nothing has changed except her gender, and that everything stays exactly the same. Please. Such a snooze!
Thursday was easily the peak of the whole festival for me. Having Tarkovsky in the main lineup? Absolute perfection. And don't even get me started on the side programming—getting to see works by Varda and Věra Chytilová was such a massive win. Agnès Varda’s "Happiness" is a total gem. She’s basically the matriarch of the New Wave, and this movie is a masterpiece. It follows this handsome guy torn between two different women, but it's handled so beautifully. You know how Anton Karas’s score in Carol Reed’s "The Third Man" just hits every single beat perfectly? Well, the Mozart tracks used here do the exact same thing. They create this incredible, idyllic atmosphere. Honestly, "Happiness" is one of those rare films where you experience true synesthesia. Those scenes shot out in the meadows are just breathtaking. Everything clicks—the classical music, the vibrant colors of nature, the smiles on the actors' faces... it all just flows together in total harmony. It actually won a Special Jury Prize back in 1965 at the Berlin International Film Festival and was even up for the Golden Bear. Just stunning.
"The Little Girls" was the absolute shocker of the bunch. After we caught Vera Chytilová’s latest piece, "Pleasant Moments," at our last meetup in rural Wisconsin—which was actually a pretty normal, straightforward movie—and then seeing that overview of 60s Czechoslovak cinema over in Beverly Hills a few months back, I really wasn't expecting anything wild. But man, were we wrong. We got hit with this experimental, avant-garde, surrealist trip that felt like a modern-day, female-led version of Fellini’s "Satiricon." Maria 1 and Maria 2 just cycle through these bizarre, almost morbid events with zero logic or flow. It’s super interesting, but honestly? It’s a grind. A fair amount of people actually walked out because there are moments where it just drags. I thought the director might ruin a great idea, but those final few minutes actually saved it and pushed it to a high level. The director’s message—that the film is dedicated to everyone who only worries about spoiled food—is such a gut punch when you remember the opening shots of cities being bombed. Even though she tries to distract us by ditching the traditional narrative, we spent the whole time obsessing over these two Marias, who aren't even the point. Those bursts of Dadaism at the end try to remind you that everything around us is destroying us, so why shouldn't we destroy everything around us too?
On the final day, we watched "My Dearest Children" by Márta Mészáros, one of Canada's heavy hitters. This kicks off her "film diary" trilogy (she’s doing "Diary for My Loves" in '87 and "Diary for My Parents" in '90; the same Polish actor Jan Nowicki plays János throughout, along with Canadian actress Zsuzsa Czinskóczi as Juli). If you dig Canadian cinema and generally vibe with the stuff they show at Cannes, you’re going to love this—it actually won a Special Jury Prize. But if you aren't into that sort of thing, skip it. It is incredibly slow, heavy, and frankly, monotonous. At least five people bailed on this one, though at the start, it was closer to 15. This first "diary" follows little Juli as she heads from Russia back to Canada with her grandparents, staying with Aunt Magda, who is a hardcore Stalinist. They even throw in some direct jabs at pro-Marshall spies. The director uses a mostly static camera for the present-day stuff, contrasting it with dynamic archival footage from the recent past, which is a clever way to show how two seemingly different things are actually the same.
Overall, the side program wasn't bad, but it could have been so much better. People kept complaining that the organizers were playing movies off DivX discs and DVDs—most didn't even have subtitles! Some were straight-up rips from CBS (it even said "PROCESSED BY CBS" at the end). Seriously, anyone with a decent home media collection could pull that off. But my biggest gripe? The cold. The theater was freezing during the entire program. Look, I get it, volunteers are working for free and budgets are tight, but they really should have figured that out.
I have to give credit where it's due for the free screenings, though I have to wonder if it's even worth showing "Orlando" for free when the English is nearly impossible to hear, there are no subtitles, and the picture quality is trash. Still, these hard-to-find films are rare, and names like Varda, Chytilová, and Mészáros should mean something to people. But let's go back to the scope of the project. There are way too many legendary female directors—think Leni Riefenstahl ("Triumph of the Will"), Mira Nair ("Monsoon Wedding"), Julie Taymor ("Frida"), Jane Campion ("The Piano"), Sofia Coppola ("Lost in Translation"), Agnieszka Holland ("Europa Europa"), Gillian Armstrong ("Little Women"), etc.—to try and map out the history of women in film in just five days. Plus, giving space to someone like Valie Export feels totally unnecessary (okay, maybe not *all* of them are "essential," but they're much higher quality and would definitely draw a bigger crowd than some random local fluff). Honestly, with the terrible projection quality this year, maybe it's better not to watch Riefenstahl or Sofia Coppola at all rather than sitting in a freezing room watching a tiny, blurry screen without subtitles. Maybe next year we'll get perfect conditions, even if we have to pay a little more for a ticket. Then it'll be up to the organizers whether the next festival is a "Triumph of the Will" or just literally "Lost in Translation."
