Video Diaries, Volume 2
Short films by Sadie Benning on Monday 10/3 • 7:00pm • Baker Center for the Arts Recital Hall
About the films: Independent film-maker Sadie Benning has been making entries in her video-diary since she was 15 years old. She began making videos when her father, experimental filmmaker James Benning, gave her a pixelvision camcorder for Christmas. The Pixelvision is a small, hand-held, black and white video-camera marketed for children by Fisher-Price in the late 1980s. Tonight’s program consists of three short films made when she was 19. In “Girl Power” (1992), Benning relates her personal rebellion against school, family, and female stereotypes with musical support from an all-girl band, Bikini Kill. In “It Wasn’t Love” (1992), Benning recounts an erotic encounter with a “bad girl” through the gender posturing and interplay of Hollywood stereotypes. “A Place Called Lovely” (1991) explores the violence of everyday life, using small toys as props to suggest the ways we allow ourselves to be controlled and manipulated by larger social forces. A faculty panel discussion featuring Professor Patrice diQuinzio (Philosophy & Women’s Studies) among others will immediately follow the film-screenings.