foryourinfilmation-blog

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Kiki’s Delivery Service is a classic 1989 animated film by celebrated anime director Hayao Miyazaki that narrates the adventures of Kiki, a young witch who ventured off into a new town, per tradition, to hone her own witch skills. True to the characteristic of Miyazaki films, the leading character is a young, headstrong girl whose independence carries her through the trials and tribulations of her pre-adolescence.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about Kiki’s character is that she was always decidedly ready to try and handle things on her own and that even when she needed help, she never took a full step back from accomplishing her goals. She additionally had a maturity that never took away from her child-like innocent, rather, enhancing it. Even as she struck a friendship with a boy named Tombo who was very much interested in her, she never came in second to a male lead.

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Persepolis is a 2007 primarily black-and-white animation based on a graphic novel written by Iranian-French novelist Marjane Satrapi. Based on her own true life story, it navigates her personal experience before, during, and after the Iranian Revolution. Marjane’s family was not only quite liberal but very much politically aware and involved. This became an important foundation in who she would become as a person, as she was raised in a space that allowed her to express herself freely and speak her mind without refrain. From her avid admiration of Bruce Lee to her affinity for punk rock, she had the freedom and support of her family to embrace the characteristics that made her unique.

After being encouraged by her family to leave Iran, due to the increasing persecution of “decadence by western influence,” we see Marjane at highs and lows where her independence and candor were not enough to fight off feeling out of place. The additional nostalgia of her home and the way things once were drove her to return to her native Iran, despite the continued unrest. Even as life threw curve balls and detours and her bright innocence was stripped away, her belief system seldom wavered. Feminism was an avid presence in the film without the need to use the word and it certainly carried her character growth.

One particular scene that stood out to me was the last interaction Marjane had with her uncle, a political dissident named Anoosh. Her uncle had significant influence on her. When she visited him last in jail, he still gave her a talk about his beliefs and how important they were. His subsequent execution pushed her to the point of abandoning her faith while holding tight to her uncle’s words and beliefs. This was a major turning point and a departure from innocence to grasping the full reality of the world around her.

An aspect of the film that I particularly enjoyed was that as she got older and understood her world even more, the dimensions of the people around her changed. Starting off with childlike visions and interpretations of how people interacted with her, those around her became as complex as she did.

Discussion question: Why do you think it’s important that her uncle made no exception in his interactions with her, regardless of her gender?

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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a 2014 vampire film about an unnamed young woman who manifests into her vampire form at night and kills “bad” men while sparking up a budding relationship with Arash, a humble, hardworking young man with a heroine-addicted father.

I don’t particularly care for films with blood but I made an exception while watching this. The fact that her victims were men that were “bad” was a fascinating eccentricity about this film. The young woman didn’t convey any significant amount of emotion and her indifference to the suffering of the men who died at her hands gave her a bold characteristic that can definitely be appreciated from any angle. I think there was certainly an intentionality in leaving her nameless. She seems to be more symbolic of an idea of men being held fully accountable for their actions and while her complexity is present in other aspects, this particular point is minimalistic yet equally as important.

Discussion question: Why do YOU think she remained nameless? Does it represent an identity bigger than her character?

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“Born Into Brothels” is a 2004 documentary that follows a group of children whose mothers work in the brothels of Calcutta’s “red light district”. British photographer Zana Briski, who had initially gone to document the lives of the women working in the brothels found herself sparking up relationships with the children of the brothel’s sex workers and offered to provide an escape for them in the form of photography. It would serve as a distraction to the realities of their home lives. Her investment in them would eventually involve into trying to get them out of the brothels entirely and into schools, the girls, especially, as it would further them from a fate of falling in their mothers’ footsteps. At the end of the film, updates on the academic fates of the children revealed that several of the girls were either pulled from their schools and/or returned home. Of the entire group of children, Avijit avidly pursued photography and I found out, after doing my own research, that he eventually moved to New York to carry out a proper career in film. My overall sentiment towards the film was appreciation. Even in the pursuit of humanitarian work, there aren’t always entirely happy endings. Despite Avijit’s success, you are still inevitably left to wonder if the girls who dropped out of school and went home returned to face a reality that could have been. Despite the potential space for a conversation on the dynamics of the “white savior complex” in this film, I believe that, at best, light was shed on the reality of these children’s lives. Discussion question: Do you believe that gender dynamics in India are the defining cause of what made some of the girls return home?

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“Like Water for Chocolate” (“Como Agua Para Chocolate” in Spanish) is the 1992 adaptation of the book of the same name written by Mexican author Laura Esquivel. This fantastical tale walks us through the life of a young woman named Tita, forbidden to live a life of her own thanks to a family tradition that restricts the youngest daughter from marrying in order to tend to her mother’s beckon call until the latter passes away. Despite the tradition, Tita falls in love with a young man named Pedro who would stop at nothing to be around her. Her mother is displeased with Pedro’s conquest for Tita’s heart, deciding to offer up her daughter Rosaura for Pedro to marry in Tita’s stead. Pedro relented, as he found it to be the only way to be around Tita. It seemed early on that Tita’s fate to live under her mother’s will was sealed without escape, yet she found her escape in her finest talent: cooking. Her expressions of sorrow, joy, longing, lust, and healing became unspoken ingredients of her cooking, causing her emotions to be transferred over to those who partook of her meals, including Pedro. The story carried on as one of love, loss, and above all, empowerment. Within the confines of Tita’s restrictions in life she found escape and redemption in the kitchen, a place where her emotional maternal figure nurtured a spirit of freedom.

Having grown up watching Latin media (primarily Mexican novelas), I am no stranger to the melodramatic traits of Mexican film and television. There was a sense of familiarity I felt with the playing out of the story which, perhaps, seems over-the-top to the unacquainted viewer. I also didn’t particularly care for the story line. I understand the cultural and historic elements that make it so patriarchal, as my own Dominican culture encompasses many of those elements, yet it made it difficult to sit through and embrace the story. It does have a few redemptive moments, including Tita’s bold decision to finally abandon her mother’s ranch to live life more freely after reaching a breaking point of oppression in her home but the overlying need of a man being her driving force was not a favorite for me. However, I think it is certainly a metaphor for the bigger picture of the oppressive nature of patriarchal norms, regardless of the context of time and culture. Another particular scene that stood out to me was where Tita and Nacha, the family’s house cook, began to prepare the cake Tita was forced to make for Rosaura and Pedro’s wedding. The compassion and love Nacha had for her as they cooked and baked was a breath of fresh air within this Cinderella-needs-Prince-Charming trope. She found her strength and sense of relief in Nacha’s company in that moment where others tend to find that in their own mothers. This scene is important because it portrays the sense of community that is at the core of Latin culture and empowerment women find in those closest to them.

Discussion question: If we would consider the framework of the story as a metaphor for toxic patriarchal paradigms, would you find that these norms have manifested in different forms rather than disappearing altogether?

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Beyonce’s impact in music stems not just from the intensely coordinated performances and overall brilliant artistry, but what she conveys through her craft. This decade saw some of her finest work as a soloist. Her surprise eponymous album BEYONCE was celebratory of the edges, curves, and byways of the emotions and experiences brought on by love. Her succeeding 2016 album Lemonade, however, took on relationships with a completely different lens. A very publicized cheating scandal involving her husband Jay Z inspired the lyrics and overt themes of this video album. Lemonade is characterized by its cohesive “movie-esque” format that is multifaceted in its use of visuals and symbolism. As she poetically narrates the emotional journey of discovering, coming to terms with, and ultimately healing from the experience, visual and auditory imagery of black culture, history, heritage, and the overall celebration of the black woman make a very clear and loud presence in the film.

Perhaps one of the most iconic moments of the film was in a stage entitled “Denial”. This scene is one of many that incorporate all of the themes of the album. She narrates being blindsided by a building confirmation of her husband’s unfaithfulness while she finds herself in a lonely but lavish home flooded with water. As she asks the question “are you cheating on me?”, the scene quickly transitions into that of her opening a door, almost like floodgates, dressed in a flowy yellow dress, barefoot. This has been said to be portrayal, almost a tribute, of sorts, of and to Yoruba goddess Oshun, a water goddess who oversees love, fertility, and sensuality. Even in the description of her pain, she shows to have never lost sight of her identity as a woman and what it means to her, specifically to be a black woman. The incorporation of African mythology as a visual representation of black femininity while describing the darker emotions that embody infidelity is certainly a statement on its own regarding race and sexuality, almost as if to say to herself and others in her shoes: “Regardless of the flaws of a relationship, you are still a woman; a strong, black woman at the forefront of her femininity and identity.”

Lemonade is, beyond just the storytelling of a trough in a marriage, a celebration of the black woman. You can see it all throughout. Through the poetic excerpts of British-Somali poet Warsan Shire that captured each aspect of the emotional journey, the cameos of important black women (and girls) in media like Serena Williams, Quvenzhané Wallis, Zendaya, her own daughter Blue Ivy Carter, and even the backdrop of music from legendary singer and activist Nina Simone were Beyonce’s salute to “Black Girl Magic.” Lemonade is a statement that glorified a people through all of life’s emotional trips.

Discussion question: Does Beyonce’s portrayal of femininity, black and/or otherwise, sit with just one end of of the definition? In what was is it (or is it not) multifaceted?

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This 2013 Palme d’Or winner presents viewers with the slice-of-life story of a growing young woman, Adele, journeying from the confusion of discovering her sexuality in pubescence to navigating the ups and downs of her first love as she strides to adulthood. Throughout the course of the film, we see Adele at the beginnings of pursuing a blossoming interest in a boy while realizing the developing way in which she saw other girls. With passing glances a small reunion, she forms a relationship with Emma, an older, artsy, well-versed college student. Their relationship’s passionate form, both in sexuality and emotion, carries its role throughout the course of the film, not quite as much a statement as it is merely presenting an LGBTQ relationship as fact of life with the same complexities, challenges, and passion any human relationship carries. The overall cinematography, I found, is nuanced more in its simplicity than anything else. What it lacked frills it abounded in beautiful visuals of a French city as the backdrop of a romance film while pacing itself in capturing characters’ emotions.

As in many indie European cinematic productions, the film’s music came not as a traditional soundtrack but pleasant background noise that seemed applicable to its time and place. In other words, the music itself doesn’t overtly set the tone. More than anything, it plays realistically, not necessarily reflective of the emotions the characters felt during those scenes. Among my personal favorites was the inclusion of “Mi Corazoncito,” a bachata by the now-broken up but highly popular Dominican group Aventura, heard playing at the bar Adele visited following her discovery of a dubious voicemail on Emma’s machine. The film, overall, does a splendid work in romanticizing reality rather than the coddling idealism often seen in romantic dramas. Whether the repeated use of overly explicit sex scenes was absolutely pivotal to the progression of the plot of the film I personally find to be debatable but “Blue is the Warmest Color,” with its themes and overall presentation, very devotedly told a very honest story of love, loss and growth in the formative years of a young woman.