Gender Matters

The Gold Hugo winner at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival was Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio—the sixth feature directed by a woman to win the top prize. That’s twice as many as Cannes can claim, spanning four nationalities and several genres. Gender matters to topic and perspective in all six, though their stylistic diversity belies any one-dimensional notion of “the female gaze.” And winning isn’t everything: two of these world-class movies are only narrowly available online, and a third is streaming nowhere. With clips and images from all these films, this talk will explore the constant dyad of bounty and precarity in women’s cinema, well into the 21st century.

Suggested viewings: Marianne & Juliane, aka The German Sisters (Kanopy) and/or Happy as Lazzaro (Netflix).