Jill Soloway, the creator of Transparent gave a brilliant keynote at TIFF 2016 about The Female Gaze. I urge you to watch it carefully with an open mind and heart.
Jill Soloway says so many things in this keynote that I wish I was smart enough to figure out and say with so much clarity and wit. Her explanation of the female gaze is helpful to me as a viewer as well as to the filmmakers in her audience.
Love you hear your comments after you’ve watched it.
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This is a comment from Mary Ellen, who left it on Facebook and gave me permission to copy it here.
Virginia, thank you so much for posting Jill Soloway’s speech. Every point she makes are things that go through my awareness daily as a female, as a former filmmaker and now psychotherapist doing my best to support my clients in finding their way through the muck of identity. When I was in film school, Laura Mulvey’s then recent study of the male gaze was regarded as forward thinking by the film establishment. It was rare to have a female voice writing about film. Film theorists seriously used the phrase “penis envy” when discussing female presence in film! Today I find it very difficult to find space in daily life to speak openly about the topic of gaze, power and the propaganda of point-of-view. Witnessing the glacial pace that seems to be the path of evolution and collective growth is simply exhausting. But listening to Soloway I feel inspired. Not alone in my observations. As she states, it is necessary to act in leadership consistently. What is obvious to me and you has barely – perhaps not even – begun to register in the consciousness of most. This is the power and function of the internet – sharing a clear minded, funny and thoughtful presentation, to be listened to more than once. I especially enjoyed her analogy/wish to see feminist interchange be as popular as family football, and fantasy football!