Week Seven: Women Make Film Episode 7
Tuesday, October 13
Night Seven: Bodies and Sex
Two Airings on TCM: 8:00 PM and 11:00 PM
Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema Episode 7 begins with chapter 18 narrator Jane Fonda discussing how bodies have fascinated movie-goers from the early silent film days watching the movement of Charlie Chaplin and the stillness of Garbo to the Golden Age of Hollywood and the curvaceousness of Marilyn Monroe and the walk of John Wayne. Bodies covered and uncovered, individual and collective, in movement and stillness are explored. No look at bodies in cinema is not complete with an investigation of sex, the topic of Chapter 19. This chapter explores films about the anticipation of sex, sex both planned and unplanned, sex as control, as submission, as mutuality.
Complementary Film Schedule
Airing on TCM, times given in Eastern Time
9:15 PM – Dogfight (1991) directed by Nancy Savoca
12:15 AM – Rafiki (2018) directed by Wanuri Kahiu
2:00 AM – The House is Black (1963) directed by Forough Farrokhzad
2:30 AM – First Love (1977) directed by Joan Darling
4:15 AM – The Night Porter (1974) directed by Liliana Cavani
6:30 AM – Le Bonheur (1965) directed by Agnes Varda
8:15 AM – Danzón (1991) directed by Maria Novaro
Academy Assignment
For individual pondering and sharing via the site comments. Watch one of this week’s films taking into consideration the Women Make Film chapter content on bodies and sex. Questions to consider:
- How were bodies or a singular body essential to the storytelling?
- What role did sex play in the film’s plot or character development?
- Bonus: How did the Women Make Film bodies and sex chapter material influence how you watched this film?