Mixed | 6:30pm, Thursday 16 August
Presented as a partnership between Queensland Film Festival and the Institute of Modern Art, this free screening, Love Means Taking Action Part Two, is the second in a series of screenings presenting works that engage with caring, parenting and domestic labour. These films demand justice, to and from the world. These works show caring, make it visible, but also incorporate caring into the production process itself, with the films tracing ways of representing the thought, ethical deliberation and engagement of the practice of caring.
Mamoushka | Valérie Massadian 2012 | 10 minutes
A woman recalls. Christine Famer, Massadian’s mother, marks prejudice and its legacy. Half audio and half slideshow of Massadian’s luminous photography, Mamoushka draws on our memory.
Courtesy of Gaïjin and Valérie Massadian
Charity | Kate Davis 2017 | 16 minutes
Inspired by the ways Margaret Tait (1918-99) invites us to contemplate fundamental but overlooked emotions and everyday activities, Charity takes artistic representations of breastfeeding as its focus. The film explores how the essential – but largely invisible and unpaid – processes we employ to care for others could be re-imagined.
Courtesy of LUX
Pyramid| Margaret Salmon 2014 | 17 minutes
Pyramid responds to Abraham Maslow’s theory on the hierarchy of human needs through the rhythms and choreography of middle-class South England. Salmon’s documentary both develops and challenges the themes presented in Maslow’s theory, as well as her own interest in human iconography, stereotype and domestic rhythm.
Courtesy of LUX
Weed Killer| Patrick Staff 2018 | 17 minutes
At the heart of Weed Killer is a monologue—adapted from Catherine Lord’s moving and often irreverent memoir The Summer of Her Baldness—in which an actress reflects upon the chemically induced devastation of chemotherapy. This monologue is intertwined with comparatively otherworldly sequences, including choreographic gestures shot with high-definition thermal imaging.
Courtesy of Patrick Staff
The Body Beautiful| Ngozi Onwurah 1991 | 23 minutes
This bold, stunning exploration of a white mother who undergoes a radical mastectomy and her Black daughter who embarks on a modeling career reveals the profound effects of body image and the strain of racial and sexual identity on their charged, intensely loving bond. At the heart of Onwurah’s brave excursion into her mother’s scorned sexuality is a provocative interweaving of memory and fantasy. The filmmaker plumbs the depths of maternal strength and daughterly devotion in an unforgettable tribute starring her real-life mother, Madge Onwurah.
Courtesy of the NFSA
This is a free screening taking place at the IMA at 6:30pm on the 16th of August.
Unrated 18 +
