Scared to leave the room____#15 Sois belle et tait-tois (1976)

crippling paranoia / desperate loneliness / masochistic death-wishes / paralysing catatonia / dangerous obsessiveness / apocalyptic hysteria

film #15

BE PRETTY AND SHUT UP - Delphine Seyrig, 1976, 115 min

Delphine Seyrig, who played major roles in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman and Marguerite Duras' India Song, was a prominent French actress and a feminist director who, like Carole Roussopoulos, worked on radical feminist documentaries in France in the 1970s. In the film, BE PRETTY AND SHUT UP, she interviews Jane Fonda, Barbara Steele, Ellen Buratyn, Shirley Maclaine, and other actresses who worked with the French Nouvelle Vague and Hollywood directors in the 1960s and 1970s.

The dialogue among the actresses about typical female characters with limited roles, excessive sexualization and the relationship between female characters in films are naturally developed into a serious discussion about “Why we need women’s cinema”. Even though the film presents a simple talking-head format, it provides an insight into the social prejudices, negative views, and isolation of the actresses and raises piercing and interesting questions about the ways in which actresses and images of women are treated in the film industry.

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film #16

INDIA SONG - Marguerite Duras, 1975, 111 min

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film #17

MADEMOISELLE - Tony Richardson, 1966, 103 min

Scared to Leave the Room, a series of film screenings at Tropics Cafe, Grow Elephant.

All films are free to attend.