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March 30th 2021

Guest Picks: Queen Mary University of London

Guest Picks: Queen Mary University of London

The collective experience of audiences in a cinema watching great films is at the heart what Park Circus is about. We love films, shared stories and escapism, and have asked some of our friends from across the film industry to recommend some of their favourite films for audiences to enjoy when it is safe for cinemas to reopen.

To finish off our month of celebrating International Women's Day, we’ve asked women scholars in the Department of Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London to give us their Guest Picks.

Regularly ranked highly in university league tables, the Department of Film Studies at Queen Mary is situated in the heart of the East End, close to the creative and media quarters in Hoxton and Shoreditch and Spitalfields to the west, and to the Olympic Park to the east. They offer a range of distinctive and career-oriented degree pathways for undergraduates, including 4-year Study Abroad options, as well as an MA in Film Studies and an MA in Documentary Practice.

Read on to see the picks curated by Dr Lucy Bolton and PhD students in the Film Studies department.

Dr Lucy Bolton, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies.

Certain Women (2016)

I am overwhelmed by the great films made by women that we have to choose from. I am torn between the work of Antonia Bird, Dorothy Arzner, Gillian Armstrong, Gurinder Chadha, Jane Campion, Joan Littlewood, Joanna Hogg, Mira Nair, Julie Dash and Lynne Ramsay. All amazing filmmakers, with terrific movies to their names. To choose one is impossible, but I am picking Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women. This beautifully melancholic portmanteau tells us about moments in the lives of four certain women who work, love, and desire. It is engrossing and moving, magical and quotidian. It is a unique and exceptionally humane film.

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Kelly Reichardt shooting Certain Women (2016)

Georgia Brown

All About Eve (1950)

With caustic and witty dialogue, performed by masters at the height of acting powers All About Eve is an aural joy. For once, Bette Davis is surrounded by verbal sparring partners who all give as good, if not better, than they get, George Sanders, Anne Baxter and, the often criminally underrated, Thelma Ritter. I challenge anyone, after watching this, not to want to try and emulate each and every one of them.

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All About Eve (1950)

Giulia Rho

20th Century Women (2016)

20th Century Women, by Mike Mills and produced by Megan Ellison is an homage to motherhood, aging and elective families. Set in 1979, it tells the story of a single mother enlisting the help of her tenants to raise her teenage son. The movie asks all the questions we are too cool to externalize, and answers with razor-sharp one-liners coated in warm Southern California haze.

It brings me back to the kitchen table conversations I grew up having with my mother and aunt, with the addition of a satisfyingly sarcastic and unapologetic Greta Gerwig - which I’m never not in the mood for. Three eras of womanhood, each with their respective feminist beliefs, grapple with what it means to be a good man, how to raise and love one. A must-watch to nurture the hope that things are slowly changing for the best. And a good reminder to call your mom.

Alice Pember

Raw (2016)

A cunning subversion of the coming-of-age genre told through the lens of vegetarian veterinary student (and somewhat unlikely cannibal) Justine, Julia Ducournau’s debut feature, Raw is as indebted to its schlock horror forebears as it is the elite French film school in which she was trained. Symbolically rich and pulsating with bloodlust, the film ties its heroine’s journey to sexual maturity to an unfortunate predicament— a newly-acquired taste for human flesh developed in a university initiation ritual in which she is forced to eat a pickled liver. Not for the faint of heart (or stomach) the film’s exploration of Justine’s new-found appetites raises striking questions about sexuality, desire, femininity and notions of the 'human' in the twenty-first century, whilst never relenting in its mission to absolutely gross out its viewers. You’ll never look at your own finger in the same way again.

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Raw (2016)

Cathy Lomax

Niagara (1953) (Edited by Barbara McLean)

Niagara is a film noir with added extras. Rather than shadowy black and white it is realised in a luscious Technicolor palette, which enables Marilyn Monroe, in her first major starring role, to establish what would become the archetypal Marilyn look – pastel toned clothes cut to hug her curvy form and lips lacquered in the deepest red. Beneath this alluring surface it is a fascinating performance by Monroe whose pent-up desire for her young lover is nicely summarised by one version of the poster which shows her lying above the falls with the water spilling over her body alongside the tagline, ‘a raging torrent of emotion that even nature can’t control’.

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Niagara (1953)

Lisa Duffy

Yentl (1983)

Barbra Streisand has exerted control over every aspect of her career, and that is nowhere more apparent than in her directorial debut , Yentl, on which she also served as co-writer, co-producer and star. The story of a Jewish woman who disguises herself as a man to become a Talmudic scholar is shot lovingly with gauzy lenses and an attentive camera that pulls the audience into the intimacy of the complicated threesome at the film's centre. But perhaps most appealing is the inventive use of music, as Streisand's gorgeous singing materialises only in Yentl's thoughts, illuminating her emotions while allowing the film to stay grounded in the naturalism favoured by New Hollywood. Streisand's visionary work netted her the Best Director Golden Globe for the film, the first and only time a woman has received this award

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Yentl (1983)

Tashi Petter

Toni Erdmann (2016)

Maren Ade’s bitter-sweet tragi-comedy centres on the strained relationship between musician and prankster Winifred and his grown-up daughter Ines, a cold and corporate business consultant. Both lost and desperate in their own ways, the pair become embroiled in a game of one-upmanship in Bucharest, prompted by the appearance of Winifred’s alter-ego “Toni Erdmann,” with a ridiculous wig and false teeth. Hilarious, unpredictable yet subtle, just as Winifred asks his daughter, “Are you really human?”, the film raises pertinent questions about modern life, family and the boundaries between work and play. A must watch!

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Toni Erdmann (2016)