female – Nicole Davis

June 14, 2016June 14, 2016

My Experience Of Solo Travel

In last week’s Lenny letter, Lisa Goldberg addressed her experience of solo travel, the circumstances that lead to it and the lessons she learned from it. It was a piece of writing that particularly struck a chord, especially since returning from my 17-day sojourn throughout Europe.

“I just couldn’t stomach the idea of censoring my own life’s experiences based on the absence of a companion. It felt so hopelessly Victorian.”

Preach. If I lived by the tenet that I needed companionship to complete all activities, life would be an organisational nightmare. No more popping or pootling anywhere. Invitations would be sent and declined and altered and accepted for even the most banal of enterprises. Do join me on a turn about the room. I can’t bear to appraise these four walls without a second opinion. Independence would be a distant memory. And if you couldn’t source a companion? Well then experience be damned.

No thank you.

When I started thinking about what I was going to do for a holiday this year, it became wonderfully freeing to sidestep consultation and deliberation and flirt with the utmost decisiveness. Look at me go booking trains, planes and, well no other transport actually, without so much as a second thought. If I wanted to experience parts of Europe, then I absolutely could and what’s more, I could do it uninhibited.

“The experience was abstractly luxurious and soul-nourishing.”

Goldberg hits the nail on the head. It’s the most luxurious trip I’ve ever had. I wallowed and delighted and rollicked in every whim and desire I had. I ate a whole loaf of Czech bread sitting by a stream post-hike because I wanted to, and didn’t have to get up to move until my digestive system signalled that that would be ok. I meandered around an exhibition in Berlin twice, because I’d paid for it, and if I wanted to gaze at pictures taken by Helmut Newton for longer than is the norm, then I absolutely could.

The operative word here being ‘want’. And it’s not lost on me that that is a complete luxury. It’s a product of a selfish culture increasingly fuelled by instant gratification, a culture where the self and individualism is more than ever placed on a pedestal (which, incidentally is not always a good thing. Oh hey there Brexit). Not many people get to do what they want – all of time, or any of it for that matter. Which is why this trip felt so damned extravagant. Not because I sipped on champagne at the opera (I did do that though), but because I allowed myself and was fortunate enough to indulge in a rarity; that of acting upon my inclinations 24/7.

As Goldberg also acknowledges, the idea was met by my mother – not with resistance exactly – but a keen desire to dissuade otherwise, or at least to join me on parts of the trip.

“Honestly this is what I want”, I emphatically replied.

Which is both true and not. It came about as a product of circumstance. I was single and my schedule didn’t align with that of friends. If there’d been a group trip to Morocco going, I would’ve been the first to sign up. But there wasn’t, and circling back to the aforementioned point, I didn’t agree that that meant I should miss out on the experience of travel altogether. So it became what I wanted.

So was it? Did the trip turn out to be that which I’d hoped it would?

Yes and no.

It was never going to be the stuff of a best-selling memoir, but that didn’t stop me from harbouring a tiny hope that as soon as I stepped onto foreign soil I’d be living on a diet of enlightenment and ground-shaking, perception-changing discoveries. But as soon as I came round to the idea that I wasn’t Christopher McCandless, or Ron Swanson for that matter, and going ‘off the grid’ wasn’t really realistic, I had the best time.

I’ll be the first to admit, that if by some stroke of absurdity this trip became the plot to a film, it would 100% be rated U. Maybe PG-13. I did go to Amsterdam after all. But ‘best time’ is not some wink-wink lingo for a pleasure-seeking, bar-hopping rampage. Y’all should know me better than that.

It was the stuff of early nights and evenings spent sat on balconies reading Kurt Vonnegut. I traipsed and trailed and traversed through street after cobblestone street, stopping only when the desire for coffee became too resounding to ignore. I brunched and cycled and filled my brain to the hilt with cultural ventures; the highlights of which were the C/O gallery in Berlin, FOAM in Amsterdam and a David Cronenberg exhibition in Prague. Wild it was not. Ridiculously middle-class perhaps. Antiquing and café-crawling were the two most prominent past-times of the trip. But it was bloody lovely nevertheless. I relaxed completely. And though on a couple of occasions I was plagued by the anxiety that I really wasn’t doing everything in my power to be adventurous and meet new people and acquire eye-popping stories that proved to my peers how fun I was, I realised that wasn’t the agenda at all. Maybe another time I’ll go back to Berlin, squad in tow, and show Berghain how to dance, but not today. Not this trip.

It didn’t have to be every colour under the sun and everything I dreamed it would be. It just had to be enough to make me happy, and it was.

The other thing I learnt on this trip, aside from the fact I’m really due a pension and concessionary travel, was to suck it up.

Companionship gives you an immediate outlet for complaint. Of course that’s cathartic and you can bond over mutual woes, but it felt very healthy to avoid that as my go-to reaction. My train’s delayed for an hour? Excellent! I can sit and read my book. I’ve been walking in completely the wrong direction from my hostel? No worries. I can walk myself back. I’ve given myself blisters on day one of the trip? Fucking nightmare, and I complained to the thin air that would listen, but had to get on with it anyway. I never felt like I was hindering or impeding someone else’s fun and if I didn’t fancy seeing a particular attraction, or wasn’t in the mood for cocktails, I was not obligated to pretend otherwise.

“The idea of these solo trips isn’t to be the most swashbuckling lady out there, it’s to show up to your own life, reconnect with yourself as a single entity, and know that you never have to sacrifice an experience because there isn’t someone else there to share it with.”

Goldberg once again proves herself a wise lady. I figured there’ll always be time for more swashbuckling. One such perk of the millennial generation and our ever-receding acceptance of maturity is that I can easily fit in some more debauchery before 30. It’s not ‘now or never’. Just because my 23^rd year (and in fact, all those before it) was spent outside of a relationship and beyond the tradition of a family holiday in August, didn’t absolve me of the desire to vacate routine. I wasn’t immune to wanderlust merely because there was no-one to lust with. After 20 or so years of making a lot of decisions to please other people, or at least letting those opinions influence and mould such decisions and quite frankly, wanting to be perceived in a certain light, this trip to Europe became one of the few times I’ve been completely and unashamedly myself.

And I showed myself rather a good time.

N.B. More specific summaries of each place to follow!

February 2, 2015March 18, 2015

5 Female Directors You Should Know…

The paucity of female filmmakers has almost reached the point of media saturation. It doesn’t take long to find statistics or editorials decrying the severe scantiness of a female perspective in the film industry. As well as being an all-white affair, this year’s Academy Awards are once again male-dominated, with zero women being nominated in the Directing or Cinematography categories. However, I would contend that it’s not because there is an actual lack of talented, insightful and masterful women helming films but rather fewer opportunities presented to them.

I was reading a piece in The Guardian, the other day about a film critic who is vowing to watch films only penned, or purposed by women. Her justification for including male-directed, but female-written film is as follows:

“A lot of times a woman will write a script and in order to get it made, she’ll need a male director. If she goes to a financier, as a female screenwriter with a female director, she will be turned down. But if you have a female screenwriter and a male director who has one or two films behind him – or even if it’s his debut – financiers are more likely to back a film by a man”.

And in that brief statement, Gates articulates the core issue. Gender discrimination in Hollywood is pervasive, and destructive. It’s like a community sitting atop a vast field of untapped oil, and being told it doesn’t exist – that those resources are somehow inferior, or less visible than the ones they have access to. That would be a massive squandering of potential, and quite frankly, ridiculous. Yet the difficulty women have making movies, or making money making movies, is often viewed as ‘just the way it is’.

Here to prove that point – that it’s not a lack of female directors, but a lack of opportunity – are 5 up-and coming or established directors who are doing their thing, and doing it quite brilliantly. Of course there are plenty more that deserve your curiosity, but these are the ladies currently capturing my attention…

5. Kat Coiro

With three feature-length projects under her belt in as many years, Coiro is perhaps the most prolific director of my selection. Her films And While We Were Here, (which I review in my last blog post), Life Happens, and A Case of You, often focus on the difficult choices that women are faced to make, such as between career and family. The critical response to her films has been mixed, however her female leads are all intriguing, flawed but ultimately likeable people that don’t necessarily have their shit all figured out. Particularly interesting in A Case of You is how the male lead (playing by the affable Justin Long) is the one trying to change, and mould himself to lure his love interest, which is so often the other way around in romantic comedies directed by men. Her films are in turn delicate, nuanced, witty and beautifully realised. And While We Here particularly showcases an artistic vision and her potential as a director of great potency.

4. Lake Bell

If you haven’t see In A World… steal a friend’s Netflix password immediately. It’s hilarious and relevant, and reveals actress Lake Bell to not only be a great comedic performer, but also a very astute director. It’s a satirical piece that charts a young woman’s attempt to compete in the male-dominated world of voiceovers and Bell never misses a beat nor an opportunity to underscore the double-standarded nature of the entertainment business. In A World… is a pacy and well-crafted feature length debut for Bell, and one that has me incredibly, insatiably excited for her collaboration with Noah Baumbach for her next project The Emperor’s Children.

3. Amma Asante

Belle might be better known for launching EE Rising Star nominee Gugu Mbatha-Raw into the spotlight, but behind her confident, multi-faceted performance is Ghanian-British director Asante. Tackling the slave trade – especially after awards-sweeper 12 Years a Slave – in an original and sensitive way, is no mean feat, but it is one that Asante achieves with the deft of a director considerably more experienced. This is her first big-budget film, after her smaller 2004 debut A Way of Life, which won a handful of awards and lots of praise. Powerful, poignant and intelligent, Belle is a mischievous, and much-needed divergence from traditional period costume-dramas and one that has me hoping it doesn’t take Asante another 10 years to release a film.

2. Haifaa Al-Mansour

Al-Mansour is from Saudi Arabia, a country where extreme restrictions and limitations are placed on the female population; where they aren’t allowed to wear certain clothes, drive cars or compete in sports, let alone direct a groundbreaking and thought-provoking film. But against these curtailments of her freedom, that’s exactly what Al-Mansour did with Wadjda in 2013, a courageous, endearing and important film that picked up several awards nominations on the film festival circuit. Al-Mansour is to make the cross over to Hollywood with a Mary Shelley biopic, in which Elle Fanning is slated to star in the titular role. Let’s hope she continues to push boundaries upon arrival.

1. Ava DuVernay

If there’s one name you should remember from this year’s awards season, its Ava DuVernay. Though she just missed out on a Best Directing nomination for her Martin Luther King biopic Selma, she has done something arguably much more admirable – broken through the glass ceiling. Historical films such as this are predominantly the reserve of a male director and it’s rare for a woman to be charged with detailing the events surrounding one of the most important victories for the Civil Rights movement, as spear-headed by the most important figure of the Civil Rights movement. And yet she does it in blistering, gutsy and and complex style. She’s got filmmaking verve by the bucketload, and shows great amounts of restraint and intelligence in her formal approach. DuVernay might not pick up any awards, but she should win herself a legion of fans and cement her position as a talent to take serious note of.

November 2, 2014March 18, 2015

9 Films From a Feminine Perspective

Originally published by Raindance

It would be degrading and reductive to outline what might consist of a ‘feminine aesthetic’. It would suggest that cinema about, or written/directed by women is operating solely in contrast or in counter to, the dominant masculine style, rather than merely – and necessarily – portraying the diversity and difference of our experiences.

These films selected below, though by no means an extensive list, go to demonstrate the generic and stylistic variety that female-centric cinema is capable of. It goes to show that women are by no means limited by their gender and that women do not constitute a certain or specific type of stylistic output. In my opinion, these films serve to highlight our complexities, difficulties and capabilities. That heroes can be female and that they can take many forms…

Meek’s Cutoff (DIR. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)

Director Kelly Reichardt is well-known for her reworking of genre to encompass a female perspective. In Meek’s Cutoff she takes on the Western and subverts it’s inherent theme of rugged masculinity, by placing Michelle Williams’ Emily at the forefront of a group of pioneers advancing westwards into unchartered territory. The camera emphasises the female experience and in doing so carves a space into the American landscape for a gender otherwise marginalised.

Winter’s Bone (DIR. Debra Granik, 2010)

Shot on location in the Ozark mountains of Missouri, Debra Granik’s films follows Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout role) in her perilous attempt to track down her absent, meth-addicted father, with the aim of protecting her home and family. Taking charge of her economically-deprived destiny, Ree’s search for answers resembles that of a lone cowboy, crossing boundaries both literal and metaphorical to find meaning in the world. Labelled as ‘rural noir’, Granik’s film disrupts genre conventions in its placement of a female protagonist in a hostile, violent and depraved world.

Thelma and Louise (DIR. Ridley Scott, 1991)

A seminal feminist film, Thelma and Louise are two best-friends who take to the road in a symbolic and literal two-fingers up to gender conventions and authority. Part road-movie, part crime-caper, these two women embark on a journey of liberation as they become both increasingly violent, and assertive. Driving along an open road in their T-Bird convertible and getting the last word over the cops on their tails, Thelma and Louise rebelled against genre, and societal expectations.

The Hunger Games (DIR. Gary Ross, 2012)

A female Rambo of sorts, our leather-clad, bow and arrow-wielding heroine Katniss Everdeen has become a symbol of endurance, indestructibility and strength. Following in the footsteps of Ellen Ripley, Lara Croft or even Joan of Arc, Katniss subverts the notion that the action genre is an arena reserved solely for her male counterparts. Some film critics have even compared her to the archetype of the Western hero as embodied by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood – a marginalised loner, existing on the fringes of society. Most importantly, Katniss seems to transcend gender boundaries, acting as both surrogate mother to her younger sister Prim and assuming responsibility as bread-winner for her family. Ultimately, she upends the rules; both of the Hunger Games and the action genre.

Gravity (DIR. Alfonso Cuaron, 2013)

The final frontier, and indeed, the moon, were advertised as places ‘where no man had gone before’, let alone women. In 2013, Gravity turned the tables – and pretty much everything else – upside down, not least in it’s depiction of a female astronaut. Dr. Ryan Stone (a name which begs the question whether she was initially written as male), must scrape together all her resources to survive against the odds when a space mission goes awry. As narrative progresses she transforms from a nervous, panicked and inexperienced astronaut, to a capable and determined one (with just a little bit of help from George Clooney). Her gender is irrelevant to her ability, something which makes for a refreshing watch.

The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo (DIR. David Fincher, 2011)

Emotionally fragile, but physically formidable, Lisbeth Salander is perhaps the fiercest female on this list. TGWADT navigates the world of corporate corruption through the eyes of inked, pierced and pissed-off computer whizz Lisbeth, as she sets about getting revenge on the men that abused, and institutionalised her. In the meantime, Lisbeth proves herself just as commanding, clever and quite frankly terrifying, as any male vigilante on the big screen.

True Grit (DIR. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2010)

In the Coen Brothers’ remake of Charles Portis’ novel, True Grit follows the traditional Western trajectory of revenge, against the backdrop of a harsh and desolate landscape. Finding herself in this hostile environment of whiskey-swigging, gun-toting, foul-mouthed cowboys is 14 year-old Mattie Ross, who must prove she has enough grit to survive. And boy does she. Mattie has no interest in her male counterparts for protection or otherwise, and continually demonstrates that she has the confidence, competence and sass to outsmart them all.

Million Dollar Baby (DIR. Clint Eastwood, 2004)

The boxing ring is a place where blood, sweat and spectacle reigns. Where violence is a language and machismo is the currency. Hardly deemed a place for a woman. Million Dollar Baby trod relatively new territory then in depicting the trials and tribulations of Maggie (an Oscar-winning turn from Hilary Swank), a working-class woman who conquers the boxing world. Whilst she masculines herself to trainer Frank’s tastes, to see a woman in the ring at all is certainly a change of pace and a forceful blow to the notion that only men can put up a fight.

Zero Dark Thirty (DIR. Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

Wars, and by extension, war movies, have typically been the domain of the male population. However, this Kathryn Bigelow helmed exploration of the CIA’s search for Osama Bin Laden represents and honours the real female CIA operative whose dedication was key to his capture. Jessica Chastain, as Maya, is on formidable, snarling form. She imbues the characters with stoicism, steely resolve and unshakeable determination. In some respects she is both the hero and the villain of the story, employing controversial interrogation techniques to achieve her aims. But the point that Bigelow successfully drives home is that she is the lone wolf; the sole female mole at table of ego-driven male officers and thus a symbol of exceptionalism.

This is by no means an extensive list. Please share your own suggestions for films which subvert a masculine genre!