Lis Rhodes 3 - Her Image Fades as Her Voice Rises

3 April, 2020 - 22:30
Paddenhoek

Her Image Fades as Her Voice Rises
Films selected by Lis Rhodes and Felicity Sparrow

A re-staging of Circles’ inaugural film program Her Image Fades as Her Voice Rises (1982), with films selected by Lis Rhodes and Felicity Sparrow.

Founded in 1979 by a small group of filmmakers including Felicity Sparrow, Lis Rhodes and Annabel Nicolson, Circles was the first women artists’ film and video distribution organisation in Britain. It operated initially from Felicity Sparrow’s flat in Highgate. Circles’ program included women only screenings and group discussions that took place at Four Corners Film Workshops in Bethnal Green. In 1991, Circles merged with Cinema of Women to form Cinenova. Her Image Fades as Her Voice Rises was the first of several pioneering film touring programs Circles ran in early 1980s that grew out of the cultural and political debates from the 1970s.

Sitting with her at the table, talking, her hands poised over the typewriter. The words in our minds turning between description and analysis — to write the image or to write about the image. This will be a subjective gathering of threads of meaning, drawing attention to the spaces between four films that are dense with connections and difference. Seen thus, the program becomes a fiction in itself; a looking at — a listening to — the relationships between the filmmakers — their stories — avoiding false isolation, the separations determined by history as it is written — as it has been read — to mean meanings other than HERS. We shall try to make explicit the links and fractures between four films made by four women whose lives and work belong to different times and different places — different languages even — but whose voices are placed within similar constraints. We all experience these constraints but most women are allowed no time or space to reflect upon them.” — Lis Rhodes and Felicity Sparrow

 

In the presence of Charlotte Procter

Often During the Day

Joanna Davis
,
UK
,
1979
,
video
,
15'

A House Divided

Alice Guy
,
US
,
1913
,
video
,
13'

La souriante Madame Beudet

Germaine Dulac
,
FR
,
1922
,
16mm
,
35'

Light Reading

Lis Rhodes
,
UK
,
1978
,
16mm
,
20'