'Film Course: Women Make Film VI' consists of two sixty-minute screenings: each followed by a discussion with a filmmaker and a critic.  

The sixth of seven classes explores the cinematography techniques of some of the world’s greatest women directors and examines the themes of time and memory. This session features screenings of six chapters from Mark Cousins’ documentary Women Make Film.

‘Tension’ reminds audiences the real-world tension that appears in documentary films. The second chapter ‘Stasis’, showcases the inventive ways to film a static encounter—from undeviating lives contained within a frame to the biggest statis of all: death. In ‘Leave Out’ Cousins examines the obvious visuals that are left out from the frame and the unseen that sings a feminist dimension.

The next chapter ‘Reveal’ surveys the ways a plot—of love, death, religion, or myth—could be revealed. ‘Memory’ samples how individual, national, or nostalgic memory—triggered by touch, sound, and sight—have been depicted and reinvented in films. In the last chapter, ‘Time’, Cousins explores the magic of cinema where filmmakers have stretched time like mozzarella, concentrated a lifetime into a few minutes, or used the camera as a time machine.

In this film class, Ivy Ho, acclaimed scriptwriter of Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996), and critic/editor Joyce Yang will have a dialogue commenting on Mark Cousins’ views on tension, stasis, memory, and time, as well as the inclusion or exclusion of visual elements. Examples will be drawn from Ho’s July Rhapsody (2002) as scriptwriter and Claustrophobia (2008) as writer and director, as well as Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking (1996) and Cecile Tang’s Sup Sap Bup Dup (1975).