Part of Summer 1999
A co-presentation with splice this! Toronto’s Annual Super 8 Film Festival June 18 to 21
New York film legend returns to Toronto to present a program of her most alluring Super 8 works. Peggy Ahwesh likes to have it both ways. Her films languish in the realm of the politically incorrect – from pornography to drug abuse to child sexuality- yet by playing under a set of broken rules she privileges us with a view of the incorrect from the inside out. In doing so Ahwesh teaches us not to be afraid but to recognize the things we fear about ourselves as complex manifestations of the human condition. The defiant child is a theme of several films in the prgram. Matina’s Playhouse, a response to Pee Wee’s Playhouse, focuses on the girl child, grappling with the fluidity of gender roles as she role-plays with her toys. Girl’s Beware, by eduactional film auteur Sid Davis, is a melodramatic scare film- a girl’s advisory about the hazards of sexual activity. The Color of Love is a super 8 porn film that was found in the garbage slowly deteriorating and chemically decomposing. “The Color of Love is really about these abysses of obliterarted time. In it’s riuned frames, sex and death meet face to face. The encounter is as tender as it is painful. A whole world of desire is created and destroyed. In less than ten minutes, it’s all over” (Steve Shaviro).
Program:
Philosophy in the Bedroom, Pts1&2, (Super 8, 14 min)
The Color of Love (16mm blow up, 10 min.)
scenes from: The Fragments Project (Super 8, 10 min.)
Martina’s Playhouse (Super 8, 20 min.)
The Scary Movie (16mm blow up, 9 min.)
From Romance to Ritual (Super 8, 20 min.)
