SESSION 109, ILLEGAL_CINEMA

Screening of Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986),* proposed by Cecilia Hernández, followed by a discussion.

“To make a film, you have to get up”, Chantal Akerman declares in La Paresse, one of the works that make up this film. All of these directors “got up”, although each of them first placed a different foot on the floor.

Seven Women, Seven Sins is a film that materialises as a compendium of different methodologies that are united and organised around a particular subject: the seven deadly sins.

At the end of the 1980s, seven women filmmakers and artists were invited to make an anthological film: Helke Sanders, Chantal Akerman, Bette Gordon, Ulrike Ottinger, Valie Export, Maxi Cohen and Laurence Gavron. Each of them employed different audiovisual forms to interpret and deal with their subject, ranging from more experimental approaches that are closer to videoperformance to more classical practices using a more conventional narrative.

The seven forms of looking, interpreting and realizing coexist, alternating formats and scenographies, providing a portrait in keeping with their time and that continues to be interesting today because of its eclecticism. Setting out from aesthetic approaches close to the world of the 1980s videoclip, the film includes audiovisual works with a more testimonial, sober and direct character, videoperformances in which “doing nothing” means “doing everything”, classical short films that are somewhat theatrical, and visual bacchanals constructed using grotesque visuals and props. Seven Women, Seven Sins is a film that enables us to get closer to each of the directors and their creative methodologies in a fleeting but clear way.

* The screening is in English.

Cecilia Hernández (Madrid, 2000) is a researcher and artist based in Bilbao. At present she is doing research on performativity and discourse, proposing visual imaginaries and bridges of action between the body and language.