Experimental Film Screening: The Freemartin Calf + As True As Troilus

Wed 02 Oct 2013, 8.30 pm
ATK

From The Onion Cellar:

The Onion Cellar is delighted to present the Vietnam (and Asia? hopefully) premiere of 2 experimental films written and directed by Franco-Australian filmmaker JAYNE AMARA ROSS (who also graced the works with her beautiful spoken-word poetry), shot on Super 8 and 16mm, and featuring haunting musical contributions courtesy of members of the Paris-based post-rock (or post-everything, to be precise) collective FAREWELL POETRY and friends.

THE FREEMARTIN CALF (2010)

A film by Jayne Amara Ross
Original music by Frédéric D. Oberland with Gaspar Claus
Poetry and narration by Jayne Amara Ross

Watch the trailer:
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/14898901[/vimeo]

SYNOPSIS

freemartin (n.): A sexually imperfect, usually sterile female calf born as a twin with a male calf due to the influence of male hormones during the development in utero. Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, 2007.

The Freemartin Calf relates a day in the life of two women: a young girl and her mother, as they brave two very separate realities laced with a very similar pain, fueled by a dogged desire to both reject and conform to the societal roles imposed upon them. The film is a deliberation on the subject of the creative process: the importance of a belief in the invisible creative mechanism (represented by the female body), the angst associated with the inability to create and the part of us that we leave behind in the final product.

‘The realistic narrative of ‘The Freemartin Calf’ never ceases to enrichen its symbolic basis with dreamlike imagery. Here we are closer to a naturalism that is transcended, magnified. From the ambitious mis-en-scène to the intricate structure of the film and the power of the facture, ‘The Freemartin Calf’ is a film of great maturity – and of extraordinary beauty.’

Gabriela Trujillo (Culturopoing, June 2011)

AS TRUE AS TROILUS (2009)

A film by Jayne Amara Ross
Original music by FareWell Poetry

Watch the trailer:
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/24995247[/vimeo]

SYNOPSIS

The film takes its title and mythology from Chaucer’s important 14th century poem ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, a retelling of a ‘faux’ Greek myth with Medieval origins, in which the main protagonist Troilus falls in love with Trojan Cressida who finally deceives and leaves him for the Greek soldier Diomedes. “In this work, Troilus embodies denial, he does not want to see his lover for what she really is. Despite the fact that she is ‘as false as Cressida’, he remains resolutely faithful in his love, desiring to be the superlative lover” (Nicole Brenez). The narrator of ‘As True As Troilus’ (just as Chaucer’s narrator) uses this myth to explore his own romantic mythology, using the characters and their situation to recount his own plight, illustrating the destruction of his own failed relationship with tableaux from the Trojan tale.

Free entry.