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Wikepedia censors Freja Film, historic Swedish women's film organisation

As of September 19, the men's club at Wikipeida has eliminated a post on Freja Film, a women's screening forum in Stockholm Sweden from the 1980's. By trying to save this entry it is clear that decisions are made within a very select group of individuals, who are not only undemocratic but discriminatory towards women's culture. No amount of change to the article could save it. The young male wikepedians with a sense of white male under 30 smell insist on scholarly reports, quotes, cross references, statistics, search engines, metrics , in short "pulling a rabbit out of a hat" documents prior to the profuse public use of internet. This means that history can only be determined from this, since none of these individuals have gone to Sweden to research at "KvinnSam - Nationellt bibliotek för genusforskning" - the national library for gender studies. Kvinnobulletinen, a woman's magazine from 1971 to 1996 mentions "Freja Film" in several articles.

According to Seneca, 2000 years ago , "To be everywhere is to be nowhere." Yet Wikepedia uses this rule of thumb for subject validity.

Since no one really takes Wikepedia serious except students who rely on it for plagiarized term papers , the omission of this article should be seen as a blessing. But it's a marvel to behold the process of getting an article into Wikipedia, dictated by a spider web of techno geeks who conjure up the anonymous faces of the Deep Web. If you have ever entered into discussions with wikipedians, the modern concept of fascism actually comes to mind, with this definition, from Wikipedia, as context:

• the use of fascist as an epithet for authoritarian and intolerant power-holders has a distinct analytical basis, suggesting that fascism is a continuum or a social relation, rather than simply a political system, and that acts of repression are in some way homologous with fascist ideology.

When Wipedia asks for donations to continue its practice of selective entrees, remember who is really behind the decisions. 

Freja Film: Wikipedia threatens history of women in film

Before Wikipedia erases the history of women in film for being non-important, CineFemme will preserve this herstory of Freja Film, which has already spidered elsewhere out in the web,

Freja Film was a radical screening forum held at the "Stockholm Women's House (Kvinnohuset)" in Stockholm, Sweden, during the 1980s. The name Freja was chosen for the group paying homage to the Nordic goddess who was the leader of the Valkyrie. Kvinnohuset was an important meeting place for women during the 1980's and 1990's in Stockholm. The space on Snickarbacken 10 was shared by different women's organisations such as Freja Film , self defense groups, Kvinnobulletinen[1][2] Lesbiska Feminister, and musicians in Spelhålen. [3][4][5][6][7]

The original core group was composed of Moira Sullivan, Yvonne Eriksson, and Anna Kindgren. Guests to the women's house included filmmaker Barbara Hammer. Regular screenings of films made by women were held with discussions afterwards. The icon on the poster head for the monthly screenings was Dorothy Arzner, the only woman working in Hollywood as a director during the 1930s. Freja Film was modeled after the Amsterdam based feminist film and video distribution collective Cinemien.[8] Freja Film imported films with permission of filmmakers for special screenings. Some of the films screened were Lizzie Borden's "Born in Flames" which won "prix du public" at Créteil International Women's Film Festival in 1983 and Marleen Gorris' A Question of Silence which won in 1982. Freja Film's activities and reports from women's film festivals were published in Kvinnobulletinen, an important journal for women in Sweden during the 1970's through 1990's. Among the editors was Ebba Witt-Brattström. Freja Film was the contact organisation of women's film established during a special conference sponsored by UNESCO in 1981 held at the 1st International Feminist Film and Video Conference in Amsterdam. At the Amsterdam meeting all functioning women's festivals and women working in film such as Frances Reid, Barbara Hammer, Michelle Citron presented papers and strategized about reaching women in media around the globe. Also present was the newly startedCréteil International Women's Film Festival(1979), the longest surviving women's film organization in Europe. Freja Film worked closely with Créteil International Women's Film Festival as the Nordic contact organisation.

References

1.      ^ Stockholms KvinnoCentrums arkiv http://sok.riksarkivet.se/?postid=ArkisRef+SE%2FRA%2F730534%2F%23&s=TARKIS08_Balder Kvinnobulletinen

2.      ^ Schmitz, Eva Den nya kvinnorörelsen under 1970-talet, 2009. http://www.ub.gu.se/kvinn/portaler/systerskap/historik/

3.       ^ Gallagher, Margaret Unequal Opportunities - The Case of Women and the Media, UNESCO 1981.http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0004/000476/047681eo.pdf

4.      ^ Mickey Lee, A review of UNESCO's publications on women and communication, International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) 23rd Conference and General Assembly, Barcelona, Spain 21st-- 26th July 2002http://www.portalcomunicacion.com/bcn2002/n_eng/programme/prog_ind/papers/l/pdf/l010se06_lee.pdf

5.       UNESCO (1980). Women in the media. Paris: UNESCO.

6.      ^ First international feminist film and video conference Amsterdam First international feminist film and video conference Amsterdamhttp://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/?/nl/items/IIAV01:104001729

7.      ^ First international feminist film and video conference Amsterdam First international feminist film and video conference Amsterdam (2)http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/92034/GVNRC_NAGO02_EYE_A21633.html

8.      ^ Kuhn, Annette, The Women's Companion to International Film, p. 83.

Amy Winehouse's end of life truthfully chronicled in new Cannes documentary

The great jazz singer/songer writer Amy Winehouse

“Amy” which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May is an extraordinary exposé of the life of the late Amy Winehouse. There is virtually little relief knowing Winehouse’s short life cyle in the public eye was due to substance addiction, but this documentary reminds us how her career was built on the joy and enchantment of her artistry. British filmmaker Asif Aspadia’s “Amy” was nominated for a Golden Eye Award for best documentary as well as a Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival Cannes Film Festival and showcases previously unseen footage of this phenomenal artist.

The documentary starts out like probably many music videologs that trace the career of an emerging artist. It is impossible to see Amy Winehouse as anything but an extremely talented jazz vocalist who was born with talent not luck. She felt best playing in intimate jazz clubs with good musicians. She loved to write songs and was clearly one of the best singer/songwriter jazz vocalists of this century. Her exquisite voice, vocal range and phrasing hit notes with spot on accuracy and emotionally wrenching language, framing familiar episodes in life with an exactitude inspiring international introspection.
Winehouse’s new fans proclaimed their infatuation with that voice and those incredible lyrics. This is the same public that booed her off the stage at the end of her career for failing to sing and who even demanded their money back. It was pay back time for the public that felt they made her. Her refusal to perform in Belgrade can only be seen as an act of defiance and strength for no one listened to her when she said she didn't want to go. "Amy" updates the media picture of this outstanding vocalist and shows how she stood her ground and said no to a large concert she could no longer tolerate as a serious artist.

Amy Winehouse stands her ground and refuses to perform at Belgrade

Tony Bennett confirmed this when he said that Amy Winehouse was one of the great jazz musicians of our time on the order of Elsa Fitzgerald. Shown in the documentary is a beautiful and touching collaboration of Winehouse and Bennett. 

Given substantial room is Amy Winehouse's relationship with her husband Blake Fielder-Civil , a relationship characterized in the documentary as all consuming, temptuous and painful. Fielder-Civil introduced her to heroin and crack and Amy could not be separated from him until he was forcefully incarcerated and later divorced her. According to Fielder-Civil, she did not want the divorce and her signature was forged. By Amy's own admission the relationship was a drug.

Also given ample space is Winehouse's eclectic vintage fashion sense, heavy eyeliner,  and her hairstyle inspired by a fusion of the 60's pop group "The Ronette's" and Brigitte Bardot.

At first we love our artists for the accord that they strike in our experience but as they become successful within the industry model, they become our slaves and wind up dolls. “Amy” well illustrates the modern myth of god/goddess destruction. The artist pulls the strings of our hearts and we become fickle and restless and lose interest waiting for the next sensation. The industry has of course created this fickleness, this throwaway artist society with mythological heroes and heroines, even when they are banished or doomed.

“Amy” makes one wonder how extraordinary it must be for any megastar to not succumb to drugs and alcohol. “Amy” indeed presents a horrifying picture of what success actually looks like, mirrored in the fearful faces of Amy Winehouse as she walks to fame and out of it in her short life. At first stunned at the ignorant questions she is asked as an artist she is later repulsed by the invasion of her privacy by the media.

Almost everyone is a player in this mediated gimmicry—even her father who brings photographers to St Lucia where she becomes drug free and chastises her when two "harmless" tourists asks for a photo with her and she is less than overjoyed.  That one simple photo to her is equal to all the excesses she has suffered since she began winning awards and recognition. Jay Leno and David Lettermen ridicule her drug habit on national television but if they did that to someone with an illness other than addiction they would be shut down. Both are finally going anyway as spent fuel.
We wonder why someone so incredibly talented, such a beautiful unique creative and illuminating young woman can die before our eyes after an inevitable failed comeback as painful as the one planned by Michael Jackson. But the answers are all there in “Amy” of how this could be.

There are no particular culprits, since success is a cunning foe that is propelled by faceless greed and commerce. Artists whose careers are intertwined with commerce pay a heavy price. There is also the truth that Amy Winehouse even before she became famous was a substance abuser with food and alcohol. Her parents, in the documentary, seem clueless that alcoholism was just as important to tackle (though they disagree with how they are presented). Going to rehab, or not going to rehab as the song goes that became her signature song did not seem to sink below the goal just being clean and tackle the underlying issues behind her relapses.

Amy Winehouse was a beautiful soul and there are ample pictures in this brilliant documentary of her upbringing, her first songs with enchanting poetic images in  her ever enlarging career prompted by public demand for more of her. And as the public demanded more of Amy, she began to disappear with increasing regularity. However, it is clear that it was not only a public sacrifice but her support system and her own ignorance of addiction that took her life, despite doctor's warnings. All this is evident in this powerful documentary.

“Amy” shows how the success pendulum cares not for beautiful souls but is a cunning predator that kills with animal instinct the wondrous artists of our world who exist only to enlighten us and ease our every day lives. Thank Amy Winehouse for her gifts, and see in Amy Winehouse a vulnerability that was not strong enough to stand up to the gimmicry and was left unprotected by family, husband, fans and promoters. Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning in July 2011 at the age of 27.  Asif Aspadia dignifies Amy Winehouse who was always worthy of our love.

Stig Björkman's 'I Am Ingrid' mesmerizes 68th Cannes Film Festival

Ingrid Bergman with her film camera on the road.

Courtesy of Mantaray Film

The festival poster for the 68th Cannes Film Festival is a picture of Ingrid Bergman. Her image is used in most of the daily schedules and this is truly because Swedish filmmaker Stig Björkman’s documentary - " Jag är Ingrid" (Ingrid Bergman - In Her Own Words, Sweden 2015) brings her to life again. The documentary was selected for the category "Cannes Classics" and its worlddebut at the festival was May 19. The film's international sales are managed byTrustNordisk and it has already been bought by Italy, Japan Taiwan and France.

"Ingrid Bergman - In Her Own Words" could just as well been in competition because the documentary is that good. It highlights the work of a woman that dedicated her life to film Though she was a phenomenal artist so little is out there about her life on film. The marginalization of women at the festival is one of the issues that Cannes has been criticized for and the need to address this is real and immediate. Even Ingrid Bergman experienced the same diminishment of roles when she was no longer a young ingénue.

Stig Björkman directed the documentary and co-wrote it with Dominika Daubenbüchel and producer Stina Gardell. Swedish vocalist Eva Dahlgren, who also sings the final ballad of the film, coordinated the Super 8 footage and Ingrid's letters to her friends are read by actress Alicia Vikander. Björkman revealed at the debut introduced by Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux that the film came about through his friendship to Ingrid's daughter Isabella Rossellini who suggested that they make a film about her mother.

Most of the film is found footage from newsreels but also footage of the home movies that Ingrid and her family made during her years in Hollywood, Italy, Sweden and London. The assemblage by Dominika Daubenbüchel is extraordinary and the editing of this footage is brilliant. Above all it shows that the ultra professional Ingrid Bergman gave the greatest emphasis to her children who were apart from her during her busy acting schedule.

We see Ingrid with a film camera on many occasions during the film. Her father was a photographer with an eye for mis en scène and selected costume and makeup for his portraits of Ingrid who is often in character. Ingrid lost her parents when she was very young and as far as men behind the camera, fell in love with photographer Robert Capra, and later in life married filmmakerRoberto Rossellini. She wrote to him and asked if he needed an actress who spoke English and a little French. That letter of invitation resulted in several years of marriage and the birth of three children, all of which are part of the film.Pia Lindström, her daughter by her first marriage to Petter Lindström, is also in the film.

Ingrid defied the conventions of Hollywood and never regretted the things that she did, she said, but "what she hadn’t done". As she got older, her choices for roles diminished but she still kept working. By her side throughout her career were several strong women including Irene Selznick, the wife of David O. Selznick, but in her letters to them it was always about her children. This extraordinary documentary makes you not only esteem Ingrid Bergman but also her children Pia (Lindström), Robert, Ingrid and Isabella Rossellini. All of them have her incredible charm and intelligence. In many ways Ingrid never lost her Swedish roots and when working in the garden, raking leaves and pushing a wheelbarrow, the tall Ingrid Bergman remained down to earth. She worked with great directors, but although she could not control what was said about her abroad and in Sweden, in her own life she made her own images.

Patricia Highsmith's 'Carol' in official Cannes selection

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as Patricia Highsmith's 'Carol' and 'Therese'

Courtesy of Festival du Films de Cannes, used with permission

Carol

Star

Star

Star

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Star

Todd Haynes "Carol" is at the top of the list for Anglo-American critics at Cannes but it is not a top runner for Francophiles. The biopic is artistically executed with soft filters and props from the 50's but many look like they were acquired for the movie from antique shops and do not have that fresh look that newly acquired possessions should really have. The narrative is a haunting one that touches on homophobia in the 1950s based on Patricia Highsmith's intriguing title, "The Price of Salt" (1952). 'Out' lesbians at the time were only known to each other and their private circles, and met in secret clubs.

Carol (Cate Blanchett) and her lover Therese (Rooney Mara) are both heterosexual women trapped in aimless or loveless relationships that do not inspire them. This lack of belonging and accountability is not about two women just having an intrepid affair for although they are surrounded by men throughout the film, their affinity lies with each other. This is a hard concept for many and witchhunts and claims of immorality are the results of not getting it. Leaving a man for a woman is an affront to how society has been calibrated. When Therese is asked if she is a lesbian, she adamantly denies it, so powerful is the taboo.

Cate Blanchett, producer of the film, gives one of her best performances to date. Carol is the kind of mythical creature who is clearly in a vulnerable position but does not want to put her feelings into words. Therese wants to ask her questions and eventually Carol lets her. Therese's inward intensity at the prospect of this relationship is comprised of an entourage of penetrating stares. Their relationship commands the film and is the backbone of the narrative arch that compels spectators to listen to their dialogue while off handedly taking note of the makeup, costumes, appliances, shop fronts, automobiles, and furnishings of the time.

Ultimately, Todd Haynes requires viewers to surrender to the love story. On the final days of the Cannes screenings, crowds swarmed to stand in block long queues with the high critical ratings, but it is not altogether clear that they were there to witness the silent rampages of homophobia that is part of the film's message or to watch two women in love that is still a voyeuristic thrill. There is also the time honored clever Weinstein & Co schematic involved in pushing a film like this at the box office and for awards shows. For Cannes, narratives about lesbians have been hugely successful such as Palme d'Or winner La Vie d'Adéle (2013) and Haynes is contending for the award this year.

Todd Haynes has put a lesbian relationship up front and in doing so watches to see if the two women in the relationship put it first too. They always have men to rely on and it is somewhat contrived that they are constantly being hit on so that they are (we are) absolutely sure of their choices. Therese notices other lesbians but in her upwardly mobile New Yorker wardrobe does not look like one of them. The elegant Fifth Avenue dressed Carol has had other lovers and one since she was a child (Abby -Sarah Paulson) that stands up for her as far as female bonding. But other than their affair, Carol and Therese have a hard time finding each other and making it stick. Their professional energies which involve retail buying,and doing photography for the "New York Times" seem like distractions. Their real job is each other. Therese gets an expensive camera from Carol and in turn gives her a Billy Holliday record. Materialism is a large part of this film. Will they eventually wind up sharing an uptown flat in Manhattan? How could they not?

Patricia Highsmith's novels have been put to film before. Matt Damon's Tom Ripley in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999) is far from the outwardly gay character that Carol seems to be. Todd Haynes has decided to make a proper claim to Highsmith's character's sexuality and lifestyle. It seems to work better with lesbians who have discarded their male suitors than for gay serial murderers.

"Carol" should do well because of the star wattage of Blanchett and Mara who command every scene they are in. In the end we are left with a stylistic mis en scène furnished with all the appropriate items of the time and a love story that is made totally believable by the actors. This is the kind of film that dreams are made of and the love story enchants. Unlike their characters, Blanchett and Mara are not only make believe. At the Cannes photo shoot both actresses had their hands on Todd Haynes rear end. Cate Blanchett made it clear that she had many women friends, but no lovers, a question on many journalists' minds at Cannes.