Screenings: AMINA | Terra Femina | LES PLAGES D'AGNÈS | Miranda Pennell

Riotous Planet of Women

Tampere Film Festival offers a broad selection of films about women's lives. This selection's solid core are the four Terra Femina short film screenings. The films in the screenings have been made in the 2000s, but the tales told in them are universal observations about women's everyday life and peak moments, unanchored to place or time.

The Terra Femina programme also includes two feature-length documentaries, Amina (2008) and the autobiographical The Beaches of Agnès (2008). Amina takes place in a Yemen prison, where young Amina, convicted of the murder of her husband after an unclear incident, waits for her execution. Amina is not the only woman in the prison charged on dubious evidence. Of the women interviewed in the film by the director, Khadija al-Salami, the majority's crime seems to have been being born a woman to a society where citizens are not equal before the law.

The Beaches of Agnès tells of the film director Agnès Varda's colourful and film-filled life. Varda is renowned as one of the driving forces of the French New Wave, although she was a member of the so-called Rive Gauche group already in the 1950s. Fellow members of the group included, among others, Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Marguerite Duras, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. The group drew inspiration from the modern French novel, but nevertheless created extremely cinematic films. In The Beaches of Agnès, Varda examines her life through people close to her, her films and numerous journeys, and, of course, various beaches.

Miranda Pennell is a British filmmaker who originally graduated as a dancer-choreographer. The Tampere festival includes a retrospective on Pennell, comprising eight films from 1995 to 2007. The director's background is visible in both the subjects and execution of the films. Several of Pennell's films study everyday routines, whose choreographies she shapes into playful dance.

Programme guests:

Khadija al-Salami (Amina)
Rebecca Johnson (Top Girl)
Caroline Sascha Cogez (Bus)
Miranda Pennell

Related discussions:

Aesthetics and Politics: Can Documentary Save the World?
Werstas auditorium, Saturday 7 March, 12 - 13 (Khadija Al-Salami).

Meet the competition directors!
Festival Centre Bravo Plaza, Friday 6 March and Saturday 7 March, 14:00 (Rebecca Johnson).

MORE INFORMATION

Riina Mikkonen, Press Coordinator
tel. +358 3 213 0034 or +358 40 532 2912
riina.mikkonen@tamperefilmfestival.fi

Sanna Kyllönen, Press Coordinator
tel. +358 3 213 0034 or +358 40 067 7667
sanna.kyllonen@tamperefilmfestival.fi

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