Sunday, August 07, 2005
#24: On PARIS WAS A WOMAN
5/12/05
Next Sunday The Redhouse in Armory Square is
opening the 1995 documentary, PARIS WAS A WOMAN,
as its next film offering on Sunday & Tuesday evenings.
Greta Schiller directed & edited, & Andrea Weiss
adapted the screenplay from her book of the same
title. Both have stellar credentials as documentary
filmmakers before & since this collaboration, as partners
in Jezebel Productions since 1984, when they made the
classic BEFORE STONEWALL as well as their acclaimed
trilogy of films about women jazz musicians. PARIS is
short - just 73 minutes long - so hopefully The
Redhouse will also run a selection of the excellent
special features on the DVD edition. PARIS WAS
A WOMAN has screened at 150 film festivals
throughout the world. It had theatrical release
here in the US, New Zealand & several European
nations.
PARIS WAS A WOMAN portrays the community
of women artists who flocked to the so-called Left
Bank district in Paris in the early decades of the
20th century. Mostly we think of this crowd in
terms of the “Roaring 20’s,” but many of the women
were there earlier & stayed much longer, even past
World War II. The films is divided into sections
about individuals – Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas,
journalist Janet Flanner, poet Nathalie Barney &
painter Romaine Brooks, novelist Djuna Barnes,
bookstore owners Sylvia Beach & Adrienne Monnier.
Photographer Giselle Fruend & scholars Shari Benstock
& Catherine Stimpson offer comments. There’s a
wealth of still photos, home movies, audio clips &
music. A map periodically shows where people lived –
within blocks of each another. The narrative line is
a tad meandering but I didn’t mind, because there’s
such a vivid & thoughtful appreciation of that world.
One of the possible pitfalls with the film lies
in the audience. A decade ago when the film was still
new, one reviewer suggested a better title would be
HOW LESBIANS CHANGED WESTERN CIVILIZATION,
because it deals matter-of-factly with the personal
relationships of many of these figures. This is a pretty celebrated film in the gay community. Watching it,
I was struck instead with how this is simply a part
of things, not the topic of the movie. I’m hoping a
very wide audience will want to see it. PARIS can
tell Central New York a great deal at what I think
is a critical moment in our cultural life, about how
a creative class rises & what kind of synergy &
innovation can occur, surviving even periods of severe
disruption like war. I particularly liked how the film
follows the long career of Janet Flanner. Her weekly
column in THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE under the
pen name Genet, really pioneered arts journalism &
she also explained the competing movements of fascism
& communism to Americans. The examination of how
Beach & Monnier’s bookstores supported the artistic
community may be more useful that rehashing
Gertrude & Alice’s Saturday night salons one again.
If you’re not movied out, go see this one,
& thank The Redhouse folks for their perfect timing.
(505)