This August at the Pink Flamingo Cinema we're back with WOMEN VS THE WORLD, five furious features of feminine fury, folly, and fortitude! Plus shorts!

Audience note: The films in this program contain strong themes of violence, at times of a sexual nature, that may be distressing for viewers.

15/07: FEMALE PRISONER #701: SCORPION (女囚701号/さそり) (1983)

dir. Shunya Itō, 87 min. Japanese language w/English subs

The legendary Meiko Kaji stars as a woman scorned who takes on the world. After being betrayed by her corrupt cop lover, Nami Matsushima is sentenced to hard time in a women’s prison run by sadistic guards. Surrounded by enemies, allies and would-be lovers, Matsushima will have to use all her cunning and ruthlessness to survive.

The first (and most accessible) in Shunya Itō’s hugely influential Scorpion series, this is an unhinged expression of rage- against a carceral system, the men who profit from it and the women who would betray their sisters for a seat at the table. Future Lady Snowblood Meiko Kaji is extraordinary, conveying multitudes with a single burning gaze that slices through the exploitation and pierces our own complicity.

22/07: STAR 80 (1983)

dir. Bob Fosse, 103 min. English language

Dorothy Stratten has everything: youth, looks, charm, money, success, and a kind heart. Paul Snider only has one thing: Dorothy Stratten. A small time hustler who meets a teen beauty queen and throws her on the pages of Playboy magazine, Paul begins to find that the more successful Dorothy is in the field he’s positioned her in the further out of his reach she gets, and so he begins a desperate attempt to hold on that will end up costing Dorothy everything.

Based on the true life story of Dorothy Stratten, Bob Fosse’s faux docudrama examination of the men in Stratten’s life is an unflinchingly brutal depiction of how a woman who seems to have everything can still be without control over her own life. The film looks at how Snider, Hugh Heffner, (not) Peter Bogdanovich, and even Fosse himself refract Dorothy’s personage so that she becomes whatever suits them best, and there’s perhaps no film made by a man that better encapsulates the self-made prison of the male gaze and its victims.

29/07: WORKING GIRLS (1986)

dir. Lizzie Borden, 93 min. English language

From the director of Born in Flames comes a disarmingly pragmatic portrait of the day-to-night shift in a Manhattan brothel. Through the mundane grind of clients, cleanups and conversation we meet women like Molly, a university-educated lesbian in a long-term relationship, and single mother Mary. All of them have a different relationship with the clients, boss and each other, finding sisterhood even when the vast gulfs between life experiences put them at odds.

Inspired by the experiences of her friends and collaborators who supported their artistic ambitions through sex work, Borden once again focuses her extraordinary lens on the intersections of race, class and gender in unified struggle. Arguably the most accurate screen depiction of the job’s rarely addressed tedium: a limbo world of intense encounters punctuated by endless smalltalk and ciggies.

CUDDLY TOYS (2021)

dir. Kansas Bowling, 102 min. English language

This white-coater meets girlblog, presented by the one and only Professor Kansas Bowling, is provocative and moving. In the old time format of a scare film about what your daughters might be up to, it uses a 16mm-shot “educational” framing device to explore visceral vignettes of girlhood. Scrutiny, second-guessing and shockumentary hold sway.

A searing watch cooled down by Bowling’s wry sense of “so it goes” and then reignited by memories of the slings and arrows thrown at unsuspecting teenage girls. Cuddly Toys is angry and mean as hell, a visually stunning feminised independent mondo-movie that slashes and strikes while getting tactically goofy with it.

WOMAN DEMON HUMAN (1987)

dir. Huang Shuqin, 108 min. Mandarin language w/ English Subtitles

Qiu Yun is a star of Chinese opera who breaks with tradition in playing male roles on stage. She recollects her youth being raised by her actor parents in a touring theatre troupe, her childhood is marked by the poverty of 1950’s China, the anxiety of her parents decaying relationship, and her own struggles with gender identity. As she grows into a great actor in her own right, she continues to face issues with her want to live in the image of her father and exist as an artist while maintaining her own vision of modern femininity in a China caught between traditional gender roles and communist ideals of equality.

Regarded as the first ever feminist film made in the People’s Republic of China, director Huang Shuqin’s pioneering work is one of the few looks into the evolving role of women before the Cultural Revolution. The film is a prismatic tale where performance becomes identity which then bleeds into performance, and its almost magical realist flashback sequences are gorgeously composed mid-point between the practical and theatrical existence of Qiu Yun. An incredible performance from Xu Shouli in the lead role balances the masculine presentation of the character with a received femininity and she impresses as much in the intimate dialogues as she does in the lavish opera performances.

Contact the host of Pink Flamingo Cinema: Women vs The World