WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS?
Directed by Pamela Tanner Boll
Classification: NA
**
For anyone who hasn't set foot in an art museum lately, Pamela Tanner Boll's engaging documentary Who Does She Think She Is? is a reminder that art history, at least in its most formal presentation, is mostly not "herstory." Boll and co-director and editor Nancy Kennedy take us into the lives of five contemporary female artists who are struggling, or have struggled, to balance motherhood with professional creative endeavours in a less-than-supportive society (and that includes husbands).
None of these women are household names in the art world. The point is made - through quick person-on-the-street interviews used throughout the film - that most people are hard-pressed to name even one female artist. Scenes from the main characters' everyday lives and family dynamics, meanwhile, make the film's exploration of the relationship between economics, society and art feel down-to-earth and accessible.
The movie's opening montage features images of womanhood - from fertility goddesses painted on vases to photos of Hollywood actresses to abstract nudes - and is accompanied by telling snippets from the film's subjects, one of the women saying that by choosing to be both a mother and artist she always feels she is "not quite good at anything."
The five artists' stories are interwoven throughout the film, with several academics, famed activist agitators the Guerrilla Girls (interviewed in full gorilla costume) and some archival footage helping to paint the bigger picture. In particular, Courtney E. Martin, a professor of gender studies at Hunter College in New York, offers articulate commentary on the past, present and future of women in art. Her words become the film's spine.
But the heart of the documentary is the passionate, earthy Maye Torres, who lives "in nature" in New Mexico and believes that "art is the soul of being human." Her wide-ranging, incredibly powerful work is on full display as we meet her teenage sons and former mentors and, gradually, learn of the guilt, sacrifices and hardships she experienced on the way to attaining balance in her life.
We also meet sculptor Janis Wunderlich of Ohio, who grabs an hour here and there to make whimsical, bizarre clay works that express her inner conflict about raising five young children; nap time is precious. Camille Musser, meanwhile, who moved to the United States from St. Vincent and the Grenadines at age 19, was able to focus on her vibrant painting only once her son was older. "When I paint St. Vincent," she says now, "I know I belong there." Then there's Mayumi Oda, born in Japan just after the Second World War, whose childhood act of stopping her mother from committing suicide is the foundation of both her art and her anti-nuke activism.
The documentary's fifth character has the most active ongoing story, but it's a distraction from the main focus and thrust of the film. Angela Williams works with her husband as a co-pastor at their church, and has just started working in professional musical theatre. We see her juggle auditions in New York and rehearse for a regional production of Aida, which take a toll on her health and family, particularly on her marriage.
As Martin says toward the end the film, the art world and society need an economic and, more importantly, psychological shift to change conditions for and attitudes toward female artists. Who Does She Think She Is? provides some solid fodder to fuel the discussion.
Director Pamela Tanner Boll will take part in a panel discussion of the film after each of its Toronto showings (which are today at 6:30 p.m., Saturday at 4 p.m. and Sunday at 11 a.m.) at the Revue Cinema, 400 Roncesvalles Ave. Who Does She Think She Is? also shows in Ottawa on March 8 and 9; Montreal on March 14 and 15; and Vancouver on April 17 and 18.
