Don't Call Me Honey: Fierce Women of Film coming in July

Some of the baddest, fiercest women ever seen on screen are the focus of Don’t Call Me Honey: Fierce Women of Film, the Wexner Center’s summer film series. The 17-film series considers “fierce” in all its forms and features work from across all eras by trailblazing filmmakers, writers, and actors such as Chantal Akerman, Ida Lupino, Dorothy Arzner, Ava DuVernay, Sigourney Weaver, Pam Grier, and many more. Don’t Call Me Honey begins Thursday, July 7.

David Filipi, organizer, cocurator of the series, and director of Film/Video at the Wex, notes, “To guarantee that this series is as representative of as many points of view as possible, we reached out to an extraordinary array of artists, scholars, and curators to cocurate this series with us. In doing so, we ensured that Don’t Call Me Honey has a lineup of incredible variety, across genre and cinema history.”

Jennifer Lange, curator of the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Studio Program and cocurator of Don’t Call Me Honey, says, “The lack of opportunities for women and women of color in Hollywood has been one of the most important issues facing the field for decades, but, recently, is finally getting more and more attention in both the press and industry. We feel the Wex has always been at the forefront in supporting women filmmakers, both on the screen and in our post-production studio, and this series is a terrific way to highlight the Wex’s mission of sharing and celebrating the work of a diverse range of voices and visions.”

The cocruators are: Vera Brunner-Sung (Filmmaker & Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre, The Ohio State University), Jennifer Lange (Curator of the Film/Video Studio Program, Wexner Center for the Arts), Laura Larson (Artist, Associate Professor of Photography & Integrated Media, Ohio University), Sandra Macpherson (Associate Professor, Department of English, The Ohio State University), April Martin (Filmmaker & Artivist, Oakland), Astria Suparak (Artist & Curator, Oakland), and David Filipi (Wexner Center for the Arts).

RELATED EVENTS

The Box video space will also focus on the fierce this summer by screening The Devil Inside by Jennifer Reeder in July and Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman by Dara Birnbaum. Admission to the Box is free during regular Wexner Center hours.

Guests can also see a display of artwork from the Friday Foster comic strip, on view throughout the run of the series, courtesy of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

Visitor information: Unless otherwise noted, all films will be held at the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Theater, 1871 N. High St., and all screenings start at 7 pm.

Tickets for each screening or double feature are $8 for general public; $6 for Wexner Center members, students, and senior citizens. For double features, the single ticket price gives patrons access to both films on the bill for no additional charge.

The schedule follows.

Thu, July 7 | 7 pm
New Restoration!
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
(Chantal Akerman, 1975)

The late Chantal Akerman gained international acclaim in 1975 with Jeanne Dielman, one of the rare films to almost instantly enter the canon of global postwar cinema. Delphine Seyrig inhabits the tile role in on of modern cinema’s most hypnotic performances. (201 mins., DCP)

Fri, July 8 | 7 pm
North Country (Niki Caro, 2006)

Based upon a real life incident, North Country stars Charlize Theron as a woman who finds work in a mine in Minnesota’s Iron Range after leaving her abusive husband with her two kids in tow where she experiences an intolerable environment with daily bouts of sexual harassment leading her to file a landmark suit against the mine’s owners. (126 mins., 35mm)

Sat, July 9 | 7 pm
Director’s cut
Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)

In Aliens, Lt. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is found floating through space in cryogenic stasis 57 years after surviving her first alien encounter on the Nostromo. Back on Earth, she is quickly charged with leading a team of marines back to moon LV-426, where she first encountered alien eggs decades earlier, to discover why communication has been cut off with the colony there. This Director’s Cut contains more than 15 minutes of footage cut from the original theatrical version, much of it devoted to developing Ripley’s character. (137 mins., DCP)

Tue, July 12
Double Feature
Je tu il elle (Chantal Akerman, 1975) | 7 pm
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983) | 8:40 pm

Akerman’s first feature and considered by many to be her most sexually daring, Je tu il elle stars Akerman as a young woman coping with a breakup alone in her apartment. (86 mins., DCP)

One of the landmark indie films of the 1980s, Born in Flames is a dystopian tale set in the then not-too-distant-future of a feminist insurgency against the anti-women/anti-minority government. Screening in a new restoration. (90 mins., 35mm)

Born in Flames is preserved by Anthology Film Archives with restoration funding by The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation. Laboratory services by Video and Film Solutions and Audio Mechanics.

Thu, July 14
Double Feature
Friday Foster (Arthur Marks, 1975) | 7 pm
Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973) | 8:40 pm

Blaxploitation icon Pam Grier is Friday Foster, a model turned photographer who gets too involved in even the most dangerous stories to which she is assigned. Based on Jim Lawrence’s newspaper strip of the same name, the first to feature an African American woman as the main character. (89 mins., 35mm)

In Coffy, Pam Grier plays a nurse-turned-vigilante bent on raining vengeance on the underworld of pimps, dealers, and mob bosses she blames for getting her sister hooked on drugs. (91 mins., 35mm)

Thu, July 21 | 7 pm
The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)

The Babadook follows a widow and young son who find themselves tormented by a creepy monster that has materialized from a child’s pop-up book. A box office dud upon its initial release in Australia, The Babadook became a critic and audience favorite after screening at Sundance. (94 mins., DCP)
Make it a double dose of terror and see Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho on our outdoor big screen as part of the Wex Drive-In.

Thu, July 28
Double Feature
Fire (Deepa Mehta, 1996) | 7 pm
Wildness (Wu Tsang, 2012) | 9 pm

The first installment in Mehta’s “Elements Trilogy,” Fire follows two young women unhappily married to brothers who begin to emotionally gravitate to one another, forming a “forbidden” love and threatening to pull the entire family apart. One of the first mainstream Indian films to depict a lesbian relationship. (108 mins., 35mm)

Wildness documents the Los Angeles trans bar Silver Platter, and examines the evolving dynamic when a group of artists begin holding a performance night in the traditionally Latin LGBT bar. Wildness received post-production support from the Wex’s Film/Video Studio Program. (74 mins., HD video)

Thu, Aug 4
Double Feature
Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970) | 7 pm
Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010) | 8:50 pm

One of the few American films directed by a woman to be theatrically released in the early 1970s, Barbara Loden’s Wanda is an authentic, verité-style vision of Middle America. Loden, a former model and actress who appeared in a handful of husband Elia Kazan’s productions, was an unlikely candidate to direct what many consider one of the greatest indie films ever made. (102 mins., 35mm)

Wanda print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

In Winter’s Bone, Jennifer Lawrence plays a young woman forced to care for her younger siblings, her mentally ill mother and criminal father. When her father disappears, she learns he has put their house up as bond, sending her into the meth underworld of the Ozarks to bring him back. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film at the Sundance Film Festival. (100 mins., 35mm)

Thu, Aug 11
Double feature
The Bigamist (Ida Lupino, 1953) | 7 pm
Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940) | 8:30 pm

A double-bill of films by pioneering Hollywood directors! Actress-turned-director/producer Ida Lupino was the only woman working within the Hollywood studio system of the 1950s. In The Bigamist, Lupino directs herself along with Joan Fontaine and Edmund Gwenn in a noir-ish tale of a man who suddenly finds domestic responsibility tugging at him from two directions. The Bigamist print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. (80 mins., 35mm)  

The great Dorothy Arzner enjoyed a Hollywood career as a director that spanned the silent era through the early 1940s. Perhaps Arzner’s best-known film, Dance, Girl, Dance stars Lucille Ball as a sexy burlesque dancer and Maureen O’Hara as a classically trained ballerina who take very different paths to success and romance while maintaining their own ideals about feminist integrity. Named to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2007. (90 mins., 35mm)

Thu, Aug 18 | 7 pm
I Will Follow (Ava DuVernay, 2010)

The first feature by Selma director Ava Duvernay, I Will Follow stars Salli Richardson-Whitfield as a woman who has spent the last year caring for her aunt (Beverly Todd) who just died of cancer. Unfolding over the course of one day, I Will Follow explores the emotional nuances around the death of a loved one as people (movers, friends, family members) move through the house, each with a unique relationship with the two women. (88 mins., DCP)

Sat, Aug 27
Double feature
Spy (Paul Feig, 2015) | 7 pm
Haywire (Steven Soderbergh, 2011) | 9:10 pm
Free to OSU students with Buck ID

Upending genre conventions in hilarious fashion every step of the way, Spy stars Melissa McCarthy as a desk-bound CIA worker who is thrown into field action after top agent Jude Law is killed. (120 mins., DCP)

Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, former MMA fighter Gina Carano stars as special ops agent-for-hire who finds herself in the middle of a mission where she might be the hunted instead of the hunter. With Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, and Ewan McGregor. (93 mins., 35mm)