Peter Wollen

Synopsis:
A complex treatise exploring feminism, motherhood and sexual difference in seven numbered chapters. Headings are: Opening Pages; Laura Talking; Stones; Louise’s Story Told in 13 Shots; Acrobats; Laura Listening; Puzzle ending.Read More »

”[The film] was planned to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Amy Johnson’s epic solo flight to Australia in 1930—to commemorate it and to comment on it. AMY! is neither a drama nor a portrait in the conventional sense, but an assembly of sounds and images which evoke the subject through historic documents and relics, re-enactments and metaphors. The film also asks the underlying question: What is a heroine? We want to enquire into the idea and image of the heroine, not in an explicitly theoretical way—though the film has a theoretical background—but by putting fragments on display to suggest both the frustrations from which heroism is born and to which it is condemned, and at the same time something of the exhilaration it provides for the heroine herself and for others. Formally, our points of reference are Maya Deren and Gertrude Stein.” (Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen)Read More »

Quote:
A robot messenger (Tilda Swinton) is sent to earth to appeal to humans to live in peace. Originally designed to go to MIT, by mistake she ends up in Amman, Jordan during the Black September riots of 1970. Sullivan, a British journalist, (Bill Paterson) comes to her aid when she is found wandering without papers following a bombing and grants her refuge in his hotel room. But there she tells him she is a robot, sent as a peace envoy from another planet. He is not sure whether to believe her story or not, but finds her unusual view of the world appealing. They examine the human condition in a series of incredibly insightful and entertaining conversations.Read More »

AMY! is neither a drama not a portrait in the conventional sense, but an assembly of sounds and images which evoke the subject through historic documents and relics, re-enactments and metaphors. The film also asks an underlying question; what is a heroine? We want to enquire into the idea and image of the heroine, not in an explicitly theoretical way, though the film has a theoretical background, but by putting fragments on display to suggest both the frustrations from which heroism is born and to which it is condemned, and at the same time something of the exhilaration it provides for the heroine herself and for others. Formally, our points of reference are Maya Deren and Gertrude Stein.Read More »