Future of Lesbian Films1/30/2022 As a screenwriter of documentaries on love, emotions, and sexuality and screenwriter of films besides that I am a philosopher of love and sexuality, an editor and many more I am thrilled to see a new wave of lesbian films, such as Carol, Summertime, Women's Lake, and others but what I still miss is that we haven't seen films that present a truly happy long term lesbian love, love between elder lesbians and spiritual dimensions of lesbian love yet. I have watched many lesbian films over the period of 20 years and I can not remember a single film that has presented, described or talked about lesbian love in a form of spiritual and human evolvement and evolution. I can not remember a film about a happy peaceful long term lesbian love either or a decent portrayal of love between elder lesbians. I saw however a great deal of lousy lesbian films on the part of writing (It is in the Water, Bar Girls, Claire of the Moon ...), imitating heterosexual stereotypes or using lesbians to add a sort of juicy spice to film, i.e. to leading straight/bisexual female role (Femme Fatale, Laurel Canyon, Awol ...), weird films on the part of the presentation (Mango kiss, April's Shower ...), low-cost production films that resulted in bad acting and screening (Goodbye Emma Jo, Thin Ice ...), lesbians preying for their victims and sucking the life out of them or using and domineering them for their pleasure (Hunger, The Vampire Lovers, Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant) and very sad and depressing on the part of how society has perceived the value of lesbian love as something worthless, expendable, abominable and horrible due to societal perception of homosexuality which influenced lesbians themselves (The Children's Hour, Lost and Delirious, Boys don't Cry ...). We are fed up with lesbian love stories that are overly tragic, overly sad and violent. It can be argued it is also because all great love stories, even heterosexual ones, like Rome and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Juliet and Saint Preux, are tragic and sad love stories. Well, if that was true for lesbians they would not die at such a high rate in such a violent manner for no noble, higher, spiritual cause. Lesbians in films usually do not die for moral, philosophical, or sacred reasons but mostly for reasons showing how their existence is worthless, forbidden, immoral, sinful, and most of all expendable. Namely, how can be a lesbian love used (and what) for in patriarchal society (in a male and combative competitive ego world where female is usually seen merely as a resourceful means of producing more male combative, competitive egos)? None. Ergo, she is useless thus worth only killing her off as something redundant yet usable for a very short of time for the sake of the story which is clearly seen in the long history of lesbian film character(s). For this reason I as a philosopher of love and sexuality and screenwriter of films and documentaries of the same topics I wish to see a new concept of love presented on a big screen: I truly wish and desire for love stories that present a happy peaceful love; love that has a potential to be a long-term and at the same time successful, fulfilling and happy and also stories of love between adults or elder lesbians not only teenagers and adolescents and very importantly also something with deep, lasting love in the level of sacred and divine. As we can see throughout history, male homosexual love has been endowed with spiritual, holy and noble perceptions of love between two men since the beginnings of times, such as in the epic story of Gilgamesh or even more famous Plato's Symposium and Phaedo, Pindar's Theoxenus ode or Vergil's book 5 of the Aeneid and even immortalized in opera's like Handels opera L'Oreste. Yet lesbian love has never been described in such elevating spiritual or soulful words as for instance Aristotle wrote of love between Alexander the Great and general Hephaestion as“one soul abiding in two bodies.“ And where are lesbian films such as Wang Kar Wai's love films In the Mood for Love and 2046; films that deeply question and explore the notion of human desire and importance of memories, such as Tarkovsky's Stalker, Solaris and Nostalghia, films of a big unrequited love such as Ophulus's Letter from Unknown Woman, films about the human mind and its big, incredible achievements like Apted's Enigma or Howard's Beautiful Mind, films that depicted and unrevealed the landscapes and dynamics of the human psyche such as Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Persona and Silence, Ozu's films, such as Floating Weeds, Late Spring and Good Morning and Kurosava's Dreams and Rashamon to name a few? As I started this essay by stating that I long for brilliant lesbian films that will portray big, long-lasting and sacred lesbian love between two adult women I am adding to this also films that will portray a landscape of woman's desire not only desire for another woman but also as a human desire, for films that would explore the vastness of woman's memories, the complexity of woman's psyche, her dreams, and her brilliant mind, the search for the truth and justice and the importance of woman's vocation and affording life she (and the way she) wishes and to love whom she desires, especially if that includes another woman! It seems that we have a long way to the greatness and entirety of lesbian film making in all areas of woman's and/or lesbian's life but we can achieve that first by depicting what we wish, desire, want, and need and then carrying out that in great film artworks.
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Katarina Majerholdphilsopher, lesbian, editor Archives
May 2023
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