Experimental Documentary
In this highly personal and visually evocative testimonial, the filmmaker presents their sister’s triumphal recovery from the emotional and physical scars of breast cancer. Incorporating poetry, experimental video and Super-8 montage, this moving piece looks at the myth of Amazonian women, and compares their battles to the war being waged against breast cancer.
2 minute excerpt
Duration: 8 minutes
Year: 2001
Director: Nandini Sikand
Writer: Chandana Sikand
Screenings
Museum of Modern Art, 2003.
Women of Color Film Festival, New Orleans, LA 2003.
Zanzibar International Film Festival, 2003.
Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Minneapolis, MN, 2002.
Bryn Mawr Film Festival, 2002.
Artwallah, Los Angeles, 2002.
4th Belo Horizonte International TIM Short Film Festival, Brazil, 2002.
SAJA Non-Fiction Film Festival, New York City, 2002.
25th Asian American Film Festival, New York City 2002.
Georgetown Independent Film Festival, 2002.
The Substation, Singapore, 2002.
The Millennium, New York City 2002.
Pioneer Theatre, New York City 2002.
Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films in Bilbao, Spain, 2002.
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 2002.
The Metropolitan Medical Anthropology Association, CUNY Graduate Center, New York City, 2002.
Reellife: Women, Film, Conversation at College of Santa Fe, NM, 2002.
Women & Film Festival at Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, 2002.
Cinema Paradise Film Festival in Honolulu, HI, 2002.
Accolades
Second Prize in experimental section
Imaginaria: 11th International Lesbian Film Festival in Bologna, Italy, 2003.
Grant
New York State Council on the Arts, 2002.
“… a visually stunning video, shuttling between chillingly sharp digital photography and warm, poignant, almost pointalist images… Evocative of both individual memory and the history of gendered bodies, it claims, in its short length, both the Lyric and the Manifesto, as it engages questions of breast cancer.”
Joseph Boles, Northern Arizona University
“…provides a new way to imagine the lives of those in pain with ongoing serious illnesses. It offers a textured imagery of crowds and cities and struggle, of fighting and nobility it’s not about being a victim. Illness brings pain and loss, but it is also full of life.”
Julia Lesage, English Dept, University of Oregon