'Film Course: Women Make Film III' consists of two sixty-minute screenings, each followed by a discussion with a filmmaker and a critic.

The third of seven classes examines films about children, surrealism, and dreams, and looks at how directors employ cinematic techniques such as editing and choosing camera angles. This session features screenings of six chapters from Mark Cousin’s documentary Women Make Film.

The first chapter, ‘Adult/Child’, explores the connection and bond between children and adults as depicted in films from across geography and time. ‘Economy’ looks at the fragments of a cinematic picture, going beyond spare and evocative visuals. Next, ‘Editing’ summarises how filmmakers connect or disconnect visuals, emotions, events, characters, and stories.

In ‘POV’, Cousins investigates the role of point-of-view shots to demonstrate psychological intimacy. ‘Close Up’ is about the power of the camera transforming itself into a microscope, a psychological zoom, or an element of abstraction to communicate finer details. The last chapter, ‘Surrealism and Dream’, sheds light on how filmmakers switch into, reveal, and replicate the inner workings of the subconscious mind in films and silent movies.

In this film class, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Ruby Yang and veteran writer and critic Long Tin will comment on Mark Cousins’ views on stories of adult and child, and surrealism and dreams besides the technique of film editing. They will draw examples from Yang’s My Voice, My Life (2014), and Ritoma (2018), as well as a work by Swedish artist and filmmaker Gunvor Nelson. Long Tin will focus on the art of economy in documentary filmmaking, whether addition or subtraction is the essence of editing, and the role of the female gaze through point of view.