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

The fourth of seven classes explores the themes of bodies, sex, religion, and home through the compelling lens of the world’s greatest women directors. This session features screenings of five chapters from Mark Cousins’ documentary Women Make Film.

‘Bodies’ questions how women directors have filmed it and explores the symbolism of nakedness and its relations with religion, gender and class. The chapter transitions into ‘Sex’, examining the many ways in which it is anticipated and imagined; its complexity in acknowledging control and submission; and its contrasting wariness which is often seen as demonic.

In ‘Home’, Cousins examines the theme of the dream home from an immobile star of domestic life to clips that depict homelessness and safety, destruction and reconstruction. ‘Religion’ begins with four scenes of genuine religious intensity and ends with one of the boldest films about rejecting religious dogma. Finally, ‘Work’ reminds us of work ethos; the repetitive yet rewarding nature of domestic work; and the pleasure, purpose, or dignity we may find at a workplace.

In this film class, Stanley Kwan, director of Rouge (1988) and Centre Stage (1991), and veteran critic / independent filmmaker Bryan Chang, discuss Mark Cousins’ exploration of bodies, sex, and home. The speakers will draw examples from Kwan’s Still Love You After All These (1997) on the fascination with male bodies, Hold You Tight (1998) on the shooting of sex scenes, and Lan Yu (2001) on home and family, a theme which is viewed differently than what we may find in the queer films from the West.