A Lesbian Collective Aesthetic:
Making and Teaching The Owls

Page 5 of 6

Thus, in this writing about The Owls, “lesbian cinema” is understood to encompass the following elements: cinema about lesbians (by men or straight women), by lesbians (working in the many roles of film production from director to costumer), or for lesbians; cinema that creates a lesbian gaze (looks from the point of view of a lesbian), is itself about lesbian cinema or queer theory, or strives to create a lesbian aesthetic (a unique style to encompass some or all of the above elements). In The Owls, our collective filmmaking process seeks to achieve all of the definitive qualities listed above: a film by, for, and about lesbians and queers, utilizing new forms while relying upon reflexivity, theory, and inventive looks. Lesbian cinema comes from a need to see images of the complexity of our lives; a belief that film is well-suited for this political and personal project; and a longing to see reflected on the screen our unique journeys, our unconventional lives, the diversity within our community, and our radical politics and practices. According to Sarah Schulman (after she read a draft of this article), given that so little lesbian-made representation exists, this “justifies the extreme measures necessary to break through the censorship. But these conditions are not desirable.” Digital production and distribution allow us to break through cultural censorship at a scale unprecedented in cinema’s history. In other writing (about YouTube),5 I have expressed dismay that our recent DIY revolution has mostly led to paltry efforts in mediamaking, primarily attuned to commercial culture and undertheorized self-expression. This is where this essay’s (and The Owls’) commitment to both collectivity and education comes in. Tools alone (even the Master’s) do not a revolution make. We need to talk together, so as to stretch and challenge each other, then to read and watch, debate, and support each other, so as to make our best attempts at a lesbian cinema attuned to the multiple needs of our community.

Q & A at the Berlinale, part 2
Featuring: V.S. Brodie, actor; Cheryl Dunye, director, producer, actor; Agusta Einarsdottir, producer and editor; Candi Guterres, producer and production design; Alexandra Juhasz, producer; Sarah Schulman, screenwriter [7:50]

Collective Practice, Lesbian Aesthetics, and Teaching

I am certain that viewers of mainstream cinema (queer or straight, no matter) will find our film provocative, original, erudite, and unconventional. As hard as this may be to understand, the film is not for a generic (lesbian) audience. It is not supposed to be easy, or routine, or classic, and even if it is at times fun it should also be hard: it needs (collective) work to be best understood and enjoyed. While The Owls has been dismissed in reviews for being academic, having a “slight whiff of the women’s studies seminar room about it,” I’ve attempted to model that this is something we are proud of: a mark of our commitment to the convergences of avant-garde form, political content, collective process, and lesbian culture. Thoughtful, educated, political, and self-critical artists understand our work in conversation with but as a different form from scholarship or theory. We’re making (and watching) film after all! But, then again, The Owls feels little like mainstream cinema (although it refers to it), was made with a different production model, and has a different heart. We hoped to perhaps pay ourselves back but never to make money. We wanted to have fun together. We planned to model a possibility for the production of queer low-budget cinema. We wanted to make a critical intervention into (lesbian) film style and history. Thus, The Owls has a complicated form (moving from documentary to fiction, from quotation to innovation), an unhappy and inconclusive ending, breaks its own storyline, and is rooted in our collectively expressed dark emotions, unhappy resolutions, and angry eruptions about lesbian identity, politics, and cinema.