Dirty Dancing (1987)The BFI today announces details of Female Desire on Screen, a collection of films and events running on BFI Player and BFI YouTube from Friday 24 April. Female Desire on Screen will seek to flip the switch on a century of the male gaze and find space for women’s own lust and sexual expression in film; from classics of world cinema such as Belle de jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967) to films which explore the complicated relationship between fantasy, feminism, and desire, such as In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003). Also included are queer love stories like Bound (Wachowski Sisters, 1996) and The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996), tales of teen sexual awakening like The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 2014) and beloved films starring male pin-ups and matinee idols like Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolino, 1987).
Alongside films on BFI Player, BFI YouTube will be home to a number of free special events and discussions, including the first in a series of three live online events with Girls on Film, the film review podcast from a female perspective, hosted by film critic and broadcaster Anna Smith.
Born out of a season originally scheduled to run at BFI Southbank in April, this new online collection and events programme also coincides with the publishing of a new book of essays She Found It at the Movies – Women Writers on Sex, Desire and Cinema, edited by film and culture writer, Christina Newland, who has also programmed Female Desire on Screen. A number of contributors to She Found It at the Movies will also take part in discussions as part of the events programme – including Simran Hans, Catherine Bray and Willow Catelyn Maclay.
Movies have long influenced the way we think about sex. For women, those formative crushes often give us room to think about our more unspoken desires or preferences in a safe environment, communing with the fiction playing out on screen. For some women (including me) it’s a rare comfortable space to explore a relationship with desire. Films are a dream space, allowing room for elaborate sexual fantasia neither as blunt nor as frowned upon as pornography. It’s the reason why fanfiction exists, why teen pinups and matinee idols are reliable bellwethers for every generation’s adolescence. From Rudolph Valentino to Marilyn Monroe to Chris Hemsworth, they’ve been with us for a century.”Female Desire on Screen programmer Christina Newland, in She Found It at the Movies
Special online events on BFI YouTube
Female Desire on Screen will include a number of special online events on BFI YouTube to complement the collection, with more events to be announced soon:
- The Girls on Film podcast will devote a special episode to Female Desire on Screen on Tuesday 5 May at 18:30. In advance of the show, host Anna Smith asks viewers to share a film that was a sexual awakening for them and discusses these with Christina Newland and other contributors; the show will feature short readings, lively discussion and recommendations for classic films that explore and invite desire.
- The Girls on Film event is the first in a series, with two more events coming soon.
- To launch the collection, a live watch-a-long of The Diary of a Teenage Girl (available to rent on BFI Player) with programmer Christina Newland live blogging on bfi.org.uk from 19:00 on Friday 24 April.
- Discussion about In the Cut with Christina Newland and film critic Simran Hans on Wednesday 29 April at 19:00.
- Discussion about Bound with Christina Newland, writer and director Catherine Bray and writer and film critic Willow Catelyn Maclay on Wednesday 6 May at 19:00.
Female Desire on Screen will seek to encourage discussion about the female viewers’ relationship with movie-going, welcoming female and female identifying audiences to experience a sex-positive examination of the movies, taking pleasure in shamelessly ogling their onscreen desire and finding joyous and consensual pleasure in the female gaze.
Female Desire On Screen launches on BFI Player and BFI YouTube from Friday 24 April.
She Found It at the Movies – Women Writers on Sex, Desire and Cinema, published by Red Press, is out now.