Isabel Fondevila caught up with Mallary Abel, Brenda Contreras and Kelly Pendergrast, and had a chance to ask them about ATA’s new women-made film series.
What inspire the Gaze series and why did you call it Gaze?
Mallary: GAZE simply came from the aspiration to start a Women’s film festival. It took about a year and a half to really flesh out what our plan was, and we also wanted to find more female curators to work with. I think all of us have different reasons for working towards, or highlighting a “strictly women’s” film festival. I often find that films made by women are extremely delicate. I can relate to that.
We called it GAZE because, well, every film has a “gaze.” A lot of mainstream cinema, I believe, has a male gaze. To me, it’s sort of a pun on that. But this is definitely not a male gaze kind of film series.
Brenda: The name GAZE is a spin on the concept of the male gaze. In the GAZE film series, the empowered ones are the female artists showing us their point of view. Sadly, I believe the inspiration comes behind a strong feeling of frustration with the lack of female films being programmed.
Kelly: We wanted something catchy and short that would work design-wise, on a website or poster. We were also interested in indicating that the series would be dealing with point of view, and a possibly unusual point of view, without being overbearing on the “women’s film” angle, and making sure to avoid exclusionary language.
