Swollen stigma

Film made by Sarah Pucill in 1998. Performed by Jane Pucill y Kate Stephens.

Synopsis
Swollen stigma nourishes the fantasy of its protagonist’s inner life and proposes a lesbian imaginary which takes leap into risk and displacement. The film opens with an entranced seated woman working her fingers through a single strand of hair and proceeds to explore her lived imaginary in which desire and fear interlace. She re-visions different moments in time which are haunted by an absent lover. Like a playful fairy princess, this lover appears upside down in an armchair, hanging legs-down from the ceiling, playing dead on the floor, or eating roses; her body continuously permeates the woman’s reality. The film’s shifting points of view jump between the protagonist, fantasy spaces and her lover, making an internal world leak into what is external with the fluidity of blood into water.

Funded by the Arts Council.

Film notes
'A visual, surrealistic narrative of a woman travelling both literally and psychically through an interior space of several rooms. Memories, or fantasies, of another woman fill her imaginary space. Femininity, as a construction, is explored within a lesbian context where an assertion of lesbian symbolic imagery is created.

Author: 

Year: 

1998
Technical data

Original format: 

16mm

Speed: 

24FPS

Aspect ratio: 

1.37:1

Colour: 

Colour

Sound: 

Optical

Length: 

21 minutes

Distribution/sales: 

Copies for rent:
LUX
Light Cone
Canyon Cinema
Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre
*

Sales:

Swollen stigma is included in the DVD compilation Sarah Pucill - Swollen Stigma.

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