Directed by Lisa Cholodenko • 1998 • United States
Starring Radha Mitchell, Gabriel Mann, Ally Sheedy
In a revelatory performance, Ally Sheedy stars in writer-director Lisa Cholodenko’s debut feature, a wry and incisive look at the politics of the New York art scene wrapped in the guise of an emotionally spiky queer romance. When Lucy Berliner (Sheedy), a once prominent photographer who has retreated into a life of heroin abuse with her faded-actress lover (Patricia Clarkson), is rediscovered by Syd (Radha Mitchell), an up-and-coming editor at a photography magazine, professional ambition and personal attraction become dangerously entwined. Stripping away art-world glamour to tell a seductive yet troubling story of complicated human connection, HIGH ART stands as an essential work of both queer and 1990s independent cinema.
Up Next in Female Gaze: Women Directors + Women Cinematographers
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Beau travail
Directed by Claire Denis • 1999 • France
Starring Denis Lavant, Michel Subor, Grégoire ColinWith her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd, Sailor,” Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked ...
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La captive
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 2000 • Belgium, France
Starring Sylvie Testud, Stanislas Merhar, Olivia BonamyAdapting the fifth volume of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” Chantal Akerman transforms the material into a mesmerizing study of voyeurism, control, and sexual obsession centere...
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Tomboy
Directed by Céline Sciamma • 2011 • France
Starring Zoé Héran, Malonn Lévana, Jeanne DissonTOMBOY tells the story of ten-year-old Laure (played by the amazing Zoé Héran) who moves to the suburbs and decides to pass as a boy among the pack of neighborhood kids. As “Mickäel” she catches the atten...
