An early feminist filmmaker, Germaine Dulac was an integral part of the ’20s French avant garde movement. Women’s voices are felt from behind the camera, as well as in front of it, and The Seashell and the Clergyman – a silent film dealing with male obsession through a surrealist and experimental form – speaks volumes of the director’s point of view. The live film score contributes a fresh and real-time voice to this 1928 masterpiece.

The Seashell and the Clergyman is paired with a classic of recent feminist counter-culture, starring artistic icon of our time Lydia Lunch. In opposition to Dulac’s silent films, Lunch speaks ad nauseum in Black Box and narrates with a vicious anger, a voice of resistance and resilience. Artistic film occupies a special place within feminist visual culture and this double bill gives a taste of something other than the ubiquitous mainstream narrative.

[& short Spirit Away, Betina Kuntzsch ]