A PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE1989/1999
Three women telling their own stories in a non-narrative, non-documentary form. How do inner conflicts of intimacy, sexual need, and violent impulses emerge in personal relationships? The evidence includes testimonies describing experiences of sexuality, love relationships, births, illegal abortions, adolescence as a Jew in revolutionary Russia and in the Protestant US Midwest. Private anecdotes illuminate societal realities of race, culture and gender. My “story” contributed contradictory images: the archaic Florida swamp, the elegant forms of European medieval architecture, Congress and Anita Hill, the mermaids of Weekie Wachee, victim heroines of European opera, abstract color and light explorations. Bits of 1950s educational films testify to scientific belief in cause and effect and stupefying patriarchal convictions of “how to” grow up well, avoid “going bad” and get a date for the prom.
Within these images and others, I hope to find the possibilities of creating symbolic, abstract, and deductive relationships for the film’s central issues. When combined with the sound texts (and not in any redundant, or narrative manner, rather, continuing the multiple theme/parallel editing of the images) I hope to explore those areas where we all learn about submission/dominance in personal relationships, and inner conflicts of intimacy, sexual need, and violent impulses.
The sound also involves several layers. An “objective”, social representation of these issues will be presented by the reading of selections of actual newspaper articles, which describe details of wife-beating, female circumcision in Africa, general violence against women, and rape trial testimonies. A “personal” layer will include selections from recorded testimonies of three women, telling their life stories, with reference to love.
