Women Without Men: Absence and Loss in the Latest 225 Film Club
Charlotte Riley in Wild Animal (Dir. Beth Park)
There’s a scene partway through Yasmin Afifi’s short film, Jellyfish and Lobster, in which the character Grace receives a telephone call from her son.
‘You remembered you’ve still got a mum?’, she asks, only to hear him reply that he won’t be visiting for weeks. Time passes; he does not reappear. At first glance, this story of a woman faced with the prospect of a lonely death doesn’t have many overt similarities with the fourteen other short films in this years’ selection for Rita Osei’s 225 Film Club. But the moment of absence that Afifi’s film portrays is one of the unexpected common threads that makes this selection of short films so memorable.
Amongst her other achievements, Rita premiered her debut feature, Bliss!, at the 70th Edinburgh International Film Festival, and published the poetry anthology #WOMAN Remapping The Territory Our Way in 2018. A year before her anthology’s release, the #MeToo movement came to prominence in 2017, an occurrence which would catalyse her decision to create the 225 Film Club. Named in honour of the number of female directors – who were introduced to each other by an email error – the club seeks to shine a light on female and non-binary excellence in film direction. This is the sixth successive year Rita is hosting the Club, which is not only a festival screening for short films, but seeks to provide support to these directors after each event concludes.
Flo Wilson in Jellyfish and Lobster (Dir. Yasmin Afifi)
In this year’s selection, unseen characters make their presence felt: whether benevolent, malign... or neither. In Dustlight, a grieving daughter is comforted by the spirit of her departed mother. The protagonist of Re-Live, must move on, both metaphorically and physically, from a man who violently assaulted her. Meanwhile, in Pigs, the wishes of a patriarch from beyond the grave are pivotal to drama in the short. The trauma of losing a child is central to the plot in both Returned and Lullaby. The film Ceres demonstrates another theme of loss through an innovative reimagining of ancient Roman myth as it adapts the story of Proserpina, Ceres’ daughter, who is cursed to spend half of the year in the underworld, weaving it into a present-day story about estrangement and family conflict.
Juliet Stevenson in Ceres (Dir. Amelia Sears)
So what happens when it is not individuals who are absent, but a character’s life that is missing order, context, or structure? Just five minutes long and shot mostly in one room, Discord recalls Samuel Beckett’s minimalistic one-act play Endgame, reimagined with a piano teacher and student. Likewise, after the final reveal of Wild Animal, I was left uneasy about the key character, Mallory, as this dreamlike narrative of postpartum psychosis breaks down the boundaries between imagination and the uncertainty about her true circumstances.
Despite how numerous shorts in the Club deal with serious and tragic subjects, the absences they portray do not have to be negative. Take the more light-hearted AV Van, in which references to Scooby-Doo, American Psycho and The Big Lebowski colour the narrative. In Sister Wives, a story about a patriarchal religious cult, it is only with the departure of the husband that the titular wives can discover the possibility of personal freedom. It’s a reminder that absence does not have to be traumatic, it can be taken positively or as is. The final short I watched embodied that.
Dark comedy Sleepyhead introduced me to Rae, who is facing an imminent disappearance of the most important things in her life: her friends, her education, her ability to physically move. However, much like A.V. Van, this is a set of circumstances which are played out with a lighter touch, making for a moving depiction of how its protagonist comes to terms with her disability.
AV Van (Dir. Morayo Akandé)
This year's selection seems to coalesce around themes of absence and loss. Magic, apparitions, hallucinations, flashbacks, and visions of the future are all harnessed to make salient points about the myriad issues 21st-century women face. One wonders why this thread runs through the projects, and what in our society might be missing? In platforming shorts by female and non-binary directors, 225 Film Club allows us to ponder the gaps in filmmaking – and the sheer range of ways these filmmakers have found to fill them.
Images courtesy of 225 Film Club.
To learn more about these films and their directors, visit 225 Film Club’s Instagram account.
This article references the following short films:
Jellyfish and Lobster [Dir. Yasmin Afifi]
Dustlight [Dir. Cryssanthi Kouri]
Re-Live [Dir. Lotus Hannon]
Pigs [Dir. Julia Jackman]
Returned [Dir. Janet Marret]
Lullaby [Dir. Chi Thai]
Ceres [ Dir. Amelia Sears]
Discord [Dir. Jen Lim]
Wild Animal [Dir. Beth Park]
AV Van [Dir. Morayo Akandé]
Sister Wives [Dir. Louisa Connolly-Burnham]
Sleepyhead [Dir. Milly Garnier]