FemDom Rule

Precursor to Mexico’s 1950s/60s sci-fi craze, the 1945 art deco fantasy film, 'The Stronger Sex' (El Sexo Fuerte), directed by Emilio Gómez Muriel, tells the story of an unsuspecting  shipwrecked cattle rancher, Adán, from Guadalajara and his Spanish bullfighter friend, Curro, who wash up on the shores of the Kingdom of Eden.

This island utopia is ruled by beautiful Amazonians with pointy shoulder pads who keep their harems of men under control using cardboard ray-guns. The charro and his friend end up being slaves to the Female Dominating sex.

In the film’s rousing plot, Adán, is sold at a slave auction, becomes the Queen's manicurist, and then seduces the ruler. Tequila shots, a scantily clad female mariachi band, and a coup d'état swiftly ensue. 

Images courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Streetlife

Robert Doisneau (1912 - 1994) was one of France’s most popular and prolific reportage photographers, noted for his poetic approach to street photography.

Originally trained as a lithographer, in 1929 Doisneau embraced a new interest as a self-taught photographer becoming, along with Henri Cartier-Bresson, a pioneer of photojournalism.

“I took a mischievous pleasure in spotlighting society’s rejects, 
in both the people I took and my choice of backgrounds.”

He regarded his home city of Paris as a theatre and it is the ordinary people who take centre stage in his photography. Walking the streets of the City of Light of the last century, he humourously, and with great empathy, documented the surreal in everyday life; the amusing juxtaposition, the foibles of human nature, all captured by an artist who was charmed by his subjects.

“One of the greatest joys of my career has been to see and speak to people I don’t know. 

Very often these simple people are the sweetest souls and generate an atmosphere of poetry all by themselves.” 

 His modest, playful, and ironic images were marked by an exquisite sense of humour, by anti-establishment values, and, above all, by his deeply felt humanism.

“The marvels of daily life are so exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.”

With his career interrupted by World War II and German occupation, Doisneau became a member of the French Resistance, using his skill as an engraver to provide forged documents for the underground. 

In 1948, he was contracted by Vogue to work as a fashion photographer. The editors believed he would bring a more fresh and casual look to the magazine, but Doisneau did not enjoy photographing beautiful women in elegant surroundings; he preferred street photography to which he returned in 1951.

Doisneau has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Bibliotheque National in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. His photographs have become widely recognized and beloved in the history of photography. He was appointed a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1984.

The New Woman

A satirical, humorous photo ca. 1897 by Granger, with the caption: ‘The New Woman - Wash Day’.

It shows a cigarette-smoking Woman dressed in men's clothing posturing arrogantly with one foot up on a chair as a man dressed in female clothing drudges over his washday duties. 

Change is on the way.......

The Girl in the Black Helmet

Mary Louise Brooks (1906 - 1985), also known by her childhood name of Brooksie, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress

She was noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut, worn since her childhood. It was a hairstyle claimed as one of the ten most influential in history by beauty magazines the world over.

“I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife.”

Brooks was best known as the lead actor in three feature films made in Europe, including two G. W. Pabst films: Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Prix de Beaute (Miss Europe) (1930).

She starred in 17 silent films, 8 talkie films, and became one of the most fascinating and alluring personalities ever to grace the silver screen, being usually compared to her famous screen role of Lulu in Pandora's Box.

“I never gave away anything without wishing I had kept it; nor kept anything without wishing I had given it away.” 

With her beautiful, dark looks, high spirits and independent streak, Louise was a thoroughly modern female who refused to conform to the norms of Hollywood film society. She truly came into her own when she left Hollywood for Europe. There, she appeared in a few German productions which were very well made and continued to prove she was an actress with an enduring talent.

Brooks had always been very self-directed, even difficult, and was notorious for her salty language, which she did not hesitate to use whenever she felt like it. By her own admission, she was a sexually liberated woman, not afraid to experiment, even posing fully nude for art photography, and her liaisons with many film people were legendary, although much of it is speculation.

                                                "I have a gift for enraging people, but if I ever bore you, it will be with a knife".

"A well dressed woman, even though her purse is painfully empty, can conquer the world."

She ended her career in film in 1938, thereafter spending most of her time reading and painting. She also became an accomplished writer, authoring a number of books, including her autobiography, Lulu in Hollywood.

 

"The great art of films does not consist in descriptive movement of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation."

 In this video film, Louise Brooks is featured in some wonderful 
screen shots from the film, Pandora's Box. 

Credited to Catalinat22

Something Terrible

In a scene from Federico Fellini’s 1963 Italian comedy-drama film, 8½, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) meets his mistress, Carla (Sandra Milo), at the train station.

A film within a film, it tells the story of Guido’s struggles with his creative processes both as a burnt-out film director and as a reminiscing lover in a cinematic masterpiece about the alienating effects of modernization.

Surrounded by people who constantly pressurize him, Guido retreats into a world of dreams and there, he finally finds the inspiration to make his new film and to face the world.

The iconic director experienced “something terrible” in making the film - director’s block. In creating a brilliant self-portrait, Fellini’s 8½ conveys what few ventures have portrayed on screen: the dynamic, painstaking process of creating art.