FMST 214 English-Canadian Film

Final Essay

The feminist movement has forever changed the face of cinema. This field

strictly reserved to men and their vision was about to undergo a colossal

metamorphosis. During the 1970’s cinema has taken a more avant-garde lens with

women now monitoring the image. This practice came across as counter-cinema; a

cinema going against the main-stream Classical Hollywood filming and drawing

attention to real feminist issues. “Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian

Lives” is a documentary produced by Studio D that portrays truly and blatantly the

feminist cinema. “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema” by Claire Johnston is an article

that depicts the movement in the Canadian film industry and tackles the problematic

that comes along with having a feminine perspective into movies. Due to the

emergence of counter-cinema in the 1970’s in Canada, women are nowadays skilled

and knowledgeable filmmakers that are able to design films equally worthy as men’s.

Growing up under the influence of pulp novels from the 1950’s, the charismatics

women interviewed in the documentary: “Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of

Lesbian Lives” go way back in their memory lane to share with us [viewers] how was it

to love someone in a politically non-correct circumstance. Women from all races and

ages shared their forbidden love stories and how it was possible to make something
nonconforming work in a close-minded society. Some of them recall leaving their

respective hometown and escaping with their loved one, in order to avoid a judgmental

society. Inevitably, no one was ever informed about lesbians, since it was a social

taboo. Women would read pulp novels and withdraw from them as much information as

they could in order to blossom their knowledge and to connect with other people going

through the same alienation. According to the infamous pulp novels lesbians were

reading, since it was the solely source of information about this ‘other’ lifestyle;

Greenwitch Village in New York was apparently the place to go in order to meet and

connect with other gays. One woman and her lover actually took the trip to that place,

but in vain; it was only a myth. They didn’t find what it is they were looking for: people

that opted for same-sex love. This Canadian documentary is a notable example of

counter-cinema since it stands for everything Hollywood wasn’t: an avant-gardist genre

that freed the lens of the camera and showed real-life issues without being censored.

Filmmakers using counter-cinema wouldn’t mind taking spectators out of their comfort

zone to show them the tough reality that Hollywood covered up with unauthentic glam.

That is why feminist filmmaking is a blatant example of counter-cinema. Idealistic point

of view about reality was unaccepted and in “Forbidden Love” even the imperfect

moments in the women’s lives are shown, not to make them feel vulnerable (like

Hollywood documentaries would do) but to represent realism and self-reflexivity, which

were the starting point of the feminist counter-cinema. The interviewed women

acknowledged their ‘lesbianism’ and described it as oppressive and bewildering in a

1970 Canadian society. It is because of documentaries like this one, that the counter-
cinema developed and became not only a filmmaking vision, but a major aspect in the

feminist movement. Women nowadays are apt to be who they truly are and have the

opportunity to execute a craft that was then reserved to men only, that is filmmaking.

Studio D is a women’s pride production company; created in 1974, it was the

first publicly funded women’s film studio in the world. Unarguably, it had to reflect real

issues about women, by women, for women. For the first time in history it wasn’t a

man-perceived opinion, but a legitimate and accurate perspective of females. Studio D

has had an impact on today’s feminist filmmaking, because thanks to women who

fought to raise their voice in a men’s world, females can now direct, produce and carry

big budget films on their shoulders just like men can do. This precise studio, embedded

in the National Film Board of Canada, was considered as feminist counter-cinema due to

the fact that it was actively engaging women’s concerns, like no other Hollywood man-

directed documentary has ever done; it was also addressed to female audiences by

engaging through a feminist perspective the social and political issues. Studio D was a

colossal milestone in the history of women’s filmmaking in Canada. It [the studio]

offered to women opportunities that they could never imagine before; being a

filmmaker per se, but also provided them a fundamental training and helped them use

film as a means to criticize social and political taboos and issues. It was and still to this

very day a key method for women to transmit their opinion about topics or problematic

occurring in the society without having to censor themselves and being able to speak

freely their mind. The two directors behind “Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of
Lesbian Lives”: Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, were extremely brave to release a

risky documentary about a taboo subject that not many people in the society were

comfortable around. Homosexuality was sorted in the same category as pornography,

abortion and sexual abuse; yet, all it was, is a forbidden love. Both filmmakers Lynne

Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman have had a notable impact on feminist cinema, since they

were the cofounders of numerous LGBT organizations in Canada. Their involvement in

Studio D was a perk to women’s filmmaking today, since they directed perilous

documentaries and fought for women’s rights. They are a key example of filmmakers

working within the frame of counter-cinema since the documentaries that they

produced were considered risqué and not falling in the same category as men’s work

due to the defying subjects they tackled.

In her essay, “Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema”, Claire Johnston

foregrounds the importance of iconography that is, per se how the woman is framed,

dressed or expressed herself in movies. Johnston’s opinion about women’s place in films

is steady as she claimed that the solely image of women in films is the one depicted by

men, that is a one-dimensional and superficial character that bears close to absolutely

no resemblance to any real women. “Within a sexist ideology and a male-dominated

cinema, woman is presented as what she represents for man… despite the enormous

emphasis placed on woman as spectacle in the cinema, woman as woman is largely

absent” (Johnston 33). In her essay, she prevailed the importance that the idea of a

non-interventional film is a lie and that the only reality that is pictured in any
documentary is the reality of the dominant ideology of the filmmaker, hence self-

reflexivity. Claire Johnston main argument is the perception of women and how they

are portrayed through a semiotic presence in Classical Hollywood cinema. She claimed

that the female character exists merely as a sign or symbol and is only represented

through the ideological concept of ‘woman according to men’. Johnston states that

women are only portrayed as ‘not-man’ in the Classical era of Hollywood. Since this field

was prominently owned by men, everything that wasn’t manly was only sorted as ‘not-

man’ without carrying any other value. The theory of ‘woman as not-man’ in the 1970’s

was a beneficial concept for denouncing the governing patriarchal ideology in films and

inspired women to introduce their movement of feminism. From that movement, the

feminist counter-cinema was born and challenged every vision men had instituted in

Classical cinema. Females had then a voice and a distinct character portrayed by

women about women. Cinema was no longer a product of a male bourgeois ideology,

but a self-reflexive feminist counter-cinema, about reality as it was. “Much of the

emerging women's cinema has taken its aesthetics from television and cinema-vérité

techniques. These films largely depict images of women talking to camera about their

experiences, with little or no intervention by the film-maker” (Johnston 37). This being

said, in “Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives” the filmmakers

decided to use this aesthetic of cinema-vérité and having real-life women sharing their

stories directly with the viewers. This non-interventional cinema is drawn upon letting

women have a free speech and changing the look of cinema considering the sexist

ideology started by men.

 Briefly, the feminist movement during the 1970’s has had a positive impact on

women in film. The off-spring of this movement was the foundation of counter-cinema

in Canada. This anti-Classical Hollywood filmmaking changed the passive image of

women in film, previously pictured by men and allowed females to have a stand in the

film industry. It is by the means of the realist documentary “Forbidden Love: The

Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives”, that Studio D anchored a men and women equal

worthy position in the film industry suggesting an alternative to traditional Hollywood

films. Claire Johnston described counter-cinema as a self-conscious filmmaking standing

in opposition to sexist ideologies established by men and their depiction of a passive

semiotic woman. Using some cinema-vérité aesthetics such as seemlingly transparent

images on screen and non-interventional filmmaking, counter-cinema allowed women to

speak freely and to make films by women, about women and for women.

. 

Work Cited

Gittings, Christopher E. Canadian National Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2002. 263-
 272. Print.

Johnston, Claire. "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema."  Notes on Women's Cinema.

London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973. 31-40. Print.

Maslin, Janet. "Reminiscences About Lesbian First Love." New York Times. (Aug 4

1993): n. page. Web. 22 Mar. 2014.

Rist, Peter. "Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives." Guide to the

Cinema(s) of Canada. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. 73. Web.

27 Mar. 2014.

Smelik, Anneke. "Feminist Film Theory." Cinema Book. 2nd Ed. (1999): 491-501. Web.

5 Apr. 2014.

Vanstone, Gail . D is for Daring: The Women behind the Films of Studio D. Toronto:

Sumach Press, 2007. 265. Print.