Venice Days Unveils Female-Centric Lineup, Including Electropop Pioneer Doc ‘Peaches Goes Bananas’
variety.comNick Vivarelli International Correspondent Films directed by women dominate the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori, which has unveiled a lineup full of first works and special events including “Peaches Goes Bananas,” French filmmaker Marie Losier’s tribute to iconic Canadian electropop provocateur Peaches.
Shot over the course of 17 years, “Peaches Goes Bananas” provides an intimate portrait of the former schoolteacher, who during the 1980s moved from Canada to Berlin and became a queer feminist icon, breaking taboos and “transforming her body into art,” as the doc’s synopsis puts it.
The competition of the Giornate – which is also known as Venice Days – comprises 10 world premieres, six of which are first works, within a selection that artistic director Gaia Furrer described in her notes as “rigorous” and “stylistically eclectic.” Furer underlined that 16 out of the section’s 25 titles are directed by women, a fact she called significant “because many of them made difficult works while contending with often unfavourable situations and still very solid gender barriers,” she said.
The Venice Days competition also includes “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass,” the third feature by London-based stop-frame animation twins The Quay Brothers (Stephen and Timothy).
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