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If Looks Could Kill: Cinema’s Images of Fashion, Crime and Violence More…
10 - 31 May 2008
'I love Fashion in Film’s approach to film
and find their work supremely dazzling and unique!' Steve Leggett,
Program Coordinator
National Film Preservation Board, Library of Congress.

2nd Fashion in Film Festival “If
Looks Could Kill” Catalogue out now.
'A must-see for any style-conscious movie buff'
James Anderson, i-D June
2008
'Absolutely fabulous' Metro 12 May 2008
Lily Cole's Pick
of the Festival
'An impressively rich and well thought out programme'
Virginie Sélavy,
Electric Sheep Magazine
Fashion in Film Festival in GQ magazine: click
here for more...
Sharon
O'Connor, Managing Director of Oasis comments:
'... These rarely seen films dating back to 1908 present us with
a source of iconic fashion images which have visibly influenced
the contemporary scene..'
Anne
Smith, Dean of Fashion and Textiles, Central Saint Martins:
'... The role of fashion, costume and styling in films spanning
a hundred years reveals the special position that fashion holds
in locating the drama of life, society and the human experience.'
'Kirin Ichiban is often associated with style, design
and fashion so we're delighted to be a part of this exciting festival'
(Kirin Ichiban)
sponsors
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Gestures and Transformations |
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A
Question of Silence (De Stilte
rond Christine M.)
Netherlands 1982. Dir Marleen Gorris.
With Edda Barends, Cox Habbema. 92 min. 35mm.
Thursday 22 May, 18.30
ICA Cinema 1
Bags, shoes, hangers and clothes rails are transformed
from innocuous accessories and boutique equipment into deadly weapons
in Marleen Gorris’s feature film debut A Question of Silence.
Three women, all strangers to each other, cross paths in a boutique
when a relatively trivial shoplifting incident unleashes their suppressed
frustrations. The Dutch writer-director Gorris, notorious for her
outspoken feminist views, protests here against the female condition
in a male-dominated society. Gorris, who is both radical and hilariously
funny, shows how seemingly harmless women can turn into an unpredictable
force when driven by rage. Winner of two prestigious awards, The
Golden Calf and Grand Prix (both 1982), A Question of Silence
has since been referred to as a landmark feminist work.


With grateful thanks to the Embassy of the Kingdom
of the Netherlands for supporting this screening.
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A Question of Silence, dir. Marleen Gorris,
1982. Courtesy Holland Film |
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Ms
.45
USA 1981. Dir Abel Ferrara.
With Zoe Lund, Albert Sinkys. 80 min. 35mm.
Thursay 22 May, 20.45
ICA Cinema 1
Ms. 45 , (1981) directed by Abel Ferrara
is a violent retribution drama in which a shy seamstress is brutally
raped twice in the same day and transformed into a killer, shooting
men with her .45 pistol. The transformation of the heroine is marked
by the change of her style and dress, from dowdy to a sleek, cat-like
vamp who wears bright red lipstick and killer boots. The film climaxes
in a scene at a fancy dress party in which the character dresses
as a nun in suspenders, drawing together her transformation from
virgin to a murderous femme fatale.
With grateful thanks to Abel Ferrara.
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Ms 45, dir. Abel Ferrara, 1981. Courtesy BFI |
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Body
Double (X)
France 2002. Dir Brice Dellsperger.
With Jean-Luc Verna. 104 min. Digi-Beta.
With an introduction by Guest Curator Drake
Stutesman, Editor of Framework: The Journal of Cinema
and Media.
Friday 23 May - 20:30
ICA
Cinema 1
The French artist Brice Dellsperger’s Body Double (X)
(2000) is a brilliant 21st century reconstruction of the torrid
1974 film L' Important c'est d'aimer by Andrzej Zulawski
. Mouthing the 1974 soundtrack and appearing in various costumes,
drag artist Jean-Luc Verna acts out all of the roles within a cut
up and fragmenting, digitalized visual narrative. Clothes anchor
Verna’s grasp of the characters and they are the only solid
structure under his and Dellsperger’s fluid exposure of miscommunication
as a crime. But our initial reading of the story in itself may be
another kind of crime which Dellsperger also explores through clothes
by subverting their social connotations.
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Body Double X, dir. Brice Dellsperger, 2000.
Courtesy Air De Paris |
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Office
Killer
USA 1997. Dir Cindy Sherman.
With Carol Kane, Jeanne Tripplehorn. Molly Ringwald 82 min. Beta.
Introduced by Gilda Williams, London correspondent for Artforum
and Editor of The Gothic: Documents of Contemporary Art
(2007).
Sunday 11 May - 17:00
Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium
In her first feature film direction to date, American artist Cindy
Sherman concocts a peculiarly funny caricature of psycho-thriller
and horror genres. The film follows the transformation of the “pathetic”
office mouse Dorine into an unruly predator, a femme-fatale-gone-wrong.
Having stirred up criminal chaos,
Dorine finds much pleasure in fashioning a grisly tableau of her
bitchy colleagues in a dark basement, upping the stakes in Sherman’s
trademark portrayal of perversity.
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Office Killer, dir. Cindy Sherman, 1997. Courtesy
The Cinema Museum |
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