Is pretty privilege a blessing or a curse? And is it possible to discern the reverberations of the male gaze in the multitude of social phenomena we struggle with since the dawn of the white world? A quick read about Vera Chytilová’s early work will let you in on her favorite theme, women’s emancipation, where interpretation has it as an unending fight to remove oneself from existential stereotypes. Though, if we may, a more precise approach to her work is that of a fight to uproot stereotypical convictions altogether.
An Van. Dienderen’s Lili has a go at answering the first question. In Lili’s case it’s about covert acts of racism that often remain unknown or overlooked, resting unbothered in objects and tools used in cinema, as an “invisible norm” and about objectifying women. Lili “just happened to be there” and, even better, she had “just the right skin tone”.
Objectification still requires a living being. Although an inanimate object does not complain, take breaks or unionise against a higher authority, the real thing is better, at least once it can be robbed of being and turned into a perfectly inert living object.
Chytilová’s The Ceiling tackles the second question with a radical simplicity that must not be underestimated. The film unveils four examples of how the patriarchal discourse trickles through a society, intoxicating it. The first moment reveals the ignorant complicity of male youth in the proliferation of such discourse by way of their naivety, constraining Marta’s silence in their company. The second moment regards a group of young women’s seemingly innocent objectification of young men, constraining Marta’s alienation in their company.
The third moment visits a validating reinforcement of the patriarchal ethos in relations between younger and older women; where misplaced frustration with a corrosive system turns them against each other. While the first three moments raise questions of complicity, the final moment, marked by Marta’s romantic involvement, begs the question of whether it is possible or even adequate to separate the definition of a patriarchal system from that of capitalism.
Calup propus de Gabriela Cardoș, Monica Dănilă și Andreea Chiper pentru Her Docs, Varșovia. Proiect dezvoltat în Rezidența F-SIDES Wildcards 2026 – un program de formare dedicat curatoriatului de film, conceput ca un laborator de idei în care participanții își dezvoltă propriile concepte curatoriale în dialog cu profesioniști din industrie și cu rețele internaționale de cinema.
