Program overview | BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN

Retrospective | BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN

BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN 

The US-American exploitation cinema of Roberta Findlay, Doris Wishman and Stephanie Rothman

Genre cinema of the last about 120 years has been a male domain. It is only in recent decades that action, horror and erotic flicks in particular have been increasingly told and transformed from a female perspective – think of Kathryn Bigelow’s kinetic blockbuster cinema, Anna Biller’s lovingly decorated neo-exploitation pastiche or Catherine Breillat’s radical feminist eroticism.

However, in the exuberant US genre film industry from the 1960s onwards, there were already several female filmmakers who dedicated themselves to escalating genre cinema of exploitative provenance and now have a broad fan base. BAD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN would like to introduce three of them: Roberta Findlay (*1943), Doris Wishman (1912-2002) and Stephanie Rothman (*1936).
Film historiography is still in the early stages of acknowledging the work of these three filmmakers. GEGENkino, which always seeks to understand the present by looking at the past, presents a selection of six films in the spirit of this incipient reassessment, showing that genre cinema is not just genre cinema, and that the female perspective is not just the female perspective. At the same time, we cover a broad spectrum: from sun-drenched sex comedies to prison movie thrillers and home invasion roughness to an absolute “core competence” of grindhouse cinema along New York’s 42nd Street: the dream and nightmare worlds of naked bodies.

What all three have in common is the unconditional commercial orientation of their oeuvres while at the same time endeavouring to maintain their own signature within the industry. The budgets of Findlay, Wishman and Rothman are sometimes noticeably different: Doris Wishman, the great self-made filmmaker among the exploitation directors presented, often shot with micro-budgets, without a production sound and – particularly exciting as far as bizarre – without predetermined stories: a cinema of gestures and exaggerations, opulent atmospheres and unconditional commitment to its heroines. This is represented in our show by her best-known film BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL (US 1965), which was so influential for the feminist-turned-sexploitation genre, but also by the pulp fiction of the agent film sleaze of DOUBLE AGENT 73 (US 1974).

Within precarious B-movie production contexts, the films of Findlay and Rothman were somewhat better off financially. Rothman, the only trained filmmaker of the trio presented here (she went through the genre school of the recently deceased Roger Corman!), deliberately took on male-dominated genres riddled with sexism such as the libertarian sex comedy THE WORKING GIRLS (US 1974) or the muscle-bound prison action flick TERMINAL ISLAND (US 1973) in her sensitive ensemble films from the late 1960s onwards. Findlay’s film cosmos is similar: A WOMAN’S TORMENT (US 1977) uses extreme images – hardcore pornography meets horror motifs! – to tell of toxic gender relations and female self-empowerment. TENEMENT (US 1985), the most recent film in our small selection, is – despite the harshness of its “post-apocalyptic” setting – a utopian and hopeful film in the sense that the contradictions of gender, class and ethnicity in a house community seem to be briefly overcome facing of an external threat.

The worlds of motifs outlined above perhaps already hint at this: Exploitation cinema is a cinema of ambivalence. For what it critically draws attention to is at the same time – and not infrequently shamelessly – “converted” into cinematic show value. That such a cinema of calculated impositions, even if not always “valuable”, should have a firm place in film history: this is what this series stands for. Last but not least, Findlay, Wishman and Rothman have contributed to an alternative cinema in the USA. Quite often, it combines a female gaze and a diagnosis of the present with pleasurable enfant terrible vibes: a defiant “Bad Girls go to Heaven”, in a variation on the title of one of the films in our series.  

06.09.24 UT Connewitz
8 pm	TENEMENT US 1985, D: Roberta Findlay, A: Enrique Sandino, Joe Lynn, Martha De La Cruz, 94’, English OV, DCP With an introduction to the series by Tilman Schumacher (GEGENkino)
10 pm	BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL US 1965, D: Doris Wishman, A: Gigi Darlene, Charles E. Mazin, Sam Stewart, 65’, English OV, DCP
10.09.24 Luru Kino
7 pm	A WOMAN’S TORMENT US 1977, D: Roberta Findlay, A: Tara Chung, Jennifer Jordan, Jake Teague, 84’, English OV, DCP With a video interview between André Malberg (film collector and historian) & Roberta Findlay
9 pm	THE WORKING GIRLS US 1974, D: Stephanie Rothman, A: Sarah Kennedy, Laurie Rose, Cassandra Peterson, 80’, English OV, DCP
14.09.24 Luru Kino
8 pm	TERMINAL ISLAND US 1973, D: Stephanie Rothman, A: Ena Hartman, Barbara Leigh, Tom Selleck, 88’, English OV, 35mm With an introduction to the evening’s double feature by Silvia Szymanski (author and film critic)
10 pm	DOUBLE AGENT 73 US 1974, D: Doris Wishman, A: Chesty Morgan, Frank Silvano, Saul Meth, 73’, German version, 35mm