After Anya’s recent idea about doing something connected to current affairs and female sex abuse, I decided to do some research into films that are slightly more empowering to women than most of the ones I have seen so far that portray them as weak, servile creatures. Sure enough I have found a couple. The first one is really intriguing, The Woman Avenger, or Shi mei chu ma (1980) which was its original title starts with the rape of the main character, Kuang-Li Hsia and the death of her husband. She is then rescued by a female monk who, once healing her agrees to train her in ‘Dragon Style’ Kung Fu. The start is incredibly brutal and although the film is pretty low budget the sense of emotion is still really well played. Kuang-Li Hsia then goes on a journey of finding and then killing the men involved in her rape and the murder of her husband and many more. The film is pact with load conversations between the camel characters and the male ones, its constantly a battle between how man should and shouldn’t act. It could quite easily be manipulated to be relevant for today, but the kind of messed up thing is that is wouldn’t even really need editing, you could just lift some of the lines right out and they would tell the story of today 😔
This is a photo of an original 'Hand Bill', what I am assuming means flyer. super dynamic design which shows most of the main characters of the film and importantly shows the women being strong so you would not to surprised if you went to see the film having spotted the flyer first.
below is my notes from watching the film along with time stamps from when important things happen in the film. From here I will create some artwork in response to what I have seen in particular the strong female lead character, then go on to watch a couple of the other films that have been noted as quite revolutionary in how we see women in films.
