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She Had Her Gun All Ready by Lindsay Bane Like an archeologist excavating time with her camera, Vivienne Dick has remapped artistic boundaries while unearthing uniquely feminine dreamscapes in film and video throughout Ireland, New York and London since 1977. Today, she is recognized as a pioneering filmmaker, and progenitor to some of today’s popular filmmakers. During her seven years in New York, Dick made six short super-8 films alongside other inspiring super-8 filmmakers. She specifically credits the filmmaking talent of Charlie Ahern, Scott B., Beth B., Robert Cooney, Tina L’Hotsky, Eric Mitchell, James Nares and Amos Poe. Together, their films bridged the avant-garde with narrative, and are acknowledged as a seminal influence on modern American independent filmmaking. “Vivienne’s films had a huge impact on the people coming out of that period,” said contemporary Scott B. in an interview. “She didn’t make that much, but what she did make people were always talking about. She made this ethereal world that had a lot of power, and when she left New York, she left a hole. Of all the women filmmakers in that community, she was the strongest.” Dick’s films prove that infinite possibilities exist for women filmmakers, with or without budgets. They suggest that independent filmmaking might also mean something different to women; it may mean independence from male-dominant filmmaking traditions. Her films pose a statement specific to female audiences, encouraging the female viewer to pursue the camera, and film the stories that are important to her—with sexual difference. Such conventions were tested and warped in the Bohemian New York world Dick lived in; this was considered a golden era for artists. Rent was cheap and ability was at a premium for a creative community of approximately 3000 living in downtown Manhattan. Dick and her film subjects are found within a subculture of this community called No Wave. No Wave cinema and music was produced in the fringes of the mainstream New Wave culture, marked with commercially successful figures such as The Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith and The Talking Heads. The artists of No Wave and New Wave were considered the punks of New York; No Wave perhaps consisted of a more avant-garde brand of punk. But back then, and even today, Dick couldn’t care less what the subculture or culture was called. As she said to journalist Jim Hoberman in a 1982 interview for October magazine, “I want to make films that are different; you can call them whatever you want.” The no-budget films of No Wave turned a critical eye on the world around them, frequently working with the music in the scene, which also tended to be experimental. Dick’s films were quintessentially No Wave, tracked with coarsely organic sounds, edited with edgy cuts, and loaded with juxtapositions chock-full of critical observation. “Coming from Ireland, I was very aware of American commercialization, and the commodification of women,” Dick told me in an interview. These themes recur in her film work from the outsider’s perspective. Hoberman, a film reporter for the Village Voice since 1977, said that Dick was the one filmmaker of her time and scene without interest in becoming an independent Hollywood filmmaker. “She was involved with super-8 for it’s own sake,” he said. “I thought she was the best filmmaker. She was the most interesting in how she put the films together, between their locations and the film actors; it was more than attitude. She was understood as a feminist filmmaker, but it was more street feminist.” Throughout her artistic life, Dick has championed women’s stories and women’s voices, aware of an ongoing void of true female presence in filmmaking as directors and subjects. Most of the characters in her films are women. She considers the need for authentic female identities in filmmaking as an urgent issue. “Where are the stories from women?” she asks today, just as she did thirty years ago. As Dick had hoped, the NYC atmosphere of 1975 was very supportive of female artists. Dick said she was inspired by women in many different creative fields who were a part of the scene in New York— photographers, playwrights, dancers, performance artists, as well as filmmakers. "New York was fantastic. There were role models all over the place." In 1976, Dick was working with renown photographer Jack Smith. The experience she gained with Smith, in addition to screening numerous low-budget American independent films, drew her toward filmmaking. These films appeared as if they had been made without the burdens of a large crew or extensive equipment; they were shot on moderately priced super-8 film and had a 'homemade' appeal. Dick immediately perceived her potential in making such films, even without a budget or the kind of training that comes with a degree in film. She joined Millenium Film Workshop, where she borrowed basic camera and sound equipment. Then, she started shooting and editing. The first film she made, but never screened, was shot in 1977 during a visit home to Ireland as her mother was dying. Dick's filmmaking activity gained momentum when she met other people in the music scene also interested in making short films and showing them at local clubs. The group kept in touch and shared equipment, remaining supportive of one another. This is what No Wave was to Dick—the space she inhabited with likeminded artists, stretching the relationship between music and filmmaking, and challenging common perceptions. Sincerity is at the heart of the films; unpretentious and unmistakably original, they beg to question identity, particularly with concern of sex and gender within the context of Dick’s own personal world, characterized by the music around her. Bands like Teenage Jesus and The Jerks (fronted by Lydia Lunch), DNA, and the Contortions, were a few of the bands that gained Dick's interest. Dick became friends with Adele Bertei and Pat Place of The Contortions,Ikaue Mori who played with DNA, and Lydia Lunch, all of whom would appear in Dick's films. Dick went to the gigs and knew the musicians well. Soon, she was on stage with them. After Dick asked Lunch to appear in her first New York film, Guérillères Talks, Lunch invited Dick to play the organ in her band, Beirut Slump. Dick also played with The Contortions, and is featured on a track of the 1979 Contortions album Off White playing a rebellious violin. Dick's active role in the No Wave music scene is the context for the six short films she made in five prolific years. They were screened between gigs at clubs like Max's Kansas City, the Mudd Club, and Tier 3. Dick made Guérillères Talks in 1978, seven reels of film featuring one woman per reel. Each woman was given the task to perform in front of the camera for the duration of three minutes. The kind of performance she would give was her choice, while both she and Dick would choose the location together. Also in 1978, Dick made Staten Island and She Had Her Gun All Ready. Staten Island, featuring Pat Place, was supposed to be a contribution to a larger project stringing together several short films made by various women into a whole film. Though the collective film was never assembled, it is curiously entertaining in itself. She Had Her Gun All Ready, featuring Pat Place and Lydia Lunch, especially depicts the dominating and submissive nature of many relationships, a recurring theme throughout Dick's film work. Beauty Becomes the Beast (1979) explores the topic of sexual abuse in childhood, featuring the music of Lydia Lunch and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Lunch was the main actor, while Adele Bertei, another musician, also acted in the film. Liberty's Booty (1980) documents a brothel in New York, and like the others films listed here, it is well deserving of an analysis beyond the scope of this article. Finally, the last film Dick made in N.Y.C. was Visibility: Moderate (1981). Amongst all of these films, Visibility: Moderate is perhaps the most confrontational regarding American influences present in the Irish culture of that period. Sexual identity is challenged in new ways in all of these films. The opening shot in Liberty's Booty is a black screen that cuts directly to an aerial view of a woman opening a package. Inside is a pregnant doll that is naked with no hair, has androgynous facial features, and possesses both male and female sex organs. The woman comments on the “tightness” as she delivers the baby, “It must've impregnated itself,” she says. The child is born, and the viewer sees it is actually several limb-less babies. The woman puts the babies in the arms of the ‘mother’ doll, and rocks the ‘mother’ doll back and forth. Dick told me later that this actress in Liberty's Booty was actually a man who had undergone sex-change treatments since her teenage years; he also crafted the dolls in the film. I asked Dick if there was any specific meaning behind this. "No," she said, "I was just throwing that gender question out there". Since leaving New York in 1982, Dick has worked between film and video to create the following projects: Like Dawn to Dusk (Ireland, 1983), Rothach (Ireland, 1986), Trailer (Ireland, 1986), Images/Ireland (Ireland, 1988), London Suite (London, 1989), New York Conversations (New York, 1991), Three A.M. (London, 1990), Two Pigeons (London, 1990), A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy (Ireland, 1994), and Excluded by the Nature of Things (Ireland, 2002). The majority of Dick’s films can be screened on site at the Irish Film Archives. A wealth of information on them will soon be available through the LUX website, a prominent UK archive and distribution company for visual artists, which holds copies of all of Dick’s films. Largely up to now, however, her films have been hard to locate and in need of preservation. The Film-Makers Cooperative in New York hopes to find funding to preserve Dick’s original super-8 film print of She Had Her Gun All Ready. MM Serra, Executive Director at the Coop called the film a popular masterpiece, “It is an important film to the downtown scene, to punk and underground aesthetics, and Vivienne is a woman pioneer in filmmaking.” Dick has taught filmmaking at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology for the past six years, and dedicated much of her focus to being a mother for the past 20 years. This summer she plans to collaborate with actors on a project that will once again blend narrative with documentary and performance. Applying whatever budgetary support she is able to raise, she said she will approach the task in an intuitive, fearless way. :: © Lindsay Bane
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