Still from Bad Girl
Still from Bad Girl
 

On Demand

Bad Girl

by Marielle Nitoslawska
An exploration of female sexuality and the artists who are redefining women's representation within the multi-billion dollar mainstream pornography industry.
2001  ·  58m  ·  Canada
English
About the Film

How does the media influence the development of sexual identities, and how might representations of sexuality change the way we understand it? The male-dominated, multi-billion dollar mainstream pornography industry recreates a restrictive image of sexuality, but growing numbers of women directors are offering alternative visions of female desire.

From directors and porn actors, academics and sexologists, to marketers and executives, BAD GIRL offers a comprehensive view of the motivations and constraints faced by women trying to represent their own understanding of sexuality. Excerpts from female-directed films, both in and out of the pornographic genre, track thematic links between avant-garde art, including works by artists like Carolee Schneemann (FUSES), the performance art of Annie Sprinkle (A HERSTORY OF PORN), Catherine Breillat (ROMANCE), and the woman-friendly porn of Candida Royalle and the Scandinavian Puzzy Power collective.

Upcoming Screenings

Stay tuned for upcoming screenings!

Editor
Monique Dartonne
Cinematographer
Jacques Leduc
Producer
Nathalie Barton, Iolande Cadrin-Rossignol and Arnaud Hantute
Sound Editor
Cathy Compans
Soundtrack Composer
Yves Laferrièrre and Pierre Dumond-Gauthier
Writer
Nathalie Collard and Pascale Navarro
Film Related
About the Director

Marielle Nitoslawska

Marielle Nitoslawska

Marielle Nitoslawska, born in Canada, is a filmmaker, cinematographer and film professor who lives and works in Montreal. She received her B.F.A. in Studio Arts and Art History from Concordia University, Montreal and an M.F.A., magna cum laude in Cinematography from the Polish National Film School in Lodz. She remained in Poland for a decade, working as a filmmaker during the social and cultural upheavals that led to the fall of that country’s communist government. There, she shot numerous exploratory ethnographic films in 35mm and actively participated in the underground media arts movement in Lodz, with friends and mentors from the Workshop of Film Form.

Nitoslawska has made numerous film essays, both feature length and short form on ground-breaking movements and artists such as Domingo Cisneros, Szczepan Mucha, Jozef Robakowski, and Carolee Schneemann. Poetic and unconventional, her films explore the ideas behind the work of these artists and their contemporary significance. Her films have received critical acclaim and extensive festival play, and include Bad Girl (2002), a groundbreaking documentary investigating explicit representations of female sexuality; Sky Bones (1999, nominated for Best Art Doc, Hot Docs); and Choices: An Artist From Eastern Europe Speaks Out (1987), included in the National Gallery of Canada’s permanent collection. Her work is defined by an experimental approach to structure and explorations into narrative and representation.

She has also collaborated widely as an award-winning cinematographer on documentary, experimental and fiction films for a variety of directors. Her work has exhibited internationally at museums, art institutions, galleries, biennials and film festivals, including the National Gallery of Canada, Musée du Québec, WRO Biennale (Poland), Goethe-Institut New York, Vancouver Film Festival, Hot Docs, INPUT, FIFA, and the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma.
Nitoslawska served as Chair of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University from 2009-2012. In 2006 she received the Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award. She directs the Possible Movements Lab, a research group in experimental documentary, at Concordia’s Hexagram Institute for Media Arts.

 
Other films by Marielle Nitoslawska

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