Rachel Marie Walsh on the opening of London's 'Fashion in Film' Festival

London’s Fashion in Film Festival opened last night at the Tate Modern gallery. The month long festival, entitled “If Looks Could Kill”, will showcase both classic and unseen films related to intersecting themes of fashion, crime and violence. For opening night, seven photographers, visual artists and performers responded to the ‘If Looks Could Kill’ theme with a short film. The result was a sequence of visually arresting productions that revealed an uncomfortable truth: there can be beauty in the illicit, the morbid and even the gory.

                        

In ‘Frottage’,by photographer Derrick Santini, a woman in Alexander McQueen, moves through Paris. She is groped by men who pass her and brushes off every one. Finally, a ruby red pair of gloves gleams at her from a shop window and she stops. The gloves come to life and beckon her inside, where she puts them on and has several raunchy fantasies about the female shop assistant. Santini said afterwards that he was interested in the concept of clothing as protagonist and wished to convey the sensuality of the garment rather than exploring any Sapphic fantasy of his own.

Dino Dinco

Next was ‘El Abuelo’ (the Grandfather) by ASVOF contributor . The LA based artist, director and photographer offered a sensitive portrayal of a tattooed LA gangster shown ironing his clothes with painstaking precision. The 'gangster' is Texan poet Joe Jiminez and the subversion of his stereotypical appearance is taken further by a voice over that recites the poet's memories of watching his grandfather at the ironing board, handling his clothes with similar devotion.

For ‘The Corner’, Shannon Plumb transformed herself into several seamy stereotypes, including a streetwalker, a gang member and a‘hoodie’ and transposed footage of herself in each role against images of city street corners. She subverts each intimidating character with comical mime.

Eloise Fornieles’ ‘Carrion’ showed the performer stripped naked amid suspended animal carcases. She then took a knife, slit the carcases open and placed notes in the wounds. As the film opened with the caption ‘Write to apologise’, one imagines the notes were words of apology for their deaths. This film was difficult to stomach and, with the further desecration of the animal carcases, won’t improve PETA’s view of fashion but there were some interesting messages. Fornieles said that she was interested in exploring both the power and vulnerability that comes with a woman’s undressing. She fasted for three days before making the film. Afterwards, I thought about the giggly way women talk about going without food for the sake of there clothes. Fornieles called this starvation a ‘violent attack on the body’.

Paulette Phillips' ‘Marnie’s Handbag’ was a medley of bad girl moments from films like Single White Female, Foxy Brown and Batman Returns. The clips featured so many icons from various eras that it was fascinating to note the features that united them: the powerful, ominous click of the stiletto, handbags to carry lipstick and handguns and, of course, shades to hide their sins (for more on the power of the shades, see DP in the news).

The Boudicca team submitted a sequence of surreal artwork and photographs, which flashed at varying speeds to an unnerving violin soundtrack. Boudicca used the cutting and editing of film as symbols of dressmaking and surgery procedures.

The night closed with Elizabeth McAlpine’s ‘Slap’, a collection of the most dramatic point of the screen argument-the slap. Why? “I wanted to see what would happen if you played all those slaps one after the other”. What happened was the dulling of sound and impact of the smack, an interesting comment on how de-sensitized we become by overexposure to violent imagery.

The festival continues until May 31^st.

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