Empty Suitcases1980

... is a narrative derived from film's own material and my concern for exploring issues of representation and identification in cinema. The film presents fragments of a woman's life–her work (as a photographer), her friendship and relationships–in short, her economic, sexual,and artistic struggles. By deconstructing the fragments of text, speech, music and picture, the film forces focus on the workings of narrative, as well as on the narrative itself. Central to EMPTY SUITCASES is women's inability to place and define themselfs in laguage and politics, the location of radical struggle. This displacement leads to a definition of woman as other, and reveals problems of unresolved sexual relations, difference, and violence,–B. G. Her most successful sequences–a militant 'new wave' fashion show in which models photograph themselves, an expressionless white woman lipsynching alog to Billie Holliday, a scene where the filmmaker relates a dream only to be drowned out by Talking Heads singing 'PSycho Killer'–all criticize conventional modes of representation, with particular attention to what current academic jargon calls 'the imaging of woman.'"–J. Hoberman, Village Voice