WEEK IN WOMEN: Martha Coolidge’s NOT A PRETTY PICTURE on 4K Criterion Collection – Brandy McDonnell reports
The Criterion Collection is releasing trailblazing filmmaker Martha Coolidge’s feature film debut, the autobiographical docudrama “Not a Pretty Picture,” in August.
In 1962, as a 16-year-old boarding school student, Coolidge was date raped. A dozen years later, she worked through the experience in her unflinchingly personal hybrid of documentary and fiction.
Her 1976 film centers on an intense reenactment of Coolidge’s experience of rape. The film casts Michele Manenti, also a rape survivor, as the director’s younger self, and observes the actor and her castmates as they engage in a profound dialogue about what it means to recreate these traumatic memories as well as about their attitudes concerning consent and self-blame.
A high-stakes experiment in metacinema that broke new ground with its uncompromising examination of date rape, Not a Pretty Picture delves into questions about the on-screen representation of sexual violence and the limits of artistic catharsis.
A new 4K digital restoration, made by the Academy Film Archive and the Film Foundation with the support of the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, had its international premiere at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival. Continue reading on THE WEEK IN WOMEN.
