Having both arrived at the audiovisual medium in their 30s and 40s, they discuss the early, almost subconscious influence of films watched in adolescence, and the subsequent, more conscious choice to follow the alternative example of filmmakers such as Safi Faye, Chantal Akerman, Agnes Varda and Marguerite Duras.
The two filmmakers discuss this common thread in their work, and their common desire to place these characters front and centre in the narrative, transposing them into the contemporary world.
Ro Caminal’s Unfolding Penelope (2017) upends the colonial gaze by staging a re-enactment of true stories by Senegalese women who have to negotiate social and personal pressures while waiting for their husbands to return from Europe.
In Mariangela Ciccarello’s Calypso (2021), two young actresses in Naples are preparing for a play based on the Odyssey. The film merges myth, truth, and re-enactment by asking the question, what would happen if Ulysses was a woman?
