What does a 1906 French short film by Alice Guy-Blaché have in common with Josephine Baker and Marlene Dietrich? They’re being honoured in the exhibition Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion (Goddess exhibition) being held at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image in Melbourne until 1 October 2023.
ACMI’s Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion, photo by Eugene Hyland
The Goddess exhibition celebrates the women and gender-transcending superstars who shaped their own roles, took creative control and fought a system that tried to exploit them. It does so through moments from over 120 years of moving image history highlighting iconic stories, characters and moments.
The exhibition includes never-before-seen costumes, original sketches, interactive experiences and cinematic treasures, including iconic outfits worn by Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Geena Davis and Margot Robbie. The women featured in the Goddess exhibition are far more than the bombshells, starlets or screen siren stereotypes that were used to undermine them.
ACMI’s Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion, photo by Eugene Hyland
French links in the Goddess exhibition include a 1906 French short film Les Résultats du féminisme (Consequences of Feminism), from Alice Guy-Blaché. A gender-bending comedy which sees men raising the kids, ironing and sewing while women smoke, drink and prey upon the ‘weaker sex’ with lurid advances. The short film addresses the fears about feminism not being about euality but about waging war on men. It playfully suggests that men wouldn’t tolerate being treated the way women are so why should they expect women to.
French Légion d’honneur awarded Marlene Dietrich is also celebrated in the Goddess exhibition, with pieces worn by her on show. These include
patent leather and silk grosgrain ribbon Delman Tuxedo pumps, kindly provided for the exhibition by the FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandizing, Los Angeles; and
14ct gold and ruby cufflinks from Marlene Dietrich’s personal wardrobe courtesy of Deutsche Kinemathek – Marlene Dietrich.
Marlene Dietrich made her own path and courted controversy for doing so. The first lesbian kiss in cinema wearing a tuxedo was by Marlene Dietrich. She was reprimanded in Paris for wearing trousers. A flyer from the Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong in Shanghai Express film is on show at the Goddess exhibition.
ACMI’s Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion, photo by Eugene Hyland
Another woman embraced by the French is Josephine Baker who Goddess celebrates for weaponizing glamour. Baker was the first African American woman lead in a feature film, Sirens of the Tropics (1927). Though the film and Baker’s ‘banana dance’ conjured White colonial fantasies, her performances parodied the sexualisation of Black women.
Baker was also a war hero for the French Resistance. When Germany invaded France in World War II, Baker weaponised her glamour to defend her adopted home. After spying on German officers, she smuggled top-secret messages in her underwear unsuspected. Back in America, she wouldn’t perform for segregated audiences and was the only woman who spoke alongside Martin Luther King Jr in the 1963 March on Washington.
The Goddess exhibition includes sketches for Josephine Baker’s stage costumes Eric De Juan, 1949 (courtesy of Fashion Institute of Technology SUNY, FIT Library Unit of Special Collections and College Archives), and an exhibition print by Michael Ochs, 1951.
The Goddess exhibition is an ode to be a boundary-breaking, glass-ceiling smashing women and is on at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image until the beginning of October 2023.
From the end of June and through July will see Adelaide lit up with various light installations as part of the Illuminate Adelaide 2023 program. It will also see the return of pop-up club-night over two nights for Unsound Club. Canada’s Moment Factory return for its third year and other Francophone artists also join the program this year. Read on to find out more about them and their installations coming to Illuminate Adelaide 2023.
Moment Factory
Since the festival’s inauguration in 2021, Canadian Moment Factory has lit up the Botanic Gardens (read our interview with them about that here) with Light Cycles. Moment Factory is returning in 2023 with two shows not seen before in Adelaide: Mirror Mirror and Resonate. They are also Artists in Residence for Illuminate Adelaide 2023
Mirror Mirror
An Australian-first experience fresh from its premiere run in Montreal, Mirror Mirror is a playground of interactive technology inviting you to discover your own creativity.
Sharing a unique experience with everyone who enters, this series of immersive digital installations spanning from the forest of yourself to a reimagined hall of mirrors is specifically designed to awaken your consciousness with the latest cutting-edge interactive technology.
Inside the revamped and remodelled Illuminate Pavilion at its latest home in Victoria Square / Tarntanyangga, Mirror Mirror is a multi-room experience changing with every audience interaction.
Whether sharing your memories to pen digital poems, transforming your words into dazzling light displays, sending ripples through a river of time with your movements or simply marvelling at the possibilities that await inside, Mirror Mirror promises to ignite the sense of play and discovery in visitors of all ages.
Which journey will you choose?
WHERE: Illuminate Pavillion, Victoria Square, Tartanyangga
WHEN: 28 June – 30 July (except Mondays). Sessions available every 15 minutes.
Tuesdays – Thursdays 10am – 7pm
Fridays – Saturdays 10am – 9pm
Sundays 10am – 7pm
HOW MUCH: Ticket prices vary depending on the session chosen:
General Admission (Tuesday – Thursday, and until 5pm Friday) $39
General Admission (from 5pm Friday and all-day Saturday and Sunday) $49.00
Group (4 or more people) (Tuesday – Thursday, and until 5pm Friday) $36.00
Group (4 or more people) (from 5pm Friday and all-day Saturday and Sunday) $46 per person
Children four years and under are free for all sessions but a $0.00 ticket is required for entry.
A merchant service fee of 2% applies to all ticket purchases
Moment Factory transformed the Adelaide Botanic Gardens with Light Cycles in 2021 and 2022.
Resonate
Moment Factory again transform the Adelaide Botanic Garden with this awe-inspiring new after-dark experience.
Beginning from the Gardens’ North Terrace gates and pushing technical innovation even further, Resonate promises to captivate by highlighting nature itself – brighter, bolder and more immersive than ever.
With six all-new installations along a brand-new night-time trail through the garden’s grounds, Moment Factory once again invite us to resonate deeply with our environment through their spectacular signature mix of light, technology and original soundscapes.
WHEN: 29 June – 30 July (except Mondays)
Sessions available every 15 minutes
Tuesdays – Thursdays 6pm onwards
Fridays – Sundays 5:30pm onwards (except 28 July when it will be open from 6pm)
4 years and under: FREE – however a $0.00 ticket is required for entry
A 2% merchant service fee applies to each transaction.
Collectif Scale
As part of the free City Lights program, Adelaide’s Queens Theatre will be transformed by Paris based Collectif Scale, who are bringing their Ammonite installation to Illuminate Adelaide 2023. The Collectif Scale is a team of 10 passionate friends who don’t define themselves as Artists but come from more technical educational and professional backgrounds and describe themselves as having a cable and soldering iron culture.
Ammonite is made up of kinetic visual light structure that is fully responsive to music. It was initially created by Collectif Scale in Brussels in 2017. It’s been used in music videos, and on stages around the world and we’re lucky enough to have it coming to Adelaide for Illuminate Adelaide 2023.
An immersive experience combining light, music, and movement, Ammonite must be seen to be believed creating an unforgettable, entrancing spectacle of everchanging strobe, patterns, and forms.
Unsound Adelaide celebrates its 10th year in 2023 and now falls within the Illuminate Adelaide program. They are bringing back their pop-up nightspot named Unsound Club to The Lab on Light Square. The two nights of this club are curated by both the Illuminate Adelaide and Unsound Adelaide teams and they have invited artists hailing from Mali, and with Lebanese, and Ghanian-Filipina backgrounds to name just a few.
Unsound Club Night #1
WHERE: The Lab @ Light, 63 Light Square, ADELAIDE
WHEN: Unsound Club Night #1, 14 July, 11:45pm – 5am
HOW MUCH: $50 for standing General Admission tickets when purchased online, or $60 on the door. Or if you’re keen to experience Unsound Club over both nights it is on (different line-up each night), you can buy a 2 night pass for $80.
A 2% merchant service fee is applied to all online purchases.
C.FRIM
Blending global sounds that are urgent and forward-thinking, Naarm-based DJ C.FRIM has a singular, confident, boundary-pushing vision. Drawing from her experience in the Ghanaian-Filipina diaspora, C.FRIM’s musical style is eclectic and hybridised, collapsing walls between cultural silos and never skipping a beat.
You can get an idea of what to expect via the clip below:
DJ Diaki
Direct from Mali, DJ Diaki is Diaki Kone, a balani show DJ and radio animator in Sanakoroba, Mali. One of the originators of Balani Show sound system sound, DJ Diaki plays in the style of Balani mix with high energy balafon samples, crashing drums, and live remixes that he calls Balani Fou (Crazy Balani). He is a Nyege Nyege affiliate (a collective in Kampala, Uganda that promotes outsider music, primarily electronic, by African artists).
You can get a feel for his sets in the clip below:
Unsound Club Night #2
WHERE: The Lab @ Light, 63 Light Square, ADELAIDE
WHEN: DJ Plead plays on Unsound Club Night #2, 15 July, 11:45pm – 5am
HOW MUCH: $50 for standing General Admission tickets when purchased online, or $60 on the door. Or if you’re keen to experience Unsound Club over both nights it is on (different line-up each night), you can buy a 2 night pass for $80.
A 2% merchant service fee is applied to all online purchases.
DJ Plead
Playing at night two of Unsound Club is DJ Plead, a Melbourne/Naarm-based producer who draws on his Lebanese background to create tough, percussive, functional tracks.
His unique style references the rhythms, scales, and timbres of Lebanese pop and traditional Lebanese wedding music, blending them with contemporary RnB, club, and other dance styles.
DJ Plead released his debut EP Get in Circle through air max 97’s DECISIONS label in March 2018, and has since toured Europe and China. DJ Plead is also half of drum-workout duo Poison, a member of high-energy trio BV, and founder of the SUMAC label.
Check our his set from Boiler Room Festival 2019 here:
KEY INFO FOR ILLUMINATE ADELAIDE 2023
WHAT: Illuminate Adelaide 2023
WHERE: Various locations across Adelaide
WHEN: 28 June – 30 July 2023
HOW: View the full Illuminate Adelaide program hereor click on the links above to purchase tickets for those shows.
HOW MUCH: There are free events as well as ticketed events and the prices vary from event to event.
What are you looking forward to seeing at Illuminate Adelaide 2023?
