Recently, a friend shared how, while under anesthesia in the operating room, she asked the surprised hospital staff to take a picture of a part of her own body that had been removed. No, this is not a description of Lucie Rosenfeldova's new film, which is being shown for the first time at Galerie mladých. However, this real-life situation effectively illustrates one of the key themes of Lucie's film: the questions of power over (one's own) body, particularly through its visual representation. The film also explores Lucie's need to understand the ideological foundations of medical practices in relation to the individual and their body. It begins with a voiceover stating, "We map in the desire to find out what places are really ours," setting the tone for an exploration of identity, ownership, and the body.
The pictorial representation of the female body, historically manipulated as an object of power and tied to claims of its reproductive utility, has long been a subject of interest for Lucie Rosenfeldová. Her work raises critical dilemmas surrounding individual freedom versus collective interests, research and science versus dehumanization, pictorial documentation versus manipulation, and the body versus memory. Through this exploration, she critically investigates visual representation, while simultaneously offering a subjective statement with autofictional elements.
While the genre classification of her films can be tricky, we might label them as video essays, expanding the legacy of media criticism in its broadest sense, while also positioning them within the tradition of experimental auteur cinema. The aesthetic combines elements of documentary, educational films, and digital animation, with voiceover narration providing historical commentary or drawing from archival quotations.
The film How Not to Remember Your Bodies focuses on abortion procedures, but it is not a straightforward opinion piece on one of the central themes of current ideological battles. Instead, the author examines the cultural representations of this procedure, comparing how it was depicted during state socialism in Czechoslovakia and in the feminist movements of the second half of the twentieth century in the United States. Both the local, state-authoritarian context and the American emancipatory movements conceptualize abortion interventions as legitimate, though they operate within vastly different cultural and political frameworks. Both, however, reflect unprecedented support for women's equality, albeit in distinct power settings and cultural contexts. What is particularly interesting is the way these cultural representations of abortion differ.
The local documentaries are framed as observational depictions of distressing scenes from surgeries and hospital settings, with emblematic details, such as the nervously moving hands of waiting patients, which Lucie Rosenfeld repeatedly quotes in her film through additional footage. On the other hand, feminist materials present the procedure as a "hassle-free" experience, with the woman undergoing the abortion depicted as a confident agent in control of the procedure, certainly not in a subordinate role. What is striking, even bizarre, in these representations is the satisfaction and smiles on the faces of those involved. What does the comparison of these two discourses bring forth? A dilemma of broad relevance: whether to prioritize personal autonomy or to lean towards care, which, within a collective framework, inevitably involves risks of surveillance and bureaucracy. There is, of course, no simple or clear-cut answer to this question. Ultimately, this leaves us with the possibility, above all, of being both inquisitive and prudent participants in the lives of our own bodies.
Lucie Rosenfeldova
How Not to Remember Our Bodies
18 min, 2024
