![[Politics of Intimacy: Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey 2]](https://development-q5nzhaa-ou7jifsrmm4uk.us.platform.sh/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/1240473069-323686cc9ad3e9c0b7e2c89761327d4d2fd242487d62c8b31b2ad0359619ccd8-d_295x166-228x160.png)
Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey is a psychiatrist and the author of The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality. In this tape, she is interviewed by videomaker Julie Gustafson for the documentary THE POLITICS OF INTIMACY.
![[Politics of Intimacy: Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey 1]](https://development-q5nzhaa-ou7jifsrmm4uk.us.platform.sh/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/1240470117-23ae816d0140a9b7728c72a4f2a0bc2d2df6fa2b6324c1502c21abf87d2b3985-d_295x166-228x160.png)
Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey is a psychiatrist and the author of The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality. In this tape, she is interviewed by videomaker Julie Gustafson for her documentary THE POLITICS OF INTIMACY.
![[Politics of Intimacy: Mona and Theresa 1]](https://development-q5nzhaa-ou7jifsrmm4uk.us.platform.sh/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/1240470030-2d0fee262fbd57b4d127804d61b3c212e97e424d49a9c29cffc5bdf74396886d-d_295x166-228x160.png)
This is raw footage of an interview with teenagers Theresa Joyce and Mona Gustafson recorded for THE POLITICS OF INTIMACY. Mona and Theresa are close friends. They are romantically and sexually inexperienced. Mona is the younger sister of director Julie Gustafson. She has long blonde hair and is, in their description, more stereotypically “feminine” than Theresa, who has short curly hair.
![[Politics of Intimacy: Margit 1]](https://development-q5nzhaa-ou7jifsrmm4uk.us.platform.sh/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/1240469165-a53c22fd130a0e9b00934fbaae5c61487170cfa66d2a9430dd4464c371ed672a-d_295x166-228x160.png)
This is raw footage of an interview with Margit Gustafson, mother of director Julie Gustafson, for the documentary THE POLITICS OF INTIMACY. In this tape, Margit discusses her sexual and romantic history.
Independent videomaker, Julie Gustafson, invites a diverse group of teenage girls from New Orleans to make autobiographical videos exploring their developing sexuality and identity. An unprecedented long-term collaboration, DESIRE weaves together the girls’ video work, the stories of their changing lives, as well as the family, social and economic contexts in which their desires and choices are shaped.
The film begins in a primarily African-American housing project named ‘Desire’ and follows the lives of teenagers across diverse racial, political, class, and cultural backgrounds. Cassandra, Kimeca, Tracy, Peggy, and Tiffinie collaborate to tell their own stories of struggle and wrestling with questions of sexual identity, body image, family, future plans, and the pressures of finding one’s way in the world. As the film unfolds over the next five years, DESIRE honors each of the young women’s challenges and achievements, making clear that their ‘choices’ are linked not just to hopes and dreams, but to actual educational and economic opportunity– too often tinged with the racial disadvantage. In one remarkable scene, Kimeca, turns the camera on Gustafson, prompting her to share her own story of teenage pregnancy and the difficult decisions she made about abortion.
As John Anderson from Variety said: “Top-flight editing and a pace that never falters help “Desire” movingly tell the stories of its five subjects.” Justin Lane Briggs of The New School concurs: “The films the girls make themselves are shockingly honest and revealing…The result is a poignant and moving work, which stirs up a massive cloud of thoughts and issues without ever settling on one side of them… Cassandra and Tiffanie will haunt your dreams.
Features definitive versions of Beckett’s recent works written or adapted for television. There are three additional works in The Beckett Project series produced by Global Village: What Where (1988/10 minutes), a video version of Beckett’s last play overseen by the playwright himself, Godot in San Quentin (1988/27 minutes), a fascinating version of Waiting For Godot, produced by inmates of this maximum-security prison, and Waiting for Beckett (1994/86 minutes), a unique television documentary on the life and work of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett, which includes a rare scene with the playwright critiquing a video performance of one of his plays.
A fascinating version of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, produced by an all-inmate cast in San Quentin maximum-security prison. There are three additional works in The Beckett Project series produced by Global Village: What Where (1988/10 minutes), a video version of Beckett’s last play overseen by the playwright himself, Peephole Art: Beckett for Television (1992/38 minutes) featuring definitive versions of Beckett’s recent works written or adapted for television, and Waiting for Beckett (1994/86 minutes), a unique television documentary on the life and work of the Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett, which includes a rare scene with the playwright critiquing a video performance of one of his plays.
WAITING FOR BECKETT profiles the life and work of Nobel prize-winning author and playwright Samuel Beckett, a writer who shunned publicity throughout his life, and yet became a worldwide cultural influence. More than five years in the making, the 1994 documentary is a blend of rare archival footage, performances of his work, interviews with friends and scholars, as well as excerpts from Beckett’s letters which provide an astonishing and often humorous insight into his personal opinions of his life and art. Co-produced and Directed by John Reilly and Melissa Shaw Smith, WAITING FOR BECKETT was undertaken with the blessing and guidance of Samuel Beckett, who died in 1989 at the age of 83. It depicts Beckett turning one of his last plays ‘What Where’ into a highly stylized video production. It stands as the only known footage of Beckett at work as he critiques the work-in-progress with collaborator John Reilly. It also features letters written by Beckett and excerpts across his body of work, voiced by Irish actor Chris O’Neil. Actors Steve Martin and Bill Irwin perform and discuss their personal response to Beckett’s work. Footage shows Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel in the first production of ‘Waiting for Godot’ made for television, along with famous performances by Jack MacGowran, Patrick Magee, Billie Whitelaw, and Buster Keaton starring in one of his last film roles in 1964, the only screenplay written by Beckett, entitled FILM.
Mary Manning, the only known surviving family friend who grew up with Beckett, recounts personal anecdotes of their childhood in Ireland. Never before recorded interviews with the villagers of Roussillon in the south of France recall the important but unknown period in Beckett’s life when, as a member of the French Resistance, he was forced to remain there in hiding. WAITING FOR BECKETT paints a portrait of a painfully shy man who devoted much of his life to his art, spending many impoverished years in Paris, receiving over 40 rejections for one of his early novels, before recognition slowly came his way. At the same time, we see a man who was a loyal friend, generous to a fault, full of good humor and always ready to share a bottle of whiskey over a long night’s conversation. Writer and critic S.E. Gontarski said of the documentary: “No one else has this sort of footage of Sam commenting on and working with his own play. Intercutting Sam’s comments with portions from ‘What Where’ makes for an extraordinary recreation of Sam at work. And seeing Sam alert and at work even in his advanced age is incredibly moving.” Robert Koehler of the Los Angeles Times said: WAITING FOR BECKETT is sure to stand as one of the lasting records of Samuel Beckett’s life and work.”
Three additional works exist in The Beckett Project series: WHAT WHERE, PEEPHOLE ART: BECKETT FOR TELEVISION, and WAITING FOR GODOT IN SAN QUENTIN.