In outstanding films that are sharply focused on unusual women
Jane Campion has gained worldwide admiration and respect. This New
Zealand director first attracted international attention with her
1989 film "Sweetie," an acerbic study of two sisters in a wildly
dysfunctional family. She followed this in 1990 with the television
miniseries "An Angel at My Table," based on the autobiography of
New Zealand author Janet Frame. Subsequently released in theatres,
the film chronicles the early trials of the young writer. Poor,
timid, and physically awkward, Frame was misdiagnosed as
schizophrenic and was scheduled for a lobotomy, but her success as
a writer enabled her to escape this fate and won her fame and
acceptance. In 1993 in yet another story about an extraordinary
woman, Campion made the award-winning film "The Piano." It starred
Holly Hunter as the Victorian mail-order bride who refuses to
speak. Arriving in New Zealand with her young daughter, the young
Scottish widow confronts isolation in the wilderness and
communicates only via her piano until she finds real love in her
husband's neighbor, played by Harvey Keitel. Campion next adapted
Henry James's "The Portrait of a Lady," starring Nicole Kidman as
Isabel Archer, a young American heiress seduced by a decadent pair
of expatriates living in Italy.
In this collection of interviews Campion speaks of these films
that have given women a revival as a strong screen presence.
Campion tells of her early life in Wellington and of her training
as a filmmaker in the 1980s at the Australian School of Film and
Television. She speaks of those who have influenced her style and
her experiences in making movies.
Campion received the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
in 1993 and was the first woman director to win the Palme d'Or at
Cannes.
Virginia Wright Wexman, a professor of English and Associate
Vice-Chancellor of Academic Affairs at University of Illinois,
Chicago, has published "Creating the Couple," "Roman Polanski," and
"Letter from an Unknown Woman," as well as articles in "Film
Quarterly" and "Cinema Journal."
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