Director: JANE CAMPION
It’s the height of Beatlemania and the beginning of Pam’s sexual awakening. As she and her friends begin to explore their sexuality, predatory men are always lurking on the periphery and even family life cannot escape the tensions of sexual yearning.
A Girl’s Own Story is one in a series of short films made by Jane Campion while studying at the Australian Film, Television and Radio school. In the film, she establishes her strikingly original visual style, endowing the ordinary and banal with a sinister sense of the surreal. The directorial vision which engenders the disturbingly eccentric interior worlds of Sweetie (1989) and Angel at My Table (1990) is already apparent here, as is her much heralded interest in female subjectivity.
Yet the freedom of making a short allows her to edit in such a way as to make the narrative jar and fragment:
‘Short films are not inferior, just different. What's appealing is that you don't have as much responsibility for plot. Almost everyone ends up doing something creative with them, even directors who go on to make quite boring features.’
As the recipient of the Palme d'Or (1993), the Silver Lion (1990) and an Academy Award (1994), Jane Campion is one of the most successful female directors in the world.
There is no commentary for this film.
Film courtesy of the BFI
