Academy Award-winning alumna screens new film

Author: Melissa Marshall

"Art is the soul of any culture," New Mexico-based artist Maya Torres said emphatically during one of her many interviews in the latest documentary from Middlebury College alumna and Board of Trustees Member Pamela Tanner Boll '78. But what happens when that culture is still prevalently patriarchal - especially when it comes to the commercial art industry? Part of a series of events sponsored by the Women's and Gender Studies Program, Chellis House and the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs in celebration of Women's History Month, the pre-theaterical release screening of "Who Does She Think She Is?" poignantly portrayed the issues of familial opposition, time constraints and critical apathy facing six different women artists in the United States.

Associate producer of the 2005 Academy Award-winning documentary "Born into Brothels" as well a mother to three sons, Bolls tries her hand at directing - crafting a moving account of the effects of a society that seems to esteem female creation of art even less than it values the creation of children and the demands of motherhood.

"We don't value motherhood - we say we do, but we don't," Boll said during a question-and-answer session after the screening. "We give it lip service the same way we give art lip service. Artists in this country, for the most part, live in the upmost poverty."

Even though Boll sought to explore the tensions created between mother and child in response to the mother's artistic pursuits, she instead encountered the strain placed upon a marriage when a wife balances her time between familial obligation and her own desire for creative expression. Three of the six women featured in the documentary were divorced - Providence-based actress Angela Williams' marriage deteriorating during filming.

Although Boll warned that, "I think that it's very difficult for a woman who does not have children to get this [documentary]," the theme of obligation versus dreams resounded with Middlebury students in attendance.

"I'm sure having a kid is a much bigger thing," admitted Ariela Yomtovian '11 to the crowded classroom in McCardell Bicentennial Hall, "but I still feel like I have to stick with certain norms and can't experiment."

And while "Who Does She Think She Is?" focuses on individual experiences - from sculpting to painting to flat drumming - it also offers a wide-lens and sobering view of the under-representation of women on the global-art stage. According to Guerrilla Girl - a national organization of self-proclaimed feminists who stage public protests in response to discrimination in the art world - "less than three percent of the artists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art are women, but 83 percent of the nudes are female," while women make up less than 12 percent of the Tate Modern's collection.

Four years in the making, "Who Does She Think She Is?" presents an honest and harrowing narration of the devaluation of female creative and care-giving contributions as well as relaying the reality that female students may find the artistic atmosphere beyond the Middlebury bubble less than rosy.