‘BASTA!’ FILM NIGHT

FREE ENTRY

7pm (FOOD) / 8pm (FILM)

‘A QUESTION OF SILENCE’

(Netherlands 1982)

(95 mins) (cert 15)

Three ordinary women, all strangers to each other, commit a horrible, violent crime in a boutique. TTTThe establishment and a court-appointed female psychiatrist attempt to understand their motive. What the accused women find is wilful incomprehension on the part of the men who arrest them, try them and testify against them. Because what they have done cannot be understood in the context of any existing cultural system.

The film is an extended commentary on the repression of women in a male-dominated society. Incarceration is shown as preferable to their previous existences; marriage or servitudeTop of FormBottom of FormBottom of Form. This film captures the sense of living in a hostile world, evident to any woman who has suffered at the hands of patriarchy or the justice system.