Not a Pretty Picture

An incredibly bold debut film by director Martha Coolidge aims to reconstruct her personal experience of sexual abuse. Using the docufiction genre, the director and actors rethink traumatic experiences, violence against women, sexual violence, and the problems of on-screen representation of it. The actress playing the director, who has also experienced abuse, helps to create a dialogue within the team, during which personal experiences and questions about guilt and consent arise not as an individual internal struggle, but as a systemic problem.

One of the most special parts of this year’s program is a retrospective dedicated to director and sound director Marytė Kavaliauskas. She will be visiting Lithuania together with her husband, Fred Murphy, the cinematographer of the film “Not a Pretty Picture”. As the title states, the film does not offer anything pretty – in it, the director recreates her personal story of rape, using actors who have experienced sexual violence and those who have not. Improvised scenes recreate and analyze the situation of date rape. This is a film with many layers: at times it approaches the traumatic experience, but over time and through the  chosen actors, it creates a distance that allows for a constructive discussion of the boundaries that must not be crossed. – Program curator Eglė Maceinaitė

Martha Coolidge 

Martha Coolidge – the first ever film major at the Rhode Island School of Design, the first female president of the Directors Guild of America, and the first to cast Nicolas Cage as a lead in a feature film. Rising to prominence with the cult classic Valley Girl (1983), Coolidge brought a fresh, female perspective to coming-of-age narratives and romantic comedies. Her work often explores themes of identity, gender roles, and class.