Perception

Perception is a found footage film exploring how females are perceived throughout cinema. Specifically, this film seeks to comment on the rhetoric created by Hollywood on how women are to be viewed. In a predominantly male industry, cinematography and costume design perpetuate the “male gaze” and create a culture that this is how women should be treated. In the 2022 documentary “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power”, which highlights how women are objectified in film and sexualized in culture, filmmaker and researcher Nina Menkes states, “male actors and female actresses are filmed differently. Consistently differently.” Filmmaker and Dartmouth College professor Iyabo Kwayana continues, “...in a visual culture such as ours, in which there is a ravenous appetite towards the female as object, if the camera is predatory then the culture is predatory as well” (Brainwashed, 2022). Commentary is one thing, but this project wishes to visually ignite this perception of the female body in our modern culture.