Béatrice Cordua

'The Silent Cry is a fictionalised narrative film, based on documentary facts and extracts of one English girl's memories and thoughts, all surrounded, and directed towards her particular dilemma. This dilemma can be summarized as her basic inability to have relationships, especially sustained relationships, and particularly with men. This is the total of her statement and the film. The construction and flow of the film follows the way she thinks - it is her point of view that is followed in the film. So all things are the way she remembers and dwells on them, and which are important to her.' - S.D.

Trixi is Dwoskin’s most convulsive version of his recurrent theme: the confrontation of a solitary girl with the camera. Shot in one continuous 8-hour session. Trixi records Beatrice Cordua’s responses to the situation, from initial shyness, fear and withdrawal through teasing and posturing to naked surrender and final exhaustion …. The camera is highly mobile; often confronting the girl in extreme close-ups, sometimes swooping down from overhead, sometimes searching to “recapture” her …. The camera itself is the object of erotic desire, [in] the sense of giving a performance shifting imperceptibly in a helpless self-exposure in response to its constant stare. Clearly, the form of the film was dictated by the response of the performer. Beatrice Cordua proves Dwoskin’s most expressive subject to date, and the film is correspondingly “open,” the camera having been willing to choose its tactics as direct responses.

Far away from the big city, Janine is unwelcome, yet an eye-catcher: a sensual, queer subject of projection with wine-red hair. Jan Eilhardt travels with her to engage with his own rural past, opening old wounds and infiltrating a hostile milieu.

"Location: a ballet company, Mrs. Cordua training alone, training together with another person, head exercises, body exercises, leg and arm exercises, supporting herself, working in the ballet room, taking off her makeup in the dressing room, undressing, washing herself carefully, treating all of the sweaty places of her body (armpits, anus, genitalia), getting dressed, opera house corridors, canteen, driving through the city, typical buildings, shops, factory complexes on the way; apartment—opera house and back, her husband reading the newspaper, sitting, lying down, working, smoking, cooking potatoes, eating potatoes, opening the mail, drinking coffee, filming, caring for feat, mouth, while saying something amusing, hand movement (beheading gesture meaning it is finished), a TV film, dancer relaxing in private, smoking, discussing, disparaging, a TV film, drinking tea, the end: that certain shine in Mrs. Cordua's eyes!" (HHK)

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