The Irreducible Difference Of The Other (2013) & Beauty Becomes The Beast (1979) by Vivienne Dick

Vivienne Dick was born in Donegal in 1950 and studied at University College, Dublin. Between 1977 - 1982 she lived in New York, part of a group of filmmakers whose affiliation to the music and aesthetic of punk became known as 'New Wave'.

Working mainly on Super 8, Dick's films from this period feature many musicians from the punk movement in NY with performances and music from Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Pat Place, Adele Bertei, and Ikue Mori. Dick returned to Ireland in 1982 and then to London in 1985, where she was a member of The London Filmmakers Coop for many years and produced a number of films in 16mm, and in video.

The screening will introduced the new short film by Vivienne Dick The Irreducible Difference of the Other and her landmark classic Beauty Becomes the Beast
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The Irreducible Difference of the Other questions what it means to be human in a world orientated towards war, terror, and consumption with Franco-Irish actress Olwen Fouéré inhabiting the two personas of Antonin Artaud and Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Key historical moments are referenced, including opposition to the Iraq war, the Arab Spring and recent anti- austerity protests, proclaiming the desire for a world which is more balanced, and which focuses less on exploitation and destruction. An implicit critique of the male paradigm is embodied by the structure of the film – a richly textured weaving of sound and images – which posits the need for a renewal of relationship on both a personal and global level.

Using fragmented images of women and a central performance from Lydia Lunch as both a tormented five year old and a troubled teenager, Beauty Becomes the Beast looks at the mother and daughter relationship and examines the cyclical relationship between the two. Opening with a blast from Teenage Jesus and the Jerks - Lydia Lunch's band - the film trails Lydia as she runs away from home having fallen out with her mother, taking with her a battered, bald doll to whom she plays mother.

The film cuts between images of women on TV, (Lucille Ball), along with posters and adverts on the street, a woman in her kitchen, as well as members of the punk scene such as Adele Bertei who was featured in Dick's first film, Guerillere Talks. These images of patriarchical culture contrast with those of the sexually precocious 'child-girl', tormented by demons commanding her to 'be dirty', who oscillates between being a child crying for her mother and adopting a position of maternity in relation to her doll.