Gertrude & Alice in Passing

Directed by Kay Armatage

Canada, 1978 (experimental / fiction, 8 minutes, colour)

Also known as "Gertrude and Alice in Passing"

Image: © Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

Film Description:
"This experiment in point of view, narrative structure, and time attempts to reproduce cinematically Gertude Stein's notion of a 'continuous present.' In four rhyming shots/scenes, it suggests the development of a relationship over many years. Based on biographical details from the lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, with improvised performances by Jackie Burroughs and Anne Anglin."
-- Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (source)

(sources)

Quote by the Director

"After months of thinking and reading, I set out to make a short film, this time real fiction [Gertrude & Alice in Passing]. The central questions for me at the time were: (1) how to deal with the illusionism of cinema and our cultural lust for the illusion of reality; (2) how to circumvent the editing process, which ellides space and time invisibly; (3) how to allow the characters, the subjects of the film, to remain whole—unfragmented—and to collaborate in the creation of the film (a principle I still find simpatico); and (4) how to acknowledge the inevitable voyeurism of the camera and of the audience."
-- Kay Armatage (source)

Quote about Gertrude & Alice in Passing

"[Gertrude & Alice in Passing is] a charming and intelligent eight minute piece that explores, among other things, the camera as voyeur."
-- Jane Dick (source)

Bibliography for Gertrude & Alice in Passing

Journal Articles

Armatage, Kay. "Feminist Film-making: Theory and Practice." Canadian Woman Studies / Les Cahiers de la femme 1, no. 3 (1979): 49-50.