Canadian Women Film Directors Database
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Sally's Beauty Spot

Directed by Helen Lee
Canada, 1990 (experimental, 12 minutes, colour, English)
Sally's Beauty Spot
Image: © Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

Film Description:
"In Sally's Beauty Spot the eponymous mole above the breast of an Asian woman becomes the site of dense meditation on self-image and otherness, mixing theory and experience in a hybrid that moves beyond the boundaries of experimental or documentary cinema."
-- Festival of Festivals (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Principal Cast: Sally Lee, Mitsuyo Wada
(sources)

Notes about Sally's Beauty Spot

(sources)

Quote by the Director

"[In Sally's Beauty Spot] it was important to assert Sally as an active and interested viewer who took pleasure in the images of Suzie, a stereotypical 'dragon lady' and 'hooker with a heart of gold.' Although The World of Suzie Wong is addled with clichés, it was one of the few attractive mass-media images—one of the few images whatsoever—for young girls like us growing up in North American suburbs in the '70s, and this old 1960 film seemed to be on TV all the time. [...] Sally's viewing provokes a discussion about how we find pleasure in things that are supposedly 'bad' for us, in reputedly racist images such as Suzie Wong."
-- Helen Lee (source)


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