Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)

Directed by Midi Onodera

Canada, 1985 (experimental / fiction, 28 minutes, colour)

Film Description:
"'Parallax is the apparent change in position of an object resulting from the change in direction or position from which it is viewed.' Confusion, underlying meaning, and unspoken truths are often associated with the dialectic of sexual communication. Mingled with the intensity and unpredictability of a 'one night stand,' they generate unique sensations—mixed emotion, risk, excitement. The film employs formal devices in a manner which is simple yet effective. Its subject matter—sexuality and communication—gains depth and poignancy through the artist's decision to shoot the film's three scenes for projection in a double-screen configuration, providing an elegant solution to deal with potentially sensationalist subject matter. The separation which the two screens impose on the film's viewing evokes the aloneness which is the common experience of all human beings and the spaces we hope to bridge."
-- Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (source)

(sources)

Quotes by the Director

"Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax) was screened in the 1986 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in a program called 'Lesbian Shorts.' I did not attend the Festival but was contacted by the frantic programmer with news of the screening. Apparently the predominantly lesbian audience had thoroughly enjoyed the first scene between the two women, but when the washroom sex scene [between two men] came on their response became hostile. Women demanded refunds on their tickets, the projection booth was stormed and attempts were made to stop the film. Through my discussions with the programmer and reading the editorials in the local Bay area gay newspaper I came to understand the frustration of some of the lesbian audience. They wanted and expected to see work which reinforced their sexual orientation. They wanted hard cold lesbian content, not a film which included gay and straight encounters. Overnight, and inadvertently, I had entered the debate of 'what is a lesbian film?'"
-- Midi Onodera (source)

"The idea of including 'parallax' came from my desire to integrate cinematic elements with the subject of the work. The split-screen device employed by the film is meant both to comment on the technical mechanism of film and to highlight the shift in meaning or double interpretation sometimes associated with communication between two people."
-- Midi Onodera (source)

Quote about Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)

"Shown at the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in 1986 as part of a program of lesbian shorts, Ten Cents offers three semicomic narrative panels. The central panel, an eight-minute, static long-take showing a high-angle view of two frisky, taciturn, and efficient young men having sex in a public toilet, provoked the never-forgotten riot at the Roxy Theatre, in which lesbian spectators shouted at the screen, stomped out of the auditorium, and, legend has it, even stormed the projection booth."
-- Thomas Waugh (source)

Bibliography for Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)

Book Chapters

Martin, Elizabeth, and Vivian Meyer. "Midi Onodera: Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)." In Female Gazes: Seventy-Five Women Artists, 162-163. Toronto: Second Story Press, 1997.

Brief Sections of Books

Mayne, Judith. "A Parallax View of Lesbian Authorship." In Feminisms in the Cinema, edited by Laura Pietropaolo and Ada Testaferri. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. (pp. 199-204)
Mayne, Judith. "A Parallax View of Lesbian Authorship." In Framed: Lesbians, Feminists, and Media Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. (pp. 153-160)
Mayne, Judith. The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women's Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. (pp. 225-228)
Onodera, Midi. "Locating the Displaced View." In Feminisms in the Cinema, edited by Laura Pietropaolo and Ada Testaferri. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. (pp. 24-25)
Waugh, Thomas. The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006. (pp. 256-259)