Women Make Waves International Film Festival

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    A Question of Silence

    Marleen Gorris 1982 Holland Fiction color 92min Dutch 35mm
    Housewife Edda Barends, waitress Nelly Frijda and secretary Henriette Tol have but one thing in common: murder. Acting virtually on impulse, the three women kill a male store owner who has caught Barends shoplifting. A psychiatrist played by Cox Habbema is engaged to prove that the women are insane so that they can avoid being sent to prison.

    A few sessions later, however, Habbema casts her lot with the killers, in agreeing that murder is justified as long as it stems from dissatisfaction with the entire Male population/system. Although one might assume that A Question of Silence (originally released in the Netherlands as De Stilte Rond) would be rejected out of hand by the largely male Dutch Film Finance Corporation, instead, the Corporation was so enthusiastic over writer/ director Marleen Gorris' project proposal that it put up all the production money.

    Director

    Marleen Gorris

    One of the Netherlands's best-known filmmakers and an important, often provocative voice in world cinema, writer and director Marleen Gorris is renowned- and, in some circles, reviled- for making unapologetically feminist films that assert the rights of women as they question the patriarchy that often represses them. Gorris earned particular international recognition for Antonia's Line, a portrait of several generations of Dutch women that won a 1995 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Born in Holland's Limburg region in 1948, Gorris studied drama at home and abroad. She began working as a filmmaker with almost no previous experience in the cinema and made an auspicious writing and directorial debut in 1982 with De Stilte Rond (A Question of Silence).

    Marleen Gorris

    2003 Caroline

    2000 The Luzhin Defence

    1997 Mrs. Dalloway

    1995 Antonia's Line

    1990 The Last Lsland

    1984 Broken Mirrors

    1982 A Question of Silence

    Producer: Matthijs Van Heijningen

    Director: Marlenn Gorris

    Screenplay: Marlenn Gorris

    Cinematographer: Frans Bromet

    Editor: Hans Van Dongen

    Sound: Victor Dekker

    Music: Lodewijk de BOer

    Casts: Edda Barends, Eddy Brugman, Kees Cooken, Hans Croiset, Nelly Frijda, Cox Habbema Onno Molenkamp, Henriette Tol, Dolf de Vries

    Language: Dutch

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