Set to music by Bikini Kill, Girl Power is a raucous vision of what it meant to be a radical girl in the 1990s. Benning relates her personal rebellion against school, family, and female stereotypes as a story of solitary adventures and personal freedom. Informed by the underground “riot grrrl” movement, the director transforms the image politics of femininity, rejecting traditional passivity and polite compliance in favour of radical independence and a self-determined sexual identity.
Sadie Benning is a lesbian videomaker who began making videos when she was 15 years old, using a Fisher Price Pixelvision toy camera. Evoking in turn playful seduction and painful honesty, Benning's floating, close-up camera functions as a witness to her intimate revelations, and as an accomplice in defining her evocative experimental form. Her more recent work moves beyond the Pixelvision camera and into animation and film.
Selected filmography
Play Pause (2006)
One Liner (2003)
The Baby (2003)
Le Tigre Slide Show (1999)
Le Tigre (1999)
Flat is Beautiful (1998)
German Song (1995)
The Judy Spots (1995)
Girl Power (1992)
It Wasn’t Love (1992)
A Place Called Lovely (1991)
Jollies (1990)
Welcome to Normal (1990)
If Every Girl Had a Diary (1990)
Living Inside (1989)
Me & Rubyfruit (1989)
A New Year (1989)
