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Women’s eNews is pleased to announce its latest addition to its list of ’21 Leaders for the 21st Century’ for 2023: Breakthrough Film of the Year: The Disappearance of Shere Hite.
Backstory (Paris, 1991)
The dialogue could not have been more fitting, nor more beautiful: Feminist and scientist Shere Hite meets artist Iris Brosch in Paris in 1991. Paris was the place of encounter for two special personalities of the 21st century.
The city opened wide its doors and its inspiring possibilities for Shere Hite and Iris Brosch. No place in the world seemed more suited to reflect on the philosophy of femininity while exploring developments and risks of the women’s movement in the 21st century. The experiences of the foreign, the shrill profusion of a city like Paris, its sometimes contradictory multiformity or the encounters with completely different ways of life are lasting impressions that, as broadening of horizons, have shaped the development and the work of Shere Hite and Iris Brosch.
At that time, Shere Hite was at the peak of her career. Beyond the usual boundaries between feminism, science and the public, she explored, interpreted and sold the great subject of female sexuality in a new way like no other. For this she was highly respected by her readers and hounded by the press. With her Hite Report, which sold some 50 million copies, Hite pioneered feminist sexual research.
In her Paris period, which marked the end of her flight from America, she focused primarily on family structures and their impact on women’s sexuality. Her own childhood was the starting point of her research. The fundamental disappointment of the reception of her works in America led her to accept German citizenship a few years later.
Iris Brosch is a young internationally sought-after photographer in the nineties. She is interested in the character of personalities and approaches her photographs close to the model, focusing especially on a face, a body or a small scene. The deliberately provocative-realistic depictions of sexuality are part of her plan to unmask a misperceived value system and replace it with a poetic feminism. Her photographs are works of art that bring the female body into our field of vision and uniquely tell of longing and anger, but also of perception and repression.
Together, Shere Hite and Iris Brosch have explored the female body in various installations, photographs and stagings. In the 21st century, the taboos of the female body are still a social phenomenon that is culturally anchored. Women are supposed to be sexually available and at the same time perfect mothers without aging. Motherhood and female pleasure are neatly separated, however, and childbearing and dying are predominantly tabooed. The symbolic summit of this view in the Christian West is the figure of Mary as a virgin mother. In several large photo series, Iris Brosch and Shere Hite address the aspects of fertility, sexuality, and death as parts of the life cycle. In doing so, they stage everyday situations and dramas. These oscillate between a secluded existence in wholesome, nostalgic bourgeoisie and exhibitionistic, lascivious display. The scenes depicted are interspersed with quotations from Christian art, whose stylistics are reinterpreted for the picture’s own story.
“Shere told me she wanted a film to be made about her life one day,” Iris told Lori Sokol, Executive Director of Women’s eNews. The film will premiere in NYC on Nov. 16th, 2023.
Iris Brosch will accept the ’21 Leaders for the 21st Century” award at the Women’s eNews Gala on Nov. 14th, on behalf of Shere Hite. Click here for tickets to the Gala, as well as to view a list of all current 2023 honorees.
Click below to view the film’s trailer:
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