Lover Other: The Story Of Claude Cahun And Marcel Moore Dir: Barbara Hammer USA, 2006, Beta SP, 55 mins plus: The Hundredth Room Dir: Sarah Gibson Australia, 2004, Beta SP, 20 mins plus: Who's The Top? Dir: Jennie Livingstone USA, 2005, 35mm, 22 mins What an engaging and memorable threesome we enjoyed at this session! First up, a piece of visual poetry from Aussie. The Hundredth Room is a lament for one woman's partner who has died of pancreatic cancer. Weaving together random visual sources (eggs, keys, lava, water) and including some simple but effective animation, the film - at times soothing, at times highly agitated - and the grieving woman finally achieve a peace. Who's the Top is an impish story of one woman's attempt to come to terms with her desire to 'experiment' sexually. This struck quite a chord with the audience! The linear story is intercut with a more theatrical black and white 'comment' that climaxes in a dizzying Busby Berkley style routine about spanking! All to Ella Fitzgerald and the Ink Spots crooning I'm Beginning to See the Light! Holding this heady mix of style and content together with such aplomb (and no way talking down to her audience) makes director Jennie Livingstone a talent to watch out for. Finally, a fascinating tale of two French step-sisters who fell in love and moved to Jersey Isle. Here all was bliss, they spent their days making art (which no one saw because it was all so sapphic in a surreal sort of way) and the locals didn't mind - they were "artistic" that was all. Then the Nazis arrive, taking over the island for the duration of the war. The two women take to writing anti-nazi notes which they hide under the soldiers' ashtrays or poke into their knapsacks, even their pockets! They have wisely not signed up to say they are of Jewish descent, but they finally end up in prison, a tiny cell where they keep on making art - on cigarette packets, pieces of newspaper, whatever. Condemned to death and then to life imprisonment, they are saved by the war's ending. After their deaths it's almost only by chance that someone thinks to save their twelve tea-chests of 'art'. As the movie ends we see their works being auctioned today, reaching prices of forty thousand pounds for one photo! Truth, darlings - it's stranger than fiction! John Curry - 4th June 2006