According to Gloria Monti: > > Sally Potter brought *Tango Lesson* to the Venice FilmFest. I > attended the press conference and asked a question to which she responded > in a less than satisfactory way. I made a comment regarding the > the reversal of the male gaze--which I found interesting. Potter is both > directing and starring in the film, in which she plays a film > writer/director turned dancer. The camera often lingers on the male body > performing tango sequences. However, this reversed scopophilia is > 1)undermined: the female is longingly gazing at a man who does not love > the woman back; and > 2)recuperated narratively with a happy ending. About these two points, > Potter said that "love is a lot more complicated than that." > Not what I expected from such a thoughtful director. > > Gloria Monti Thanks for the information about *Tango Lesson*. Yes, my sense is that in *Orlando*, Potter had moved far away from the aesthetic disruptions of her early short film, *Thriller*. And while *Orlando* can certainly be read as a feminist project continuous with *Thriller*'s revision of *La Boheme*, Potter's rhetoric about *Orlando*--in interviews and quotes--seemed intent on minimizing the feminist politics of the film. This makes me curious about why Potter has decided to withdraw *The Gold Diggers*, which seems from my reading to be a classic for feminist film criticism. It seems to me also that the withdrawal of a film raises interesting questions about authorship. More than simply allowing the film to go "out of print" or undistributed, Potter has, as I understand it, asked (told?) Women Make Movies not to allow their copy of *The Gold Diggers* to be viewed. Is this a common practice among filmmakers? Cynthia Port Department of English University of Pennsylvania ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama.