Watch Damned If You Don't

Damned If You Don't is a low-budget film from 1987 that was directed, written, and edited by the pioneering experimental filmmaker Su Friedrich. It's a feature-length, black-and-white, feminist, lesbian-themed film that blurs the boundaries between documentary and fiction, autobiography and imagination, beauty and horror, pleasure and pain, passion and despair. It's a poetic and provocative film that challenges the viewers' expectations and assumptions about traditional narrative cinema, gender and sexuality, art and politics, and language and image.

The film revolves around the character of Anna (played by Peggy Healey), a middle-aged woman who lives alone in a dilapidated house in upstate New York. Anna is a complex and contradictory character who is haunted by her traumatic past, her unfulfilled desires, and her existential angst. She is obsessed with the Virgin Mary, whom she calls "the perfect woman," and whom she tries to emulate in her daily life by being pure, humble, obedient, and sacrificing. She spends most of her time praying, painting, and cleaning, but she also indulges in forbidden pleasures, such as smoking, drinking, and masturbating. She is torn between her religious upbringing, her radical feminism, and her ambiguous sexuality, which are all represented in the film through fragmented, dreamlike, and nonlinear sequences.

The film also features two other main characters who are Anna's lovers and friends: Doreen (played by Makea MacDonald), a tough and seductive bartender who is also Anna's confidant and protector, and Cynthia (played by Ela Troyano), a naive and spiritual artist who is also Anna's muse and rival. Both Doreen and Cynthia challenge Anna's worldview and expose her to new experiences and ideologies that threaten to shatter her sense of self and reality. Doreen introduces Anna to lesbian love, radical politics, and punk music, while Cynthia introduces Anna to abstract art, Buddhist philosophy, and S&M practices. Both relationships are intense, passionate, and unstable, and both lead to conflicts and confrontations that shed light on Anna's internal struggles and external pressures.

The film's production values are deliberately rough, grainy, and raw, which gives the film a sense of authenticity and urgency. The film was shot on 16mm film, with natural lighting and no special effects or post-production manipulation. The sound was recorded on location and mixed later in post-production to create a contrast between silence and noise, music and dialogue, monologue and chorus. The film's score is a mixture of classical, folk, and punk music, which reflects the film's eclectic and rebellious spirit. The film's cinematography is unconventional, with hand-held camera movements, jump cuts, still frames, and long shots that create a sense of immediacy and detachment. The film's editing is fragmentary and associative, with no clear sense of chronology or causality, which allows the viewers to interpret the film's imagery and symbolism in multiple ways.

The film's themes are complex, rich, and provocative, and they deal with a wide range of social, cultural, and psychological issues. The film explores the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion, and challenges the traditional roles and values associated with each. The film also explores the politics of representation, and questions the hegemony of mainstream cinema and language. The film also explores the dynamics of friendship, love, and power, and shows how they can be both liberating and oppressive. The film also explores the nature of art, and questions its ability to express or conceal meaning. The film also explores the nature of identity, and questions its stability and coherence in a world of contradictions and conflicts.

Overall, Damned If You Don't is a groundbreaking and daring film that defies easy categorization and interpretation. It's a film that demands active engagement and critical thinking from its viewers, and rewards them with a unique and challenging cinema experience. It's a film that paved the way for many other feminist and LGBTQ films, and that remains relevant and influential to this day.