Rape

Julia Lesage has described Rape as “an explicitly feminist documentary film which uses experimental techniques” in order to tell the stories of rape victims and analyze various myths and facts about rape in the United States. Lesage describes the structure of the film as “that of one evening’s conversation in which women who had been raped speak with the filmmaker” in one woman’s living room and pass around a video camera and shoot themselves. This video material was reverse telecined (kinescoped) to 16mm and along with various impressionistic and symbolic images, street shots, and handwritten intertitles forms the visual material of the film. The soundtrack consists solely of the women’s stories, and their words, ideas, and reflections determine the structure of the film. (Julia Lesage, “Disarming Film Rape” Jump Cut, no. 19, December 1978, pp. 14-16.)