Light Reading
‘Light Reading’ begins in darkness as a woman's voice is heard over a black screen. She speaks of her search for a voice: of presence and absence, of experience and history. Her voice continues until the images appear on the screen and then is silent. In the final section of the film she begins again – reading the images as these are moved and re-placed, describing the piecing together of the film as she tries to piece together the strands of her story.
'...she watched herself being looked at
she looked at herself being watched
but she could not perceive herself
as the subject of the sentence...'
The overall effect is of a violent, irresistible desire to destroy the “natural” order of language which has excluded, effaced and appropriated femininity… [The film] draws us into its intricate web of image and voice, speaking to those for whom the language of logic and reason represents a trap in which their subjectivity is already defined by others.
– Pam Cook, Monthly Film Bulletin
Description source: Circles Catalogue (circa 1983). Compiled by Helen MacKintosh and Margaret Gillan. Edited by Felicity Sparrow.
