The Decision

Film duration:
33
Year:
1981
Countries:
United Kingdom
Original format:
16mm
Colour:
Colour

‘The Decision’ is the story of Anyprincess whose tale is told through a clever and effective mix of live action and animation. Beginning and ending with a “fairy story” heard on the radio, the film translates Anyprincess's problem – is it a question of being decisive or of having to choose? – into a series of explosive images. Images which engage with experience and desire and explore a whole world ranging from housework to psychoanalysis; from film-making to production-line society; from woman-as-victim to sexual desire. 

Vera Neubauer has created her own highly idiosyncratic style of film­making in which [such] ambiguities are constantly held in play. A style that bursts upon the screen in a riot of images and dazzling array of techniques. Nothing is sacred: everything is potential material... Not afraid to confront the painful, the film embraces both the everyday of work of housework and the hopes and fears of "where-does-it-all-begin" and "what-if". 

– Claire Barwell

One of the most brilliant and disturbing [films] that I've seen for ages, her animation is sheer original delight, mood set to music and voices in a series of dancing, transmuting episodes.

– Helen MacKintosh, City Limits

Description source: Circles Catalogue (circa 1983). Compiled by Helen MacKintosh and Margaret Gillan. Edited by Felicity Sparrow.

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