From Romance to Ritual (S)

"From Romance to Ritual invokes and inverts the title of the 1920 book by Jessie L. Weston, as it like the book, draws connections between pagan history and ritual and mythology. "This film is formed around several scenes of women telling stories to the camera of their sexual history and experience. This material is juxtaposed with related footage concerning girls and their growing up, memory and the learning process and the received truth of history lessons. This film as a whole makes for an uncomfortable fit between women's personal experience and the official dogma of our culture's history. "The filming style is of the ethnographic film without the expert observer and of the home movie without the father." — Peggy Ahwesh