A Performance on Femininity

By definition femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviours, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Last year I was invited to a residency which facilitated an opportunity to make a film about Nara city life and it’s people from a lens of an outsider. Amongst the many amazing people I met in Nara, Japan I was particularly connected and intrigued by a Geisha named Kikuno Ono. Who due to the pandemic was the last Geisha of Nara city at the time. The Japanese word geisha literally means ‘’art person’’, the traditional Japanese female entertainers and hostesses. These women are the symbol of femenity in Japan very mysterious incredibly misunderstood and live in complete isolation. All the things I felt reflected my own life at the time. Kikuno and I became close friends although we didn’t speak the same language we connected deeply in spirit. We both understood isolation very well and being misunderstood by society at large. Through our shared experienced pain we formed a bond and in this bond lead us to deep conversations surrounding the burdens of womanhood and our shared longing to be free from it. In A Performance on Femininity we are invited in an intimate conversation between two women from different parts of the world. They share their views on what it means being a woman and the burden that come along with it. Bare witness to a conversation with conflicting views on the socially perspective of womanhood. The film is a deconstructed experimental short documentary that creates a personal look into the lives of contemporary women navigating rather ancient existing constructs of womanhood.