In recent years, fashion designers have added short films to their design presentation portfolio, creating a real life element that runway shows simply cannot. In 2011 famed Italian designer, Miucci Prada, commissioned four female directors to produce short films exploring the love affair women have with Prada’s Miu Miu label.
The four films, dubbed ‘Women’s Tales’, were showcased at the Venice Film Festival on August 30, 2012, and featured an all-female cast. With minimal spoken dialogue, the beautifully shot films take place in a world seemingly inhabited by women alone and explore the concepts of being a woman, enacted through our beauty rituals, movements and unspoken language. By using established female directors, the films are imbued with credibility.
The first four films in the series: The Powder Room directed by Zoe Cassavetes, Muta by Lucrecia Martel, The Woman Dress by Giada Colagrande, and It’s Getting Late by Massy Tadjedin, featured models and actresses gloriously decked out in Miu Miu’s signature clothing, accessories and statement sunglasses.
In mid-February, the fifth film in the series was released and this time features an all African-American cast and is directed by Ava Marie DuVernay, the first African-American woman to win the best director prize at Sundance film festival for 2012’s Middle of Nowhere.
The Door, which features actresses Gabrielle Union, Alfre Woodard, Adepero Oduye, Emayatzy Corindealdi and soul singer Goapele, follows each woman as she reaches out to a friend in distress (Union) and illustrates the strength of bonds between women role that fashion and style play in our lives at all times.
For DuVernay, female directors represent more than meets the eye: “Every time a woman makes a film, it is a political act, in my view, whether we mean it to be or not,” she says.
“Films by women, whether comedy or drama, documentary or narrative; illustrate the human experience through a woman’s voice, through a woman’s eyes, through a woman’s creativity.
Experiences which are often marginalized, fabricated, or simply ignored.”
To view Miu Miu fashion shows from 2011-2013 click here.
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