Mata Hari, an erotic dancer and courtesan, was executed by firing squad for double espionage in World War I. After her death she was decapitated, her body donated to anatomical study and her head displayed at the Musee d'Anatomie in Paris. In her latest short, "How Mata Hari Lost her Head and Found her Body," Film maker Amy Ruhl takes Mata Hari's tragic ending and reimagines her as a strip tease artist whose ability to remover her head takes Belle Époche Paris by storm. Using Oscar Wilde's Salome as a site for narrative and historical interaction, Ruhl's film draws upon the cultural phenomenon of "Salomania" among largely lesbian and bisexual female performers in order to engage with an era when Orientalism sold, scandal became success, and deviant desires equaled a crime punishable by death.

Click Here to view an excerpt from "How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body"

For her Kinetic Cinema program, Electric Salomes and the Technology of Female Spectacle, Ruhl will show "How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body", using the film as a site to examine how the female body, under the unique technology of cinema, has been the primary source of spectacle since the beginnings of film. Ruhl's work engages with sources ranging from George Meliès' "trick films," to Nazimova's Salome (Dance of the Seven Veils) to Vera Chytilova's phantasmagoria scene in Daisies, one of the most lauded Czech new wave films. She will present examples of these influences and discuss how they have informed "How Mata Hari Lost Her Head and Found Her Body", which was made in part by collaging early film footage together with live action animation.  

Wildfire by Amy Greenfield

Amy Greenfield's Wildfire is the final film in her acclaimed Club Midnight film cycle and depicts women "clothed" in electronically generated flaming colors, reincarnating Thomas Edison's 1894 hand-tinted film, Annabelle Dances. For Kinetic Cinema, Greenfield will be in attendance and join the discussion.