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Swallow
Dublin Core
Title
Swallow
Subject
experimental, woman filmmaker, queer, anorexia, depression, body dysmorphia, personality disorders
Description
Gift from filmmaker. I think I wrote a letter of evaluation for Elisabeth at one point and may have acquired many of her films for this reason. Many of our core interests align: feminism, reenactment, women's liberation. Elisabeth wrote an important contribution for the collection I co-edited with Jesse Lerner on fake documentaries, F is for Phony, about her own reenactment practice in her rich and complex film Shulie.
Publisher
Video Data Bank
Date
1995
Abstract
"Subrin's cross-texting Swallow portrays the artist as a young anorexic, bombarded by the contradictory messages of a malign culture. Personality disorders find their formal equivalents in a work that clouds the borders of the bio-pic, by shifting voices, legitimizing accounts, and skillful layerings of social history." -Steve Seid, Curator, Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, CA "For Subrin, as the visual metaphor of silence or speechlessness—evidenced primarily by the repeated use of white-out on the body, text and image—gains prominence in Swallow, it becomes clear that the fragility of female identity in post-feminist America appears, in part, as a failure of language itself." -Tina Wasserman, New Art Examiner, Chicago from elisabethsubrin.com
Elisabeth Subrin’s Swallow, meanwhile, revolves around another kind of psychic and physical breakdown. Deftly blending found footage and self-shot material with spoken recollections of a childhood friend’s eating disorder, Subrin navigates the darker
side of a Free to Be...You and Me upbringing: ‘It was 1975. There was no name for it, but I knew what she was talking about. - Films by Lincoln Center
Elisabeth Subrin’s SWALLOW is based on accounts of eating disorders of her childhood friends and examines a dark aspect of the lives of today’s young women which may cause psychic and physical collapse.” - Viennale Film Festival
Elisabeth Subrin’s Swallow, meanwhile, revolves around another kind of psychic and physical breakdown. Deftly blending found footage and self-shot material with spoken recollections of a childhood friend’s eating disorder, Subrin navigates the darker
side of a Free to Be...You and Me upbringing: ‘It was 1975. There was no name for it, but I knew what she was talking about. - Films by Lincoln Center
Elisabeth Subrin’s SWALLOW is based on accounts of eating disorders of her childhood friends and examines a dark aspect of the lives of today’s young women which may cause psychic and physical collapse.” - Viennale Film Festival
Moving Image Item Type Metadata
Original Format
VHS
Duration
28 mins
Director
Elisabeth Subrin
URL
For research, teaching, and educational use please use CONTACT US in About section to make a request for access.
Files
Citation
“Swallow,” VHS Activism Archive , accessed January 24, 2026, https://activismvhs.omeka.net/items/show/689.
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