Old Girl in a Tutu
Susan Rennie Disrupts Art History
a film by Cheri Gaulke
Old Girl in a Tutu
Susan Rennie Disrupts Art History
a film by Cheri Gaulke
About the FILM
8 minutes of pure delight!
Feminist scholar, Susan Rennie, seizes her iPhone and sneaks her queer, octogenarian body into master works of art, disrupting the narrative of the male gaze.
This 8-minute film focuses on a gallery showcase of Susan Rennie's delightful art with unfiltered commentary from the artist, as well as words from exhibition curator Kirsten Grimstad.*
When Rennie retired from academia, she returned to her first love – photography. With humor and wit, Rennie’s photographic interventions offer a feminist critique of the conventional canon of art history, and an unabashed embrace of her elder, queer identity. The results are juicy, eye-opening, and often hilarious.
Writer/Director/Producer/Editor Cheri Gaulke has created an entertaining journey into the mind of an elder, queer artist through a whirlwind of images and ideas.
Fun fact: Susan's art is created entirely using her iPhone and iPad. Cheri and guest cinematographers Knox Bronson and David Leibowitz also used iPhones to film the interviews, art opening, and behind-the-scenes.
*Grimstad and Rennie were co-editors of the seminal The New Woman’s Survival Catalog published in 1973.
OUR TEAM
DIRECTOR: CHERI GAULKE
SUBJECTS: RENNIE and GRIMSTAD
SUBJECTS: RENNIE and GRIMSTAD
Director, Producer, Writer and Editor: Cheri Gaulke is a pioneer in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles and an award-winning filmmaker whose films have screened in national and international film festivals.
Gaulke’s work has been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Museum of Contemporary Art (LA), in a Smithsonian-touring exhibition, and in settings all over the world including buses, churches, and prehistoric temples. Gaulke has received artist fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, City of Los Angeles, California Community Foundation, and California Humanities.
Recent films: Gloria's Call about women and surrealism (40 film festivals; Best Documentary, Ann Arbor Film Festival; 20222 Venice Biennale); Miss Alma Thomas: A Life in Color about this under-recognized African-American artist (for a museum retrospective); and Inside the Beauty Bubble about a gay hair salon owner (50 festivals; Audience Awards at San Luis Obispo Film Festival and Dances with Films). She is currently in post-production on her first feature documentary, Acting Like Women, about feminist performance art and the Woman's Building in 1970s-80s Los Angeles. For more information about Gaulke's work: https://cherigaulke.com/
SUBJECTS: RENNIE and GRIMSTAD
SUBJECTS: RENNIE and GRIMSTAD
SUBJECTS: RENNIE and GRIMSTAD
Susan Rennie (right) was born in South Africa. She earned a BA from Barnard College and received a Ph.D. in Political Philosophy from Columbia University. She taught Social Sciences at Union Institute & University, worked as a women’s health activist, and lives in Venice, California. To learn more about Susan's photography go to her personal website: https://www.camerarennie.com/
Kirsten Grimstad (left) was born in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute & University (Cincinnati) after receiving a BA at Barnard College and an MA at Columbia University. She is currently Co-Chair of Undergraduate Studies at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and past Chair of the Getty Villa Council. Her research centers on German literature and public memory about the Holocaust, and she is the author of The Modern Revival of Gnosticism and Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (Camden House, 2002).
Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie are the co-editors of The New Woman’s Survival Catalog (Berkeley Publishing Company, 1973) and The New Woman’s Survival Sourcebook (Knopf, 1975). They went on to co-found Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women’s Culture, published out of the Woman’s Building in downtown Los Angeles from 1977-1981.
CO-WRITER: SUE MABERRY
SUBJECTS: RENNIE and GRIMSTAD
EXHIBITION: PAULA LUMBARD
Sue Maberry (left) is a cowriter of Old Girl in a Tutu. She and Gaulke met in 1976 at the Woman's Building, a public center for women's culture in Los Angeles. Maberry has a long career as a graphic designer and arts administrator at the Woman's Building and The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. After receiving a graduate degree in library science she became the Director of the Millard Sheets Library at Otis College of Art and Design until her retirement.
Maberry and Gaulke have collaborated in all things from life (they are married and have twin daughters) to art and film. They strive to make visible that which is often unseen or misunderstood in dominant culture – lesbian and gay families through gallery installations, books, and videos, and the lives of artists through short documentary films. Maberry is a cowriter of Miss Alma Thomas: A Life in Color and a coproducer of Gloria's Call.
Additional Credits:
Animation by C. Lily Ericsson
Supervising Sound Editor/Re-recording Mixer - Jeremy Grody, Sound Logic Post
EXHIBITION: PAULA LUMBARD
EXHIBITION: PAULA LUMBARD
EXHIBITION: PAULA LUMBARD
Paula Lumbard (right) is the producer of the exhibition Subverting the Male Gaze: Susan Rennie at the Durón Gallery, Social and Public Art Resources Center, Venice, California, June 17-July 8, 2023.
Lumbard is the founder of FootageBank, a provider of stock film footage in Marina del Rey, Calif. She graduated from the University of Washington. She received a master’s degree in art criticism from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., and a Master of Arts in counseling psychology from Norwich University in Northfield, Vt. Over the years she has exhibited as an artist as well as curated a variety of gallery exhibitions.
Paula first met Susan Rennie in 1978 when Susan became her academic supervisor in the Feminist Studio Workshop in Los Angeles, but they did not begin dating until 1987. They married in 2014. Here's a sweet video about Susan and Paula in which they share the importance of community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1RpAJrkel4
The exhibition was coproduced by Donna Deitch. Donna Deitch is an American film and television director, producer, screenwriter, and actor best known for her 1985 film Desert Hearts. The movie was the first feature film to "de-sensationalize lesbianism" by presenting a lesbian romance story with positive and respectful themes (Wikipedia).
MUSIC: RAY LYNCH
EXHIBITION: PAULA LUMBARD
MUSIC: SHOCKING BLUE
As a composer and producer Ray Lynch has won 3 Billboard Awards, written five albums, and sold over 2 million albums without the benefit of live performances or videos.
The effervescent Celestial Soda Pop is the musical theme in Old Girl in a Tutu that embodies the joy of Rennie’s art. It is from Lynch’s second album Deep Breakfast which became a classic and the first independently released album to be certified Gold and then later Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (R.I.A.A.). Deep Breakfast won Lynch Billboard's Award for Artist of the Year for his genre. Also in the film is the haunting melody of Her Knees Deep in Your Mind which was re-released on Lynch’s latest album Ray Lynch Best Of.
Lynch retains ownership of his copyrights, Master and Publishing rights. We are grateful to them for licensing Ray Lynch’s beautiful music for our film’s festival run.
© Ⓟ Ray Lynch Productions 1984/1994 BMI
More about Ray Lynch:
Raised in West Texas, Ray Lynch is a classically trained guitarist having spent three years in Spain studying with the renowned teacher of classical guitar, Eduardo Sainz de la Maza under whose guidance Lynch practiced guitar for 8 hours a day. Lynch then returned to the U.S. and studied music composition at the University of Texas. While there he was invited to become a member of the University of Texas Chamber Singers as their guitarist and lutenist. Lynch joined the "Madrigal Singers" in a whirlwind tour of Europe and the Near East. Having acquired a taste for the beauty of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music as well as proficiency on the lute during the years at U.T. Austin, Lynch accepted a second invitation, this time from the esteemed Renaissance Quartet in New York City. In New York, he spent the next seven years performing with the Quartet and other performers who were at the core of the New York revival of Early Music before buying a farm in Maine.
MUSIC: SHOCKING BLUE
EXHIBITION: PAULA LUMBARD
MUSIC: SHOCKING BLUE
Venus is a song by Dutch rock band Shocking Blue, released as a single in the Netherlands in the summer of 1969. Written by Robbie van Leeuwen with lead vocals performed by Mariska Veres, the song topped the charts in nine countries. We are grateful to Robbie van Leeuwen, Red Bullet Productions, and Nanada Music/Dayglow for licensing this song for festival use.